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Don’t Set and Forget Your Website

May 4, 2022 | Website Security

Many small businesses set up a website to establish an Internet presence.  However, quite a few simply create it and make minor adjustments to the site as needed, but they don’t think of the needed upkeep of the backend systems.  Not maintaining the systems is how legitimate websites can get compromised with malicious code that runs when their site is visited.  A compromised website could potentially lead to serious consequences to the visitors and potential customer and put your organization’s reputation at risk.

While cheap do-it-yourself web hosting sites are attractive, they can be very problematic for small businesses.  For example, WordPress, a very common website development tool had serious flaws at its core a few years ago, and many websites were compromised with malicious code that was executed when visitors went to their site.  WordPress and other development tools must be maintained and updated periodically to help ensure that any security issues are patched to prevent these types of compromises.

From the website development system to Java scripts, a site must be maintained. Using a good-quality web development and hosting company is critical to your operations and reputation.  It is not as cheap as those do-it-yourself websites, but it is well worth the extra cost for peace of mind.

 

If you are using a third party to manage your website, make sure they are doing the following:

  1. Automatically backing up your data to an off-site storage point
    Backing up your data is critical to recover in the event of a system failure or a compromise.  Backups should also be stored offsite from where the website is hosted in the event of a major system problem.
  1. Enforcing a strong password policy
    Every website login from the administrator to remote users should require strong passwords to include a length of at least 8 – 12 characters that have at least one capital letter, a special character, and one number.
  1. Encrypting the website
    All websites should be using encryption (https:// where the “s” stands for secure) to protect the interactions with the end-user.
  1. Continuously scanning your website for vulnerabilities
    A good hosting company will continuously scan for any known vulnerabilities and alert the staff to take action to fix any issues.
  1. Keeping your software up to date and removing unused content
    All websites need to be maintained and should be regularly patched and updated to avoid any possible exploits that might have been discovered. Also, any content that is not in use should be removed to reduce the footprint for cyber-attacks.

 

Jason Johnson
President
Johnson Business Technology Solutions, Inc.
https://www.johnsonbts.com

Thank you, Jason and Johnson Business Technology Solutions, Inc. for their guest blog post.
For all your IT needs and especially security, get in touch with Jason and Kim at Johnson Business Technology Solutions, Inc.

 

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