According to a study published by Checkpoint Software Technologies, there were 50% more cyber-attacks in the business sector in 2021 compared to 2020. The alarming rise in hacker attacks should be a clear sign that you should not leave the front door wide open on any design project.
Keeping out malware, hackers, and other nasties should be a top priority; otherwise, your and your clients’ data could be at risk, causing harm and financial loss to the entire operation.
Aside from losing money and data, hacking can result in identity theft, your site crashing, or being suspended, not to mention significant losses in traffic.
Thankfully, you don’t need to be a tech wiz to keep your design projects safe and sound. The steps we will outline below are simple to implement. That said, if you’d rather have a team of qualified professionals deal with this side of things, you can always hire one of the best cybersecurity companies and call it a day.
How Does Hacking Actually Work?
If you’ve ever seen hacking depicted in a Hollywood movie or TV show, you might think it requires a lot of fast typing and extensive knowledge of tech jargon like “mainframe.” In reality, things are a lot different.
Although there isn’t one way a website, app, or network can be hacked, there are a few patterns. One thing’s for sure — if you’ve been hacked, particularly in the corporate world, you’ll know because something will be very wrong. Here are a few common ways hacking can present itself:
- Phishing — Scammers get in touch with your employees or clients pretending to be somebody else to obtain passwords or other personal information.
- Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) — Using bots or a coordinated effort by many users, hackers overload your website/app with requests, crashing the server.
- Malware — There are too many types of malware/viruses for us to describe them all here. In essence, if your network is affected by a virus, you could experience a vast range of problems, from your website crashing to being unable to access it and anything in between.
- Gibberish hack — Your website turns into a set of auto-created content pages filled with keywords and links leading to shady websites. The goal of this hack is to use your domain authority to help these sites rank on Google.
- Cloaked keywords hack — Similar to the “gibberish hack,” except a lot more sophisticated. In this case, your content remains the same except for a few links and keywords, which makes the hack more challenging to spot.
- Ransomware — Hackers get into your website, internal network, or social media accounts. They then change the passwords and withhold access or threaten to publish sensitive information unless a ransom sum is transferred into a cryptocurrency wallet.
3 Ways to Keep Your Website or App Protected
Now that you have a better idea of what hacking looks like in the real world let’s look at a few ways to ensure you don’t become the target of such an attack. We asked our friends from a leading Phoenix website design company for their top 3 tips for keeping your design projects and websites safer.
- Use an SSL Certificate
One of the simplest and most important things to do to protect yourself and your users is installing an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. You can (hopefully) see evidence of an SSL certificate on the websites you visit every day — it is the reason for the padlock in the URL bar and the “S” in “HTTPS.”
Without getting into too much detail, you should know that SSL encrypts any information passed between your website and its users. This keeps everyone’s information protected in the transfer. Perhaps more importantly, most browsers now warn visitors when they’re entering a website not protected by SSL, and Google discriminates heavily against these sites in its search results pages.
There are many different ways to install SSL, but here are the three simplest ones:
- Use a high-quality website builder that includes an SSL certificate
- Select a hosting provider that includes SSL in all of its plans
- Install SSL for free yourself through Let’s Encrypt
It is imperative to have SSL if you’re accepting any payments through your website, but also if you’re transferring files or asking for login details. Without it, all this data remains vulnerable to hacker attacks.
- Install Anti-Malware Software
Although “anti-malware software” may sound like a load of technical mumbo-jumbo to the absolute beginner, it is actually a great way to simplify protection. Also known simply as an antivirus, this type of software looks out for potential threats and lets you go about your business.
There are many anti-malware providers available. Some, like Bitdefender, offer free plans, while you’ll have to pay for some more advanced options. The security services you’ll find within these different packages include:
- PCI compliance
- DDoS protection
- Vulnerability patching
- Web app firewalls
- Malware detection
- Web scanning
A high-quality hosting provider or website builder will also take care of your website’s security. Hosting providers often have anti-malware software or protection tools included in their plans.
- Improve Your Passwords
We’re so used to dealing with passwords every day that we often forget how integral they are to data security. It is easy to overlook the fact that your password is often all that’s keeping your personal information from falling into the wrong hands.
The good news is that improving your passwords is among the most straightforward fixes you can make to increase your projects’ security. In fact, you could do it as soon as you’re done reading this article. Take 20 minutes out of your day to make your passwords more robust, and you’ll be well on your way to a more secure online existence.
The National Cyber Security Center of the United Kingdom carried out a survey analyzing the most common passwords used by breached accounts worldwide. The ten most-often hacked passwords were the following:
- 123456
- 123456789
- qwerty
- password
- 1111111
- 12345678
- abc123
- 1234567
- password1
- 12345
If you’re using one of these passwords, or one resembling any of these, it is time to make some changes. Actually, if you can see your password on this list, go ahead and change it right now. We’ll wait.
While you’re at it, you might as well fully optimize your passwords, even the ones you consider pretty strong at the moment. Here are some ways to do that:
- Eliminate personal information from your passwords
- Make your passwords at least 8 characters long
- Don’t use the same password on multiple websites
- Combine letters, numbers, and special characters (& $, @, #…)
Use the tips above to create bulletproof passwords, but most importantly, keep them to yourself. We mean it — don’t share your passwords with anyone, even your friends, and make sure to change them regularly, at least a couple of times a year.
Conclusion
If there’s one thing that we’d like you to remember from this article, it is that you can never be too safe when it comes to data protection and privacy in business.
Although websites are easier to create than ever, security maintenance is more critical than ever.
Stay vigilant, and be proactive when protecting the data and personal information of your customers and your company. Your users trust you to keep their data safe, and failing to honor that trust could lead to significant consequences for the success of your business.
