Website Security
Common Website Security Practices
We take security seriously at Pro Digital Marketing. We make sure that we protect your users’ information as well as ensuring your website is free from malicious attacks even in the efforts of Australia digital marketing.
Hackers on the web are getting more and more sophisticated in their attacks. Web marketing Australia requires tools and platforms to fulfill tasks and services. Most websites have a login where you can edit content or allow staff or users to add content. It becomes very useful for editing and accessing the website. However, it does leave gateways for malicious users to access your data and potentially to take over your website.
Of course, in Australia digital marketing, there are common security practices that need to be followed to get the best security applied to your website. Each website is different and requires different protection mechanisms to avoid any security breaches.
Our Security Process
The steps needed to protect a website are as follows:
Hosting platform
Understand the hosting platform that you use for Web Marketing Australia
A website needs a server to provide information to the world. Some companies will host your website on their servers and they normally have some basic security measures built into their platform. Some platforms have much better security settings than others.
Our first step in securing a website is first analyzing the hosting platform of the website. To ensure security in a brand’s Australia digital marketing strategies, each web host will have a page on the types of security they implement. Since not all security is applied to every website hosted on this platform. We then analyze the plan the website is using from that hosting service and determine if these settings meet our strict guidelines. We then determine what changes may be required to uplift to the correct standard for your website.
Technology
Understand the technology used.
The second step in this process is to understand the type of website you are hosting. Many different technologies have been used to build websites. In Australia digital marketing, some of the main services are WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Wix, or Squarespace.
CMS (Content Management Systems) such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others, generally have an admin login. These logins need to be protected with secure passwords, multiple login attempt restrictions, second-factor authentication mechanisms to ensure your password is never exposed.
There are other areas of your website that can be exposed to security vulnerabilities such as customer forms, blog commenting, etc. You may have seen spam already arriving in your inbox because these areas are being exposed. We must prevent the ability of all hackers to infiltrate your business website.
Using the Best Practice in Security for Web Marketing Australia
Implement Industry Best Practice Security.
Once we have determined and analyzed the type of server and the website installation medium. We begin hardening (industry term for improving) the website and its security implementation.
We implement password controls, prevent logins from attackers, implement WAF (see below) as required, prevent malicious form submissions, database login hardening.We provide our clients with a monthly report with the security improvements that have been applied to the website which should help in maintaining and improving web marketing Australia strategies. Contained in the report also includes the updates that have been completed and the improvements in SEO ranking.
Improvements
We continuously make improvements to support your Australia digital marketing efforts.
Just like SEO and website design, security must be updated and maintained in the best interest of web marketing Australia. Servers must be updated to remain ahead of the vulnerabilities that are exposed when using outdated software. Likewise, the CMS system implemented also needs to be updated for strong security and prevention from the most recent types of attacks.
Security is something that will continually need to be looked after. Our Pro Digital Marketing web development team is here to help you stay current and ahead of the rest.
Types of Security Breaches
DDOS
A denial of service attack aims to brute force overload your website and bring the server down from not being able to handle the amount of traffic it is being requested.
Manual Break-in
An exposed password is obtained to your website and this enables an attacker to have access to your entire website. This is needed to be prevented at all costs
SQL injection
There are a lot of websites with databases. These databases are often exposed on your website URL. The database is going to hold your most precious data. The database can be hacked from brute force attacks or via an SQL injection. This is where an attacker sends a normal request to your website, but then the website looks up data from the database it shouldn’t and sends it back to the customer. Ensuring you have the latest updates and installing verified plugins is the best way to prevent this.
XSS
Cross-site scripting is the process of an attacker injecting javascript into your website, which is then exposed when your customers log into the website and send their login details to the attacker. They then have access to your entire website.
Brute Force attack
If the right security is not used for login and passwords, then a service can be used by an attacker to try combinations on your website of usernames and passwords to eventually gain access. Often your email or username is located on your website, so the attacker only needs to guess the password. With computers doing the work for them, this can be discovered in minutes or hours.
What is a WAF?
A Web Application firewall is a great preventative from many attacks. The WAF sits between a user’s computer and your website, they detect attackers and block them before they can do damage to your website. WAFs are aware of many of the types of attacks that malicious users do and can intercept these attacks, they can then look to disabling a user from accessing your website so they are blocking future attacks from the same people. They also have lists of addresses of malicious people who are attacking other websites and can prevent them from coming across to your website.
We protect our clients’ websites from all kinds of security threats so you can rest easy knowing that your data is safe.
Some Info on WordPress attacks
According to WordPress, in web marketing Australia, one of the largest used website applications, it powers over 38% of all websites on the internet today. It is also responsible for managing 63.6% of all CMS (Content Management Systems) on the internet. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.
Let’s start with the good. WordPress is used by so many people over the internet their software is updated often and maintained well. They are actively supporting security updates and looking after their customers. There are also thousands of plugins you can use to adapt your website easily to anything you need.
Now the bad, WordPress is very common and that makes it more enticing for attackers to hack since they can apply the same hacking technique to all the other WordPress websites. This is traditionally the reason Windows OS on PCs has been targeted for many years because 77% of the world uses it. See Global Stats Counter for more information.
If you are going to find a way to hack into a service, the one with the most opportunity is what the attacker targets.
Don’t worry, it is not all bad. Just like Windows OS, if you implement the best controls you will be protected and attackers will find other sites to attack instead. Let our security-minded team help you stay safe and keep you and your customer safe.