The Best Ways to Improve Your Website Security

The Internet continues to grow in importance across the corporate world as a platform for

promoting companies and their varied offerings. Yet for all the benefits that come with a well-

designed and maintained website, there are also serious threats out there in cyberspace that must

be contended with. Malicious individuals and organizations can hack into your website and steal

valuable information, such as company secrets, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data.

Alternatively, they may force your site offline for a lengthy period of time, which can cause

major financial losses for a company that depends on e-commerce transactions. They can even

victimize seemingly trivial targets that offer no obvious rewards, like small personal websites

and blogs.

Simply put, you must do everything possible to keep cybercriminals from wreaking havoc on

your bottom line. This may seem like obvious advice, but not everyone heeds it—as evidenced

by the non-stop parade of stories in the news about companies that fall victim to hackers. What,

then, is to be done to ensure optimal security? You may be relieved to hear that a handful of

simple tricks can substantially enhance the security of your website. Many sites are compromised

not by astonishingly sophisticated cyber-assaults, but by the exploitation of simple security

flaws. Luckily, in a lot of cases, these holes can be easily eliminated. Let’s take a closer look at

the subject.

Use Long Passwords

The standard advice when creating passwords is to use a combination of letters (upper- AND

lower-case), numbers, and symbols. This is sound, as far as it goes, but there is another

dimension to password security that many overlook: length. All other factors being equal, longer

passwords are more secure. In fact, some commentators hold that password length is far more

important than password complexity.

How long should your password be? Many authorities say that a password less than eight

characters long is dangerously insecure. A lot of people, though, understandably worry about the

difficulty of remembering lengthy passwords. The good news, however, is that passwords don’t

need to be extraordinarily long; just adding a few extra characters can exponentially increase the

time a hacker needs to break into your site. An eight-character password might be hacked by a

diligent cybercriminal in a matter of minutes or hours, while a ten-character password could take

weeks or even years. By lengthening the password, you can substantially lengthen the time-

frame it would require for a hacker to guess it—and it doesn’t take much to ensure that the

process is far too protracted for anyone to undertake.

Change Your Default Usernames

If you have a site with a publicly accessible log-in page, you could significantly enhance the

security of your site just by changing the default username. It’s no secret that, in many sites, the

default log-in name is “admin.” This means that hackers already have half the data they need to

break into the site; now they can concentrate on cracking the password. Change the log-in name,

preferably to something that can’t be easily guessed by examining the site. By doing so, you

force your cyber-intruder to figure out both pieces of information.

Back Up Your Site

Routine site backups will preserve your valuable data in the event of a successful cyber-

intrusion. Keep in mind that, for many hackers, the goal is not to steal information, but to cause

damage. Backing up your site can ensure that the damage is not permanent.

Find a Reliable Hosting Service

In some cases, hackers are able to exploit a vulnerability in the hosting service, granting them

unauthorized access to one or more sites managed by the company. This is especially frustrating,

because the victim of this type of attack was helpless to stop it. The security of your website

cannot be entrusted to just any bargain-rate hosting service; you need an experienced provider

that can give you the 24/7 support you need to thwart intruders and prevent disaster.

Summary

Website security is vitally important, with all the varied threats lurking in cyberspace these days.

By implementing a few simple security measures—creating long passwords, changing default

log-ins, backing up the site, and using a dependable host—one can avoid many hazards that

commonly afflict websites.

Company Bio

Based out of Dallas, Texas, CyberlinkASP is an application service provider that offers 24/7

cloud-based access to a wide range of IT services, including virtual desktops and managed

hosting. This privately owned company, founded in 1999, maintains a staff of highly experienced

IT professionals and a network of world-class data centers.