6 Website Security Best Practices for Small Businesses

By Small Biz Silver Lining
The Hartford Small Biz Ahead | Originally published January 4, 2022

Every day, small business owners confront more than their fair share of challenges. Cybersecurity is no exception. Small business owners must keep their companies secure online, from analyzing their risk to finding the right tools to mitigate it. You understand the need to protect your website from hackers, but as you get into the weeds of website vulnerabilities, you might find yourself confronted with complicated concepts and solutions. Even so, there are certain fundamental best practices to follow to improve your website’s security.

Let’s learn how to protect your data from loss or espionage and how to provide a hack-free experience to your consumers and clients to keep your business running smoothly! We’ve compiled this list of six website security best practices for small businesses that you can implement right now.

1. Update your software.

When it comes to your website’s security, it’s always a good idea to remain on top of the latest updates. This one is relatively simple, especially if you’re using a website builder that takes care of software updates and security concerns. If you’re using a platform like WordPress, though, you’ll need to stay on top of things and run updates as required. You must upgrade your WordPress core software and any plugins you have installed. It’ll become obsolete and expose your website to viruses, bugs and malicious code from hacker attacks if you don’t.

2. Use strong passwords.

Your password is often the only thing that stands between a hacker and access to your valuable information. A security breach can take hours or even days to fix, and you don’t want to squander that time. It’s better to spend just 15-20 minutes updating strong passwords or creating new ones. This will go a long way toward keeping hackers out of your website.

Create a password with at least 10 characters. It should contain a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. So, even if hackers use advanced tools, it will be more challenging to break in. Once you’ve got your new super-strong passwords, be cautious with them — don’t share them, even with friends, and change them about once every quarter.

3. Encrypt with SSL.

Another thing you can do to protect your website is install an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. You may not know it, but you constantly come across SSL when browsing the web — that’s what gives the “S” in “HTTPS” and the padlock in the address bar.

Having an SSL certificate is essential if you’re taking credit card payments, requesting passwords or sending data. SSL enables the safe transmission of sensitive information and helps to keep hackers from gaining access to your login credentials or other sensitive information. Data that isn’t encrypted is at risk of being stolen by cybercriminals…[MORE]

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To read the full article and all six tips published by The Hartford Small Biz Ahead, visit: 6 Website Security Best Practices for Small Businesses