How to secure your website: Learn it from the experts

Since many small business owners in India may not be fully aware of the variety of online security protections available today, their websites can become easy targets for cyber criminals as they use automated tools to scan thousands of websites looking for any weaknesses.

As per a survey, about 32% of the Indian small business respondents believe that they need to increase their financial investments on cyber security and privacy. (Pixabay)

With the outbreak of Covid-19, businesses have increasingly shifted to online. Vast amounts of data are being exchanged every minute, making every business more vulnerable to hackers than ever before. As a small business owner, you may not think that your website could be of interest to hackers, yet in today's digital environment there is value in everything that is online.

Since many small business owners in India may not be fully aware of the variety of online security protections available today, their websites can become easy targets for cyber criminals as they use automated tools to scan thousands of websites looking for any weaknesses. 

As per a survey, about 32% of the Indian small business respondents believe that they need to increase their financial investments on cyber security and privacy.

Before you pay experts to handle it for you, here is a short guide for entrepreneurs and small business owners can do on their own to better protect their website and its data:

Choose a good hosting provider

To help build a more secure and reliable online presence for your business, it is essential that you choose a hosting partner which is as invested in your success as you are. Many of the leading providers offer an array of online tools and solutions designed to create and run a business website affordably, including offering a variety of security protection tools. It also helps if your service provider in this case has a 24/7 helpline. 

Keep your software up to date

It is important to ensure all software programs are kept up to date in order to help keep your online business more secure. This includes the computer operating system, as well as any other software also being used. It is also important to apply security patches, when prompted by the provider of your operating system or by your security software provider.

Manage your passwords

Everybody knows how crucial it is to use strong passwords. It's equally important to use a variety of passwords, instead of the same one for every account. 

While using the same password everywhere is a common practice, this can land you and your business in serious trouble. Hackers can easily gain access to all the confidential information from all the accounts by using that single password. Therefore, it is advisable to keep passwords which are hard to guess, using a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters, yet ones that you can remember. 

Additionally, it is advisable to use consider using a password manager app to help you keep your passwords safely in one place.

Always back up your data

To help protect your business against a cyber-attack designed to access your data is to make sure you always have a recent backup of your company and customer's data. 

You can make it a habit of manually backing your website up daily or weekly by setting calendar reminders. You can also consider using a website protection service for automatic backups and cloud storage for your data backups. 

There are a variety of website site protection services and data backup providers available on the market today, to help protect your online business.

Install an SSL Certificate for your website

For all kinds of businesses performing online transactions, an SSL Certificate for your website is a requirement. As a business owner, it is your responsibility to protect the personal information of your customers which is shared while using your website. 

In fact, Google has started using website protections as a ranking signal, to help ensure that people who use the search engine will be directed to authentic and safer websites, as well as ranking websites with SSL higher in their search results. 

The encryption used in SSL Certificates helps to protect the transmission of data to and from your website. To get this protection for your website, you can install an SSL Certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority (CA). 

A website with SSL protection shows a padlock and the word ‘Secure' in the URL address bar. These prominent security indicators show customers that the website and your business are legitimate and helps to build customer trust.

This article is written by Nikhil Arora, Managing Director & Vice President, GoDaddy India