The covid-19 pandemic has impacted the very basics of how businesses are carried out and has brought a change that is here to stay, yes, bringing businesses online. Online platforms have allowed your businesses to reach out to your customers or clients in the safety of their homes. But with increased and complicated cyberattacks targeting businesses, it comes as a big challenge to website owners to pay attention to security measures that can help uphold the trust bestowed on them by their clients or customers.
Users are much more aware of the security threats to their sensitive information, and most of them are demanding on the user experience front. A Study performed by Baymard Institute reveals how various factors, including user experience, affect cart abandonment rate of 69.23% in the e-commerce sector.
So, certainly, fast loading pages, mobile optimization, website security, etc., all add to the user experience and help you grow your business. But many times, it is observed that security solutions adopted for the websites, in turn, start affecting its user experience adversely, like, say, making your website slow.
So, there is an urgent need to pay attention to security solutions that give you a balanced approach towards a good user experience and hardened security. Let me take you through a few simple yet effective tips to boost web security.
Provide Best User Experience And Highest Security With SSL Certificate
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate for your website provides heightened security for your website connection by encrypting all the interactions between the user web browser and the webserver. The website protocol shifts to secure HTTPS, thus helping to protect users’ information from the hands of cyber attacks like Man-in-the-middle attacks. Once the SSL Certificate is successfully installed onto the server, the secure padlock is added before the website’s URL address. By just clicking on this padlock, users can see all the SSL Certificate details, as shown in the example below.
You can buy an SSL Certificate from many reputed Certificate Authorities (CAs) and choose from an array of choices available in accordance with your validation needs and budgets. Among these, the EV SSL Certificate enjoys much popularity for securing your business as it offers the highest degree of validation. EV SSL Certificates are issued only after going through a rigorous verification process, thus is associated with winning the trust of its customers hands down and hence help businesses build themselves as a brand.
Ensure Daily Backups
Taking regular backups for all your website information can help you bring it back and be up and running in no time by restoring data in case of any data breach or data loss. Backups help protect all your crucial data from various malware and virus attacks. You can take backups manually or set up daily backups.
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Equally important is to keep it secure in different locations. You must also regularly test these backups for their usability and reliability. New technologies like cloud technologies enable you to backup your files on the cloud and have easy access to them from anywhere by just using login details. Most of the reputed hosting service providers have automated backups for your website as part of their services.
Change default WP Login Page.
To protect your WP Login page from brute force attacks, it is important to customize a WP Login page instead of using the regular /wp. admin URL to login to your website. You could use plugins to create custom URLs like/my-perfect-login/. This way, you hide the login page URL from the hackers trying to launch a brute force attack to crack your password. This could put the entire website at risk as the hackers may break into your configuration files and cause real havoc.
Use Of reCaptcha Verification
Recaptcha authentication can be matching images, or users are asked to figure out text that is difficult to read. This security technique helps the website identify automated bot attacks and avert major cyberattacks, including viruses, malware, and registration form hacking. reCaptcha verification is particularly useful in verifying forms before they are submitted.
Though reCaptcha validation takes some fraction of seconds as it gives protection against a large fraction of cyberattacks, it is a good bargain that surely will improve the user experience of your website. Google’sGoogle’s Recaptcha v3 does not offer challenges to users but instead keeps monitoring users’ behavior and blocks any suspicious requests then and there, thereby increasing user experience.
Restrict use of Plug-ins
A wide range of plug-ins is available to improve the website’s user interface. But remember, you must download only those plug-ins that are just sufficient to provide an optimum user experience to your customers. You can choose plug-ins that find a place in the suggested list of plug-ins suggested by the CMS platform that you use. This will help you to make a concise list of plug-ins that, on the one hand, will help you run your website smoothly and also provide an optimized user experience. Regularly updating your plug-ins can protect your website from many new techniques used by cybercriminals and will always help you fix any security patches in the older versions.
Give Controlled Access And File Permissions
You must restrict user login access and file permissions. It is always advisable to restrict login access to just role-specific requirements to the users. Unnecessary access is given, which only increases the risk of malware infection. Login activities should be continuously monitored to detect any malicious activity before it becomes a bigger threat to the entire website.
Apart from this file, permissions like reading, writing, and executing are allotted with a lot of caution and care. Remember granting access to, say, sensitive configuration files of the system is a big responsibility. Any suspicious activity needs to be immediately attended to and be constantly monitored by the administrator.
Investigate And Engage A Good Hosting Provider
Having a reputed and good hosting provider who believes in having a strong security policy as its priority goes a long way to keep your website safe. You must look out for security features like SSL Certificate security, which is mostly provided to its clients for free by the hosting provider. Other security features that you must insist upon are:
- The firewall security needs.
- Continuous monitoring of the traffic.
- Providing automated updates to your software, including operating systems.
- Anti-spam filters that keep a check on emails carrying malicious links.
Also, providing regular backups is crucial, and you should have resources to restore your web files in case of any data loss.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can say that if you work on the simple tips discussed above, you can offer a fine user experience to your customers that provide a highly secure environment and help your business build a long-lasting relationship of trust and growth with your customers. So, go ahead and get going with incorporating these hacks and steer your business way beyond the reach of your competition businesses.