2014 will go down as the year people and businesses experienced some of the worst security breaches. There were reports of breaches and attacks that made headlines across the world when many businesses both small and big corporations learned first-hand how damaging such security breach can affect a brand. One of the lessons learned was that any business regardless of size can be attacked when proper security measures are not in place. In fact, the websites of small businesses have higher chances of being attacked because they typically lack dedicated security staff and expertise compared to companies ranked in the top half of the Fortune 500. Breaches on small enterprises may not make the headlines of the day, but the damage caused might crush down the company. The following are some of the measures small business owners and entrepreneurs can use to keep the website of their business safe from a breach.
Data Encryption
In all types of sensitive data whether it’s credit card accounts, bank routing digits, or employee social security numbers are the kind of data the hackers want. Anytime you are storing sensitive information on the website, especially when the data is being transmitted over the internet somehow, it is important to ensure it is encrypted. It is recommended to turn full disk encryption tools that are currently coming as a standard on most operating systems. On Windows, the features are referred to as BitLocker and on Macs it is FileVault. It is easy to activate the features because it takes a few minutes to encrypt all files on the drive with noticeable performance lag. One catch about this type of encryption is that it applies when only one users are logged out of the computer.
It means that hackers can still attack a business computer when the users are logged in even if you are not using the computer. It is, therefore, necessary to set the computer to log out automatically after 15 minutes when it is not in use.
Security Layers
It is important to have a security system and ensure it serves as the first line of defense for your website. For instance, consider a web application firewall as the first line of defense. A firewall is designed to inspect the incoming traffic and does all the work of examining the users and weed out any malicious attempts requests offering protection from SPAM SQL injections, brute force attacks, cross-site scripting and other OWASP.
The Security-as-a-Service (SaaS) available today have made things easier to provide protection of data to small businesses who cannot afford the traditional type of firewall only available as hardware appliances. The SECaaS is using the cloud technology to cut down prices that are affordable to small businesses.
SSL Encryption
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a standard security technology that establishes a secure link between the client and the server. It may be through a web server and a browser or a mail client and a mail server. According to Blue Coat Systems, as much as 35% of all traffic is now SSL encrypted online. It is a technology that allows sensitive information such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, and login details to be transmitted securely over the internet. Since the data is sent over browsers and web servers in plain text, it leaves the data vulnerable to interception. SSL encryption is used to encrypt data for both the link and the data being sent. Since all browsers have the capability to interact with web servers, the SSL Certificates is used to establish a secure connection.
Conclusion
A successful attack on your small business site may lead to compromising of users’ data and personal information. The indirect consequences could be the site being excluded by search engine organizations such as Google, once it is listed as one of the infected sites that could spread malicious content on the web. Ensuring the website is protected with the latest security software and hardware is a critical step to prevent chances of intrusion.