With websites going down frequently due to the ever-increasing threat that are cyber-attacks, it is important that you understand what preventative measures your business can take to ensure you don’t face costly downtime. Therefore, at Three Cherries we have listed a handful of measures you can do to stay protected from threats to your website security.

Top Four Mitigation Methods:

Although there are a wide range of methods available to protect your website from cyberthreats, at Three Cherries we have listed the most simple and effective methods allowing your business to identify and rectify any security issues your site may have.

Training Employees- One of the easiest methods to ensuring that your website does not go down due to a cyberattack is reducing one of the biggest weaknesses amongst all businesses, staff IT knowledge. With around 80% of cyberattacks being down to human error, it is important that your business reduces this greatly and security awareness training is the easiest method to ensuring this. Essential skills such as phishing email spotting and best practice will be taught which reduces the possible entry points for hackers into the website.

Regular Security Updates- Ensuring that your website is frequently updated means that important security patches are regularly installed. This is typically automatic on many content management or operating systems however it is important you are able to check this and manually update any software if needed. It is also important any plugins which are installed in the content management system are also frequently updated as these can also be a potential route into your website for hackers. By ensuring you’re up-to-date, your website security will benefit greatly.

Two Factor Authentication- Most content management systems such as WordPress (Also known as CMS) will have the ability to setup multi or two factor authentication on them. This means a code is sent to another device for you to input. This greatly reduces the risk of successful log in attempts from malicious sources such as attackers. It is important to set this up for any users who have access to the editing areas of your website. An easy way to identify this is by considering “Who creates or uploads blogs?” or “Who does the maintenance on our website?”

Penetration Testing- A lesser-known method of finding any weaknesses and vulnerabilities within your business is a penetration test on the website. This is also known as ethical hacking, and the purpose of this is to allow a simulated hacking session to find where people may be able to enter through your website and what you need to fix in order to create a secure website. This is a safe method to knowing exactly where your vulnerabilities lie and how you can solve them before an attacker does.

Website Security Basics: Mitigating Cyber Threats

In conclusion, by adopting the methods above, your business can greatly benefit from increased website security amongst a whole host of other benefits. Enrolling staff into security awareness courses with a trusted provider like Three Cherries who provide cybersecurity and Bristol IT support services greatly benefits the overall security of the business let alone the website security. Penetration testing also provides an effective method in identifying weaknesses in current security plans.