Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty is an essen­tial part of run­ning any busi­ness with an online pres­ence as web­sites are prime tar­gets for hack­ers aim­ing to steal data, dis­rupt ser­vices, or dam­age reputations.

A suc­cess­ful attack can lead to finan­cial loss­es and a break­down in cus­tomer trust, which can be dif­fi­cult to recov­er from. Pro­tect­ing your site isn’t sim­ply a tech­ni­cal issue – it’s about safe­guard­ing the future of your business.

In this blog, we’ll explore 6 prac­ti­cal steps that can help secure your site and keep your oper­a­tions run­ning smooth­ly. Let’s dive in:

6 steps to protect your site from cyber threats

1. Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) and strong passwords

One of the sim­plest yet most effec­tive ways to pro­tect your web­site is by using strong, unique pass­words for every account. A strong pass­word should be at least 12 char­ac­ters long and include a mix of upper­case and low­er­case let­ters, num­bers, and sym­bols. Avoid using eas­i­ly guess­able infor­ma­tion, like names or birth­days, and nev­er reuse pass­words across dif­fer­ent platforms.

Mul­ti-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion (MFA) adds an extra lay­er of secu­ri­ty by requir­ing a sec­ond form of ver­i­fi­ca­tion, such as a code sent to your phone or an authen­ti­ca­tion app, in addi­tion to your pass­word. Even if a hack­er obtains your pass­word, MFA makes it much hard­er for them to access your account with­out the sec­ond factor.

Encour­age your team and users to enable MFA wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly for admin accounts. MFA tools are typ­i­cal­ly easy to set up and can dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce the risk of unau­tho­rised access. For busi­ness­es using mul­ti­ple plat­forms, con­sid­er using a pass­word man­ag­er to store and gen­er­ate strong pass­words. Com­bined with MFA, this approach cre­ates a high­ly secure envi­ron­ment for both you and your customers.

2. Give your team training on cybersecurity best practices

Even with the best secu­ri­ty tools in place, human error remains one of the biggest threats to your web­site’s safe­ty – mak­ing it essen­tial to edu­cate your team on best prac­tices. Reg­u­lar train­ing should equip employ­ees with the abil­i­ty to recog­nise and respond to com­mon threats, like phish­ing attacks, inse­cure net­works, and mis­han­dling of sen­si­tive data.

Start by teach­ing employ­ees how to iden­ti­fy phish­ing attempts, which often mim­ic legit­i­mate emails to trick users into giv­ing up login cre­den­tials or per­son­al infor­ma­tion. Empha­sise the impor­tance of ver­i­fy­ing the sender, avoid­ing unex­pect­ed links, and con­tact­ing the sup­posed sender direct­ly if some­thing seems suspicious.

Encour­age your team to devel­op secure brows­ing habits. Employ­ees should only access com­pa­ny sys­tems through secure, encrypt­ed net­works, such as a vir­tu­al pri­vate net­work (VPN), and avoid using pub­lic Wi-Fi for any work-relat­ed tasks. This ensures that sen­si­tive data isn’t exposed on vul­ner­a­ble networks.

Imple­ment­ing pass­word man­age­ment poli­cies is anoth­er impor­tant step. Make sure employ­ees under­stand how to cre­ate strong, unique pass­words and use a pass­word man­ag­er to store them secure­ly. This reduces the risk of weak or reused pass­words being exploit­ed by hackers.

Addi­tion­al­ly, it’s impor­tant to lim­it access to sen­si­tive data. Not all employ­ees need full access to com­pa­ny sys­tems, so con­sid­er imple­ment­ing role-based access con­trols to lim­it exposure.

Reg­u­lar­ly update your cyber­se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols and pro­vide ongo­ing train­ing to keep your team pre­pared for evolv­ing threats. When you do pro­vide this kind of train­ing, keep in mind that it should be deliv­ered in the most begin­ner-friend­ly lan­guage, as most peo­ple won’t be famil­iar with tech­ni­cal terms.

3. Keep software and plugins updated

Anoth­er essen­tial step in main­tain­ing strong cyber­se­cu­ri­ty is keep­ing your web­site’s soft­ware and plu­g­ins updat­ed. Hack­ers can exploit vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in out­dat­ed soft­ware, gain unau­tho­rised access to web­sites, steal data, or inject mali­cious code. Updates will like­ly include essen­tial secu­ri­ty patch­es that close these gaps, reduc­ing your expo­sure to attacks.

Your con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem (CMS), plu­g­ins, and any third-par­ty appli­ca­tions should be reg­u­lar­ly checked for updates. Many plat­forms, like Word­Press, allow you to enable auto­mat­ic updates, which is a great way to stay cur­rent with­out man­u­al inter­ven­tion (top tip: before updat­ing, ensure com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with your web­site’s theme and oth­er plu­g­ins to pre­vent disruptions).

Out­dat­ed plu­g­ins are par­tic­u­lar­ly risky. Some pop­u­lar plu­g­ins become tar­gets for hack­ers because vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties are dis­cov­ered over time. Always check for plu­g­in updates and, if a plu­g­in is no longer sup­port­ed by its devel­op­er, replace it with a more secure, active­ly main­tained alternative.

Addi­tion­al­ly, main­tain­ing reg­u­lar updates for your web server’s soft­ware, oper­at­ing sys­tems, and fire­walls is just as impor­tant as updat­ing your CMS. Automat­ing back­ups before any update is also a best prac­tice, ensur­ing that if some­thing goes wrong, you can quick­ly restore your site.

4. Install a web application firewall (WAF)

A web appli­ca­tion fire­wall (WAF) is an impor­tant secu­ri­ty tool designed to pro­tect your web­site from mali­cious traf­fic and cyber­at­tacks. Think of it as a gate­keep­er that mon­i­tors and fil­ters the data com­ing into and out of your web­site, block­ing harm­ful requests before they reach your site’s backend.

This is espe­cial­ly use­ful for defend­ing against com­mon attacks like SQL injec­tions, cross-site script­ing (XSS), and brute force attacks.

SQL injec­tions and XSS attacks are meth­ods hack­ers use to inject mali­cious code into your web­site through forms, com­ment sec­tions, or search bars. A WAF analy­ses incom­ing data and auto­mat­i­cal­ly blocks any­thing sus­pi­cious. This means that even if a hack­er attempts to exploit a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in your web­site, the WAF stops the harm­ful request from reach­ing its target.

Anoth­er advan­tage of a WAF is pro­tec­tion against Dis­trib­uted Denial of Ser­vice (DDoS) attacks, where an attack­er over­whelms your site with fake traf­fic to make it crash. A WAF can detect this type of abnor­mal traf­fic and block it before it brings down your web­site, keep­ing it online for legit­i­mate users.

One of the great things about WAFs is that they can be tai­lored to the spe­cif­ic needs of your web­site. Some WAFs are cloud-based, mean­ing they don’t require any phys­i­cal hard­ware to be installed. Oth­ers may be built into your host­ing provider’s secu­ri­ty offer­ings. Cloud-based WAFs are often eas­i­er to set up and can be con­fig­ured to start work­ing right away, offer­ing real-time protection.

5. Use secure hosting and HTTPS

Your web host­ing provider plays a cru­cial role in secu­ri­ty, as they are respon­si­ble for keep­ing your web­site’s serv­er pro­tect­ed. It’s impor­tant to select a host­ing provider that pri­ori­tis­es cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, offer­ing fea­tures such as fire­walls, reg­u­lar secu­ri­ty patch­es, and pro­tec­tion against Dis­trib­uted Denial of Ser­vice (DDoS) attacks. Addi­tion­al­ly, a reli­able host will offer reg­u­lar back­ups of your site, so you can recov­er your data in the event of an attack or sys­tem failure.

Beyond host­ing, using HTTPS instead of HTTP is crit­i­cal for encrypt­ing the data trans­mit­ted between your web­site and its users. HTTPS (secured by SSL/TLS cer­tifi­cates) ensures that sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion such as login cre­den­tials, pay­ment details, and per­son­al data is pro­tect­ed from inter­cep­tion. (With­out HTTPS, this data can be exposed to man-in-the-mid­dle attacks, where hack­ers inter­cept the infor­ma­tion as it trav­els between the user and the server.)

HTTPS is a must-have for any web­site han­dling cus­tomer infor­ma­tion. It not only enhances secu­ri­ty but also boosts user trust, as most mod­ern browsers now flag non-HTTPS sites as “Not Secure.”

6. Regularly backup your website data

Reg­u­lar back­ups are a vital part of any web­site secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy. Even with the best cyber­se­cu­ri­ty defences in place, no sys­tem is com­plete­ly immune to attacks or fail­ures. Back­ups ensure that, in the event of a cyber­at­tack, data cor­rup­tion, or sys­tem crash, your web­site can be quick­ly restored with­out sig­nif­i­cant loss of infor­ma­tion or downtime.

Back­ups should be auto­mat­ed and occur fre­quent­ly to cap­ture the most recent ver­sion of your web­site. How often you back up depends on how fre­quent­ly your web­site is updat­ed, but for most busi­ness­es, dai­ly back­ups are a good start­ing point. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for e‑commerce web­sites, SaaS plat­forms, and blogs that expe­ri­ence fre­quent traf­fic or transactions.

There are sev­er­al ways to back up your data. Many host­ing providers offer auto­mat­ic back­up ser­vices, which make it easy to sched­ule reg­u­lar back­ups and store copies secure­ly off-site. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can use cloud-based back­up ser­vices that store your data in the cloud, ensur­ing you have access to it even if your main serv­er is compromised.

In addi­tion to sched­ul­ing back­ups, it’s impor­tant to peri­od­i­cal­ly test the restora­tion process. Back­ups are only use­ful if they work, and test­ing ensures that you can quick­ly restore your web­site if need­ed. Stor­ing back­ups in mul­ti­ple loca­tions (such as local­ly and in the cloud) adds an extra lay­er of pro­tec­tion, giv­ing you peace of mind that your data is safe no mat­ter what happens.

Final thoughts

While imple­ment­ing strong secu­ri­ty mea­sures is essen­tial, main­tain­ing them over time is just as impor­tant. Cyber threats are con­stant­ly evolv­ing, and what pro­tects your web­site today might not be suf­fi­cient tomor­row. This is why reg­u­lar mon­i­tor­ing and audit­ing are so crucial.

Mon­i­tor­ing your web­site’s activ­i­ty in real-time can help you detect sus­pi­cious behav­iour ear­ly on. Set up alerts for unusu­al traf­fic spikes, unau­tho­rised login attempts, or unex­pect­ed changes in files. Many secu­ri­ty tools, such as a WAF or your host­ing provider, offer mon­i­tor­ing fea­tures that noti­fy you of poten­tial threats. By catch­ing these issues as they occur, you can respond quick­ly before they esca­late into a larg­er problem.

Audit­ing your web­site reg­u­lar­ly is anoth­er impor­tant prac­tice. Con­duct secu­ri­ty audits to review your cur­rent defences, check for out­dat­ed soft­ware or plu­g­ins, and ensure that role-based access con­trols are still appro­pri­ate for your team’s needs. This is also a good time to assess your web­site’s back­up sys­tems and test that they are func­tion­ing correctly.

Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty isn’t a one-time task but an ongo­ing effort. To get help stay­ing ahead of new threats, reach out to us here at pur­ple­plan­et. We can help you secure your site and devel­op strate­gies for ongo­ing protection.

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