Worried about cyber attacks on your website? Learn about the 3 most types of online threats, and how you can keep your site protected from bad actors. https://www.webguru-india.com/blog/website-security-guide/

1. Website Security: How To Keep Your Website Safe
Given that so many companies have turned to doing business online, cybercrime has
grown to be one of the biggest hazards to organizations globally today. It encompasses a
variety of criminal behaviors, including data breaches, malware infections, and hacking
attempts. Even the biggest businesses can be brought to their knees by cybercrimes. There
have been instances of major data breaches where databases were compromised and
millions of passwords, social security numbers, and other personal data were exposed.
Currently, over 30,000 new websites are compromised every single day. That should cause
you great concern and serve as a reminder to prioritize website security.

2. Enterprises or organizations often hire website development services to build websites to
establish their online presence, connect with their customers, communicate internally and
externally, and provide information about products and services, among other things.
Websites often serve as repositories for sensitive customer or business data. If these were
to be breached, there could be untold financial and reputational damage to the business.
Besides, data breaches could also land a business in legal trouble.
This blog aims to offer insightful information and practical suggestions to strengthen your
website’s security against potential cyber hazards. Continue reading if you want to take a
proactive approach to web security, protect your sensitive data, preserve users’ confidence,
and guarantee that visitors have a secure surfing experience.
What Is Web Security?
Web security, simply put, is a series of measures you take to prevent your website from
being harmed by dubious people (hackers). Such measures are intended to prevent hackers
from gaining unauthorized access to your website, databases, and server. This helps
prevent any data breaches, modifications, disruptions, or destruction of your digital assets.
As the threat landscape keeps evolving, protecting your website can become increasingly
complex and challenging. Web security is a constantly evolving field since cybercriminals
find new ways to bypass existing security measures. They are always on the look for
vulnerabilities in websites to be exploited, which requires you to stay one step ahead.
Keeping your site secure requires dedicated efforts on both the frontend and the backend.
This includes focusing on the setup of the web server, your password policy (both for new
passwords and renewals), as well as the client-side code.
3 Most Common Website Security Threats
If you want to protect your website, you must first understand what you’re protecting it
from. Here we will discuss the 3 most common (and concerning) online threats that
businesses worldwide face regularly.
1. SQL Injections
Imagine you have a box of documents that is not meant for everyone to see. However, if
some unauthorized person sees the box, he or she can gain access to the documents inside
without your knowledge and cause harm. That’s what SQL injections do to websites. They
slip harmful SQL code into a site’s database, often because the site doesn’t check user input
carefully enough before executing it. This lets attackers steal or change data, or even sneak
into the website’s control room. They can bypass logins, grab private customer
information, or mess with the site’s content.
2. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

3. Imagine you have a box of sweets that you want to share with your friends. However,
someone slips something unhealthy (and potentially harmful) into those sweets without
your knowledge. When your friends receive them they might be seriously harmed. That’s
what XSS does to websites. An attacker adds harmful code to a legitimate website. When
the victim visits it, the bad code runs in their browser, and that’s when the attack occurs.
The site is used as a vehicle to deliver the harmful scripts to users.
This can happen on sites that accept user-generated content, like comments or other user
inputs. The attackers can then steal user info, take over their sessions, or spread harmful
code. There are different types of XSS attacks, like stored XSS (the bad script stays on the
site) and reflected XSS (the script hides in a URL and gets sent to the site through other
users’ requests).
3. Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks
Imagine a crowd of people blocking the entrance to a store, not letting anyone in. That’s
what DDoS attacks do to websites. The hackers use a network of remotely-controlled
computers and phones, often called “botnets”, to flood a server or website with fake traffic.
The site gets overwhelmed, stops working, and might even crash. This can be really bad for
businesses or organizations, such as online stores, banking websites, ticket booking portals,
healthcare portals, and others, that need to be open all the time.
Steps You Can Take
While the 3 threats mentioned above are the most common types that websites face
regularly, they are by no means the only ones. It’s not always possible to assess every single
kind of threat individually, so you must take proactive measures that ensure all avenues of
unauthorized access are closed. Here are some of the steps you can take.
a. Input Validation and Sanitization
Properly validate and sanitize any user input received by the website to ensure it fits
established criteria. Utilize both front-end and server-side validation strategies to filter out
or reject any suspicious or nefarious input.
b. Escaping Special Characters
When direct SQL concatenation is essential, appropriately “escape” special characters prior
to their use in queries. “Escaping” characters means signaling to the database drivers that
those characters need to be handled differently (translated into understandable SQL code).
Different database consoles have exclusive means of escaping special characters, such as
using functional escapes or backslashes.
c. Implementing Web Application Firewalls (WAFs)

4. Install a web application firewall as a supplementary layer of protection. WAFs can
recognize and obstruct malicious attack encounters by analyzing incoming requests and
responses.
d. Regular Security Updates and Patches
Always keep all software, including your web server, content management system (CMS),
and plugins, up to date with the latest security patches. To address recognized
vulnerabilities, routinely apply security updates and patches provided by respective
vendors.
e. Security Audits and Penetration Testing
Perform periodic security audits and penetration testing to detect potential vulnerabilities.
Hire website developers and security experts or leverage automated tools to provoke
attacks and expose weaknesses in the website’s security.
Immediately handle any susceptibilities or flaws disclosed during these website audits.
f. Load Balancing
Execute load-balancing techniques to allocate incoming traffic to multiple servers. This
aids to absorb and manage intensified traffic during DDoS attacks. Load balancing will
make sure that no individual server gets swamped, guaranteeing the availability and
performance of your website.
g. Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Introduce a Content Delivery Network to distribute your website’s content over multiple
servers at assorted geographical locations. CDNs help absorb and reduce DDoS attacks by
scattering the traffic load and offering caching capabilities to take care of a high volume of
requests.
h. Install SSL Certificates
Incorporate an SSL certificate into your website. It enables data encryption, keeping the
privacy and security of sensitive information. SSL certificates help to build trust, provide
visual cues of a secure connection, and fortify credibility with visitors. Moreover, they will
help you meet security compliance requirements, upgrade search engine rankings, and
guard against man-in-the-middle attacks.
Own a site on WordPress? Have a look at these 8 WordPress website maintenance
tasks that you should perform regularly to stay clean and protected.

5. Conclusion
Web security isn’t a simple task, nor can it simply be achieved in one day. It is constantly
evolving, and requires updated knowledge, constant monitoring, adapting, and
improvement. Be vigilant, keep educating yourself on new threats, and when necessary
partner with online security professionals.
Resource: https://www.webguru-india.com/blog/website-security-guide/
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WebGuru Infosystems
Y8, Block-EP, Sector V, Salt Lake, Kolkata-700091, India
Website: https://www.webguru-india.com/
Email: enquiry@webguru-india.com
Phone: +91-8420197208
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