5 Tips For Keeping Your Website Safe & Secure
1. Back-up your website
This is the very basic standard that I recommend to everyone. What happens if something corrupts your website? What happens if someone exploits a vulnerability? Do you just start from square one and pay for it all again?
I can’t recommend enough that you make sure daily backups of your website and its contents are completed, and periodically tested to make sure they actually work! An untested backup is a disaster waiting to happen.
2. Update your software & themes
If you use a Content Management System (CMS) like we do for the majority of our websites, it should prompt you to do the updates every time you even glance at your dashboard.
DO THE UPDATES. It takes less than 5 minutes in most cases, even for complex websites. Set aside 5 minutes every week and keep on top of it!
There’s a reason that the creator of that piece of software/plugin/theme has spent time releasing a new version and if you don’t install it you’re leaving yourself open to a whole world of hurt – even if you have a backup.
3. Ensure your website connects over SSL with a valid certificate.
SSL is a bit of a technical term so without getting overly technical, it basically means that the device you’re browsing the internet on and the page you’re interacting with are transferring data in a secure manner.
You can spot websites that are secure by looking to the top left of your browser for a little padlock sign. If that website isn’t displaying a padlock – it’s probably displaying a warning sign because technically the data being transferred isn’t encrypted and can be hijacked.
4. It's basic - but use different passwords!
We know everyone knows this already, but the amount of people who don’t actually use a different password (at least for important things) is absolutely incredible.
To help with this – use a password management tool! A quick Google search will show a bunch of great ones that are free.
You’ll thank me later when whatever website you’ve signed up to 4 years ago gets hacked and your password’s leaked.
5. Hire a professional
We have support packages designed exactly to do the above. If you’re too busy running your business to make sure that your backups are running properly, that your updates are all done, your SSL certificate hasn’t expired or that basic maintenance of your website isn’t being done – use us!
In fact, I could count on one hand the customers we do have that don’t have a support plan from me. It’s not worth investing in a website only to let it waste away!