Cyber Attacks: How To Protect Your Brand Website Against Them
Updated on: April 17, 2020
Martha Jameson
6 mins read
How to Protect your Website against Cyber Attacks?
When you have a brand, most of your efforts are geared at marketing and raising brand awareness and not the cyber attacks. According to the statistics and case studies, website owners often neglect their website security in favor of other things – like brand website security. While the brand website is a great investment that has generated you a lot of leads, most brand owners think the same.
However, cybersecurity has never been more crucial. There are more and more hackers who rely on you not protecting your website.
But by not protecting your website, you are not protecting your customers either. Think about it – their personal information and sensitive information are all stored on your site. And that is exactly what the hackers want. This is why you need to consider improving your security and protecting your brand.
Ways to protect your website from Cyber Attack
The hosting provider
Choose your hosting provider carefully – do the research on the number of attacks that happened in the past with them and what kind of security support they provide.
“What matters is that you have the access to the log history. You can find out what your hosting provider can offer in terms of security and you could pay for an upgrade. If you have a shared hosting package, this is very important”, – says Anna Fey, a tech blogger at Origin writings.
Plan of action against cyber attacks
Strategizing is always important, especially when discussing security breaches. Have written out strategy in case this happens and include all of the important contacts in there like the web developer or similar. It’s very important to assess the situation properly and minimize any mistakes that might have happened.
Backups
Check with your hosting company if they back your website up by default or if you have to do it manually. If it’s not, then you will have to use free or paid backup tools if you want to save all of your content, images, videos, plugins and installations. You should back up your website at least once a month since you will probably update your content often and themes and plugins are also upgraded very often.
Checking schedule
Checking your website for the strange activity should be your top priority every day if you want to prevent cyber attacks. This is the best way to prevent any criminal activity and protect yourself and your customers. More importantly, if you protect yourself and your customers, you are protecting your brand which could be ruined with cyber attacks. “Be on the constant lookout for any red flags like spam activity, outdated plugins or similar elements. If you receive too many spam comments or update requests, it’s time to also upgrade your security”, -says Thom Bell, a data security manager from Writemyx and 1day 2write.
Importance of Firewall
When your website is under attack, the best and probably the most effective way to protect it is with a firewall. A firewall is a gate protecting your website. No product is going to protect you completely but this might just do the trick when needed. It inspects all of the data passing in or out of the network and ensures that the data and traffic are legitimate and not an intruder. When it’s set up properly, it can let users in and allow them to see all of the resources and protects your website from malware. Astra firewall is highly tailored for CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, OpenCart, Prestashop and Dimofinf.
Security Audit and Penetration Testing
Penetration testing means analyzing your systems to find vulnerabilities that an attacker might use to get into your website.
The security test focuses on evaluating the security of the web application by methodically validating & verifying the effectiveness of security controls. The process involves an active analysis of the application for any weaknesses, technical flaws, or vulnerabilities.
A security audit is a manual or systematic assessment of a system. Vulnerabilities scans are a part of the security audit as well. The generated report should inform the organization of any breaches, leaks, regulatory compliance and so on.
At Astra, the engagement will be providing the following services:
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT)
- Static & Dynamic Code Analysis
- Technical Assistance in Patching found Security Vulnerabilities
- Collaborative Cloud Dashboard for Vulnerability Reporting
- Access to our security tools/APIs
- Web Security Best Practices Consultancy
Typical Scope of Security Testing:
- Customer Web Application
- Payment Handling & Integrations
- Administration Portal
- APIs and Web Service
How to Protect CMS based E-commerce Stores
Magento
Magento offers new patches and ways to handle security and cyber attacks fairly frequently. The newest update has a Magento security scan tool which can come in handy to every Magento user. There are many other patches and safety nets like the two-factor authentication, recaptcha and so on. Here are some popular security extensions to protect your Magento store.
Opencart
While Opencart is not responsible for the security of your website and it’s up to you to ensure that your website is secure, they do offer a host of suggestions that you might find useful if you are one of their users:
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After you download Opencart on your server, you should delete the installation file immediately.
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Admin login should be very difficult to find and access in order to prevent cyber attacks since that’s where all of your data will be. Only an admin can have access to this data
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Rename the admin directory to something unrelated to admin is also essential in order to lead people away from the login.
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An htaccess and htpasswd files should keep the hackers away even if they find your admin location.
You can check our detailed blog on OpenCart vulnerabilities & how you can fix them.
Prestashop
Prestashop has witnessed many security issues in the past and they are dealing with it with add-ons. In their store, you can find plenty of these and they can protect your website. For example, there are the GDPR compliance, age verification, recaptcha, block bots add on etc. You should learn how to protect your Prestashop site against all of the most common attacks.
Conclusion
Protecting your brand website should be your number one priority from day one. Not only are you protecting your own hard work and revenue as well as your personal data, but you are also protecting your customers and their sensitive data. In addition to the above security measures, there are other security practices that may seem obvious but are often not given due attention. These include – creating & maintaining strong passwords throughout your website, updating your software, installing security patches, etc.
That being said, investing in an efficient website security tool can strengthen your security structure even more. Hopefully, these tips will help in the protection of your website again hackers and by default, the public image your brand holds.
Martha Jameson
