With over two billion websites in 2021, it is easy to understand why the internet has turned out to be a treasure hunt platform in recent times for hackers. With an uncountable number of transactions and important information being exchanged every day, hackers are constantly striving to create or build special hacking systems to evade the security measures you’ve put in place to safeguard your website from any threat.

Small website owners often overlook strict or sophisticated security measures believing that their website doesn’t have any valuable information or any essential transaction taking place on it to warrant cyberattacks. If you are in this category, you need to understand that hackers don’t only target government websites and large corporate websites; they also target small and medium-sized websites. They attack these websites because they rarely have strict security protocols in place.

The best website security practices shouldn’t be optional for any website owner; it is a must. Website security is the set of steps website owners take to safeguard their sites against any form of cyberattack. It also involves training employees on the basic safety practices or obtaining the proper protection tools such as an SSL certificate.

Securing Your Website in 2021

Below are some of the essential steps you need to take as a website owner to secure your site from any attack.

1. Automate regular backups

One of the ways you can prepare and safeguard your website against the activities of hackers is by maintaining a regular backup of your website’s database, files, content, and so on. By doing this, you can easily and quickly restore your website to the previous version even if it is attacked.

2. Good password management

The topic of good password management should by now be common knowledge for all website owners due to how often this very issue has been addressed. It’s disturbing how several people still fall victims to cyberattacks due to the use of weak or vulnerable passwords or making use of the same password for all their accounts.

As a website admin, you need to implement the use of strong passwords on your websites. When talking of a strong password, we are talking about the use of passwords that contain nothing less than 8 characters, mixed with both upper and lower case letters, and symbols.

Also, you should desist from the act of using your birthday details, surname, school name, or any other common information about yourself as a password; these are some of the information anyone (especially hackers) can get to guess your password and log in successfully into your account.

It will also be of tremendous help to you if you use new or different passwords for each of your new accounts. Your passwords don’t need to make sense or be pronounceable; you can make use of a password manager to create and save such passwords just in case you feel you will forget them. It is also a nice idea to add an extra layer of security to your passwords by activating two-factor authentication.

3. Use an SSL security certificate

The majority of people are always scared to surf a website they don’t see a lock “HTTPS” or symbol. No one wants to keep on getting pop-up messages warning them of potential security risks when they are on your web page; these pop-up messages won’t encourage anyone to navigate your site any further.

Websites that don’t have an SSL certificate are more likely to rank lower in Google searches. A standard SSL certificate is an important security measure that needs to be in place for any category of a web page, most especially for eCommerce websites where users are submitting sensitive information like their credit card details and the likes.

An SSL encrypted connection secures or safeguards sensitive information like customer credit details, login information, and other important data that has been written on forms from being exposed.

4. Use a secure hosting plan

As a website owner, your success in this business will be determined in a significant way by the hosting plan you use. A hosting company should provide you with detailed security features like protection from SQL injections and DDoS attacks, as well as scanning and removal of malware.

Whether you are making use of a shared content management system like Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress, you must put into consideration the quality and security a hosting plan will give to your website over the price.

5. Use firewalls

Firewalls are very important because they recognize any malicious traffic before it hits your website. There are two types of firewalls; web application firewalls and network firewalls.

The network firewalls are the ones that are often used by web hosting companies and large cooperate organizations to identify and block any malicious traffic attempting to hit webservers within a network; whereas a web application firewall is used to safeguard a specific website and make sure that any malicious traffic is restricted.

6. Always update your website

Hackers are always testing websites for any vulnerability that can be used to gain entry. That is why you need to make sure that any applications, software, and plugins on your site are always kept updated at all times.

CMS (content management system) platforms like WordPress provide an option for automatic updates where any current patches will be installed right after release to repair any bugs and security weaknesses.

7. Keep your website clean

A properly organized website will be easier to manage and protect. Your website needs to have a properly arranged file structure that will help you quickly locate specific files. A properly arranged website is of great benefit, especially if you can consistently delete unused plugins, applications, and files. This is because these unused files can be easily used as leverage for hackers to gain entry into your website.

Conclusion

Protecting both yourself and your users from hackers should be your top priority as a website owner. We’ve provided some steps for you to take in securing your website. If you can implement these steps, the possibility of hackers breaking into your website will be small.