Fundamentals of Website Security

Thousands of websites today are running on popular CMS like Drupal, Magento, Sitecore, Shopify, Big Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager etc. Website owners and managers are constantly posed with this challenging question- How do I secure my website?

Securing websites can seem to be adaunting task as websites today are technology heavy, rely on plenty of third-party APIs and integrations, and have become preferred targets for hackers (more than 50000 websites get hacked every day). Also, the multitude of security tools available in the market can easily confuse website owners. Besides, these tools can also mess up with the websites’ normal functioning.
So how to form an action plan to secure your sites?

Guide to securing your websites

Before you invest in any security tools available in the market. It’s important you start with the fundamentals first.

1. Poorly coded websites are easily compromised. Start by hardening your codebase, choose a developer that follows security best practices while coding. CMS coding best practices and code unit testing can go a long way in making sure your site is vulnerability free and secure.
2. Secure Site Design and Development. Most common security vulnerabilities like Injection, Broken Authentication, Sensitive Data Exposure, Cross Site Scripting (XSS) etc. can be introduced in a website due to poor site design and in secure development practices. Sites should be designed and developed with security in mind and in conformance to OWASP top 10 security guidelines.
3. Web frameworks and CMS security updates. CMS modules and other frameworks come out with regular security updates and patch releases. These updates are very vital for site’s security. Failing to apply these updates on time can make the site vulnerable to zero-day attacks and other security threats.
4. Safe & Secure Hosting. Hosting a site safely and keeping the environment secured is also critical to the site’s overall security and functioning. Ongoing updates to the server stack and correct set up and configuration of the server functions will help to keep the servers safe, and in turn, the website secured.
5. Enable HTTPS. It’s very important to secure the communication of your users with your website by integrating an SSL certificate. Without SSL, website and its users can become vulnerable to hackers as communication between the server and website users will not be encrypted.

In summary, securing a website should start with the fundamentals of your website. A website with existing loopholes & vulnerabilities in its codebase or application/business logics and servers can be easily exploited and hacked. Even sophisticated and costly security tools cannot effectively protect a poorly developed and maintained site.

Choose Ameex Maintenance & Support services today and focus on the fundaments of website security. Through our proactive approach, we make sure all fundamental security related activities are checked and covered in an ongoing manner. Secured coding, secured website development, constant platform security updates, server updates are at the core of our support services.

Do a Free Website Security Audit today to find out how secure is your site! Sign up now