How to Protect your Website from being Hacked
With the rise of cyberthreats, website hacking has become an increasing worry for many business owners.
Protecting your website from being hacked is essential to ensure the safety of your customers and business information. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to make sure your website is secure.
This article will look at how to protect your website from being hacked, including understanding the most common attacks, using secure passwords, and backing up your data regularly.
Make sure that your software is up-to-date
It might seem easy, but ensuring that your software is up-to-date is crucial to ensure your website is safe. This is true for the operating system for your server and any other software you might be running on your site, like the CMS or forum.
When security holes on websites are discovered in software, hackers will quickly exploit these vulnerabilities.
If you're using a managed-hosting solution, you shouldn't have to fret about applying security patches to your operating system, as the hosting provider should manage this.
If you're using third-party software on your site, like a CMS or forum, make sure you install any security patches.
Many vendors have an email list or RSS feeds that provide information on the security concerns that a website may face. WordPress, Umbraco, and many other CMSs will notify you of the latest system updates available after signing in.
Many developers use tools like Composer, NPM, and RubyGems to control the dependencies in their software and the security vulnerabilities that appear in a programme you depend on. Still, what you're not paying attention to is among the easiest ways to be exposed.
Be on the lookout for SQL injection
SQL injection attacks result from an attacker using web form fields and URL parameters to access or alter your database.
Suppose you are using the standard Transact SQL. In that case, it is easy to inadvertently insert rogue code in your query, which could be used to alter tables, gain information, or erase information.
It is possible to avoid this from happening by using parameterised queries. Most web languages come with this feature, which is simple to implement.
Protect against XSS attacks
Attacks that use cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks insert malicious JavaScript into your webpages that run on the users' browsers and alter the content of your pages or even obtain information to transmit data back to attackers.
If, for instance, you allow comments on your page that are not validated, the attacker may post comments that contain script tags, as well as JavaScript that could be running on every browser of the other users, and take their login password and allow the attacker to control the accounts of all users who has viewed the post.
It is essential to ensure that your users aren't able to insert active JavaScript content onto your site.
This is a particular concern for modern web applications, where pages are constructed mostly from user-generated content and often produce HTML, which is then interpretable by front-end frameworks such as Angular or Ember.
These frameworks offer a variety of XSS protections. However, mixing rendering by client and server makes for new and more complex ways to attack: not only injecting JavaScript into HTML efficiently, but also injecting content that executes code through the use of Angular directives or Ember aids.
Beware of messages that are not correct
Be aware of the information you divulge within your errors.
Only provide minimal errors to your customers to ensure they don't expose information stored within your system (e.g., API keys or database passwords). Do not provide all the details about exceptions, as they could make sophisticated attacks such as SQL injection much easier.
Ensure you record all errors in your server's logs and provide users with only the required details.
Validate both sides
Validation should be conducted both on the server and browser side. The browser can detect simple mistakes, like mandatory fields that aren't filled, or when you type text into a number-only field.
However, these can be remediated by the browser, so you should check for these validations. Not doing so may cause malware or scripting codes to be added to the database or cause unintended consequences for your site.
Final Thoughts
Protecting your website from being hacked is a vital step in ensuring the safety of yourself and your customers.
Taking the time to create strong passwords, install firewalls, and use two-factor authentication are all essential steps in preventing a potential cyber-attack.
Additionally, regularly patching security vulnerabilities and securing your server will help to ensure that your website remains safe.
Contact EWM to discover how we can support you in enhancing the safety of your website.