Best Ways to Prevent SQL Injection in PHP/CMS Websites: Consequences & Prevention

Malware attacks are widespread. When such attacks occur, they may cost businesses a lot of money in fixes, loss of customers, time and much more. Many business owners feel very secure until the moment they get hacked. Once someone gets hacked, they take the impromptu choice to learn on the causes, the consequences and ways of repairing the infected website. This article will cover the implications of getting infected with SQL injection in malware.

What is SQL (SQLi) injection?

This is an attack that occurs once an attacker/ hacker keys in malicious code in the API call and eventually takes control of the SQL statement. The main problem occurs if the code is vulnerable to SQLi since the attacker can enter MySQL commands to control the entire website without the owner’s consent or knowledge. This heavily attacks applications such as PHP that mainly rely on MySQL. This is because the fields of these applications are known to accept some characters such as slashes. Check our detailed blog to know more on SQL injection.

Some of the causes of malware attacks are due to unpatched vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities may be discovered in CMSs such as Joomla, Opencart, Magento & WordPress. Though the CMS’s security has been enhanced, they are sometimes hacked due to the plug-ins they use that can be an entry for hackers. You can learn how PHP and CMS can be protected from hackers by reading this article.

The Consequences of SQLi injection in PHP website and CMS.

SQLi injections are very prevalent in our society. Once a hacker gains control of your database, they may do whatever they want with the data at their disposal. Some effects of this include:

The attacker is not required to give their authentication before logging in to your website. This means personal credentials are no longer necessary.
The integrity of the website can be compromised. This is also known as phishing. This can be done through alteration or insertion of malicious content in the database.
Hackers may delete audit information from the website.
Redirects – This is where an attacker puts redirects on your website. This means that your legitimate website will be redirected to malicious pages. An example could be redirecting your website to a website that sells fraudulent things.
Spamming – Just like redirects, attackers monetize their fraudulent goods on your website. The problem is when they infect an application that has a one-on-one interaction with customers. This is because such spams may make customers lose trust for the website.
Botnets – In this, hackers execute DDoS attacks on a website resulting in a complete shutdown of the system leading to massive losses in finances.
Ransomware – This is like the ‘kidnapping’ of the website. In such circumstances, hackers encrypt all the files and only promise to decrypt them if certain conditions are fulfilled.

When malware attacks do occur, there are many ways of restoring the security of the website, thus reducing the repercussions of the attacks on customers and the business in large. There are different ways of fixing a website under attack: Firewall and Security Audit. A firewall is a network security hardware/software that acts as a barrier between an entrusted internal network/host and an external network/host. The firewall thus provides a much needed additional layer of security in preventing external networks from executing attacks on the internal networks.

The security audit can either be manual or automated. The manual assessment involves processes which range from testing the security awareness of the employees to conducting targeted scans on the websites to check for different security vulnerabilities. The primary purpose of installing a firewall and performing security audit is to protect personal data from being breached by unauthorized parties. In order to learn more about the importance of Firewall and Security Audit and how they can stop SQL injection attacks in real time, click here or follow this link

However, the main question is; after protecting your data from hackers, who will protect your business? How do you back up and ensure that you get all the details and credentials concerning your business? In some instances, the backup may get infected by the malware. The malware gets into the computer through downloads or installation. Malware may cause myriads of consequences as discussed above. There are many ways of preventing these attacks. To handle this, always ensure that your antivirus is up-to-date, avoid unknown downloads from the internet, and enable the firewall protection and regularly conduct security audits. The above links have extensively explained on these processes.

Benefits of SQL Backup and Cloud Service.

Backup of a database is an essential step to ensure the protection of one’s business. Over the years, a lack of backup has caused tremendous losses to businesses. Backing up a database to cloud service enables the data to be retrieved later from any other computer via the internet. Compared to the traditional, cloud computing is very significant. This is because data is stored in the remote database rather than the hard drive. Some of the benefits of using this kind of backup are listed below. However, for more information on Backup and cloud services, click here.

It is a reliable and flexible way that ensures storage of database online at all times. This ensures that in case of unfortunate events such as the website getting hacked, cloud service has already stored the database as a separate copy.
It is cost-effective since one only pays for services and later uses offsite and archive backups that do not require extra costs.
Quick testing. This is to ensure that what had been previously stored in the disk matches what is in the backup file.
Accessibility. When one stores data online, all they require is good internet to access the file from anywhere in the world. This means that one is not required to carry files either in their physical computers or hard disks.
Compression of a database. Compression is very vital since it increases the speed of the backup process. A compressed file is very small compared to a regular file. This means that fewer disks are required for the whole process. In addition to this, the backup process will be faster compared to when large files are used; additionally one can keep extra files in copies.

Conclusion.

Malware attacks are very rampant in our society. When databases are infected, tremendous financial losses are incurred to the applicant. Some of the consequences of hacking are so risky hence the additional need of protection for your business. Firewall and security audits are very helpful to a company since it ensures that personal data is protected from unauthorized personnel or updates that may happen without consent. By having an SQL backup on a cloud service, one can back up their data periodically and store it in a remote database; hence ensuring safety to their business.

Tags: Drupal, Magento, OpenCart, WordPress