A hacked website can be devastating for your business and has more adverse effects than you’d think. It disrupts your online business operations, exposes your company’s systems to a number of bugs and viruses, and can divert your customers from your website forever, thereby decreasing your online sales.

But most importantly, it puts confidential information about your company and your employees at risk. It also jeopardizes personal information about your customers, like their social security numbers or debit card information, making you liable to bear the expenses and responsibility for data theft.

According to statistics, 446.5 million American records were exposed between 2005 and 2018 and the business sector was the most affected by this data theft, accounting for around 91% of all the data breaches.

But you need not worry because we have some ways you can protect your website from hackers.

Keep your software and website platform up to date

Ensuring that your content management system, scripts, and plug-ins are up-to-date is vital to keep your website secure. Many of these tools are developed as an open source and their codes are easily accessible so any loop-holes in your software will make it vulnerable to hacking and allow hackers to exploit weaknesses in the script and take control of your website.

Strengthen your network security

Making it difficult for hackers to access your network will allow your team to prevent an attack before it happens. Apply expiration to log-ins so the systems can be logged off automatically after a certain time of inactivity. Change your passwords frequently and keep the usernames and passwords difficult to crack. And make sure that devices that are plugged into the network are scanned thoroughly to detect malware before they’re attached.

Use a web application firewall

A web application firewall (WAF) protects web applications from attacks like cross-site-scripting, SQL injection, file inclusion, and cross-site forgery by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic.

A WAF works as a shield between web application and internet and can either be network-based, host-based, or cloud-based. Cloud-based WAFs are the most popular due to their affordability and ease of use and because they’re updated consistently to protect you against threats.

Install Website Vulnerability Scanners

Website Vulnerability Scanners can detect technical faults and weaknesses on your website, such as command injection, cross-site scripting, and insecure server configuration, and warns you well in advance.

A number of commercial and open source tools of website vulnerability scanners are available and while choosing one for your company, you should pay attention to its scalability and relevance over a long period in detecting most recent vulnerabilities.

So if your business website has any outdated applications and software, the highly skilled team of experts at EX² Outcoding can help you with quality assurance in software testing, nearshore outsourcing services, IT staff augmentation, and website development and mobile development.

Contact us for more information.