Hacking is becoming more and more rampant these days. If your web site is not secure, you risk having your web store hacked. Information can be stolen but more importantly, trust and confidence will be lost.
Users who shop at your site will leave once they discover that your web site has been hacked. It’s always hard to recover trust if you lose it. At times, the loss of trust is forever. This translates to loss of revenues. Hacking can be extremely damaging to your internet business. What are some well known cyber threats and how can you protect yourself from them?
SQL Injection – SQL injection threats are some of the most commonly seen. This is not really a hacking threat but more of a programming flaw. Hackers attempt to catch access to your database by entering single quotes in web forms to alter SQL statements. This sounds a little technical but most web developers are aware of this threat. A moment of carelessness can lead to an entire web site being compromised. When a site has been compromised, sensitive data such as usernames and passwords can be stolen. This will lead to disastrous consequences. So how to protect against SQL injection? have your web developer examine each script on your web store. Then write secure code to patch all the vulnerabilities.
SSL encryption – This is a must if you are asking your users to send sensitive data on your web site. For example, during checkout, your users may be asked to enter credit card details, personal address, etc. If the data is sent over the public network (i.e. the Internet), the data can be intercepted by special programs (commonly known as sniffers). These programs operate silently on computers within the same network. All data passed within the network can be sniffed. That means if you are sending private data, they will be revealed to whoever is using the sniffer software. To ensure that this doesn’t happen, you use the SSL protocol. All data that is sent using this protocol is encrypted. So even if the data is intercepted, they will be useless to the hacker. To install SSL on your online web site, you need to apply for an SSL certificate. Then check with your web host on how to setup SSL on your web site. For most shared hosting plans, shared SSL is used. You will need to sign up for a business class plan if you want to have private SSL.
Cyber threats are very real and usually, hackers are after only one thing – data. They agree that there is valuable stored on your online siteArticle Search, and will stop at nothing to try and catch their hands on the data. So make sure you put in the measures to stop these threats. Harden your server with proper firewall.
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by Gen Wright from articlescity