Website Security & Protection: How to Secure a Website

Introduction

Website security can be a complex (or even confusing) topic in an ever-evolving landscape. This guide is meant to provide a clear framework for website owners seeking to mitigate risk and apply security principles to their web properties.

Before we get started, it’s important to keep in mind that security is never a set-it-and-forge-it solution. Instead, we encourage you to think of it as a continuous process that requires constant assessment to reduce the overall risk

By applying a systematic approach to website security, we can think of it as an onion, with many layers of defense all coming together to form one piece. We need to view website security holistically and approach it with a defense in depth strategy.

What is Website Security?

Website security refers to the measures taken to secure a website from cyberattacks. That may include protecting a website from hackers, malware, scams or phishing, and errors. In this sense, website security is an ongoing process and an essential part of managing a website. Maintaining a secure website is critical to protecting your website visitors and users from attacks, data theft, and bad actors.

Why should I care about website security?

Website security can be challenging, especially when dealing with a large network of sites. Having a secure website is as vital to someone’s online presence as having a website host. If a website is hacked and blocklisted, for example, it can lose up to 98% of its traffic. Not having a secure website can be as bad as not having a website at all or even worse. For example, client data breach can result in lawsuits, heavy fines, and ruined reputation.

Cyberattacks against public-facing websites—regardless of size—are common and may result in:

• Website defacement,
• Loss of website availability or denial-of-service (DoS) condition,
• Compromise of sensitive customer or organizational data,
• An attacker taking control of the affected website, or
• Use of website as a staging point for watering hole attacks.

These threats affect all aspects of information security—confidentiality, integrity, and availability—and can gravely damage the reputation of the website and its owner. For example, organization and personal websites that fall victim to defacement, DoS, or data breach may experience financial loss due to eroded user trust or a decrease in website visitors.

Why Websites Get Hacked

There are over 1.94 billion websites online in 2019. This provides an extensive playground for bad actors.

There is often a misconception about why websites get hacked. Owners and administrators often believe they won’t get hacked because their sites are smaller, and therefore make less attractive targets. Hackers may choose bigger sites if they want to steal information or sabotage. For their other goals (which are more common), any small site is valuable enough.

There are various goals when hacking websites, but the main ones are:

• Exploiting site visitors
• Stealing information stored on the server
• Tricking bots and crawlers (black-hat SEO)
• Abusing server resources
• Pure hooliganism (defacement)

Automated Website Attacks

It has become easier for the average site owner to get online quickly with the use of an open source content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Magento, Joomla or Drupal.

While these platforms often provide frequent security updates, the use of third party extensible components – such as plugins or themes – lead to vulnerabilities that attacks of opportunity can easily exploit.

We have developed detailed website security guides for each popular CMS to help website owners protect their environments and mitigate threats.

Website security is crucial for protecting your website, its data, and the sensitive information of your users. Here are some key aspects of website security that you should consider:

SSL/TLS Encryption:

Use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt data transmitted between the user’s browser and your web server. This is particularly important for securing login credentials, personal information, and financial transactions.

Regular Software Updates:

Keep your website’s software, including the content management system (CMS), plugins, and server software, up-to-date. Regularly update to the latest versions to patch security vulnerabilities.

Strong Passwords and User Authentication:

Enforce strong password policies for user accounts. Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) to add an extra layer of security, requiring users to provide multiple forms of identification.

Firewalls:

Use web application firewalls (WAF) to filter, monitor, and block malicious traffic. This helps protect your website from various online threats, including SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other attacks.

Data Backups:

Regularly backup your website data and store it in a secure location. This ensures that you can quickly recover your website in case of a security incident or data loss.

Security Headers:

Implement security headers in your website’s HTTP response headers. Headers like Content Security Policy (CSP), Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS), and X-Content-Type-Options can enhance your website’s security.

Input Validation and Sanitization:

Validate and sanitize user inputs to prevent common vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. This helps ensure that users cannot input malicious code into your website.

Monitoring and Logging:

Set up monitoring tools to detect unusual or suspicious activities on your website. Regularly review logs for security events to identify and respond to potential threats.

User Permissions and Least Privilege Principle:

Limit user access to the minimum necessary for their roles. Follow the principle of least privilege to reduce the potential impact of a compromised account.

Incident Response Plan:

Develop an incident response plan that outlines the steps to be taken in case of a security breach. This helps minimize the damage and facilitates a quicker recovery.

Educate Users:

Educate your users about best security practices, such as creating strong passwords, recognizing phishing attempts, and keeping their devices and software updated.

Security Audits and Penetration Testing:

Conduct regular security audits and penetration testing to identify and address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by attackers.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, web application security is a major part of modern organizational risk management. Web applications are more at-risk now than ever before, so it’s imperative that executives and managers take the right steps necessary to secure their web applications against new threats.

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