Not a week goes by when we don’t hear headlines about a case of cyber crime. For some, these news stories have become wallpaper. It’s happening, but not to me. Does it really happen that much? Unfortunately, yes. Stop for a moment and think about it: what would it feel like if it did happen to you and what could the impact be?
If you have a business, chances are you’ll have a website. If that website is hacked in any way, there is a raft of information and data at the criminal’s fingertips. At worst, they could damage or deface your website and your business could be stopped from operating. More often, hackers attempt to use your server as an email relay for spam, or to setup a temporary web server, normally to serve files of an illegal nature – not as extreme as de-facing your website, but just think how damaging this could be to your reputation…
This thought sends shivers down our spines. Security of a website is one of the most important things to us and we spend a significant amount of time and effort protecting the websites we build for our clients.
As web technology experts we use a variety of different approaches including regular updates, fixes, de-bugging and SSL certificates to keep the hackers at bay. For some clients, a more enhanced service is needed, so for them we provide extra barriers to help protect their particular business. This includes things like monitoring, encryption of data, back ups and more.
Hacking is regularly performed by automated scripts written to scour the Internet in an attempt to exploit known website security issues in software.
Weak passwords, insufficient security updates and a bad business process can all lead to a dreaded attack – any attack, however big or small should be treated very seriously. So, at a basic level, what can you do?
First things first, make security a business priority. Weave it into all of your normal businesses processes – do you delete from your system the profiles of staff that have left? How often do you ask for password updates? How sophisticated is your password system?
Who hosts your website? Do they include security as part of their service? Does it meet your needs?
Do you have password areas for sensitive data? If so, are they encrypted?
What about a back-up plan? What would you do if your site were hacked?
This raises a lot of big questions, so we’ve pulled together our top 5 tips which we hope will help: http://bit.ly/2ecure
If you are at all concerned about web security and want to speak to Drupal experts, please contact us.