A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack occurs when multiple compromised nodes are used to generate an attack. Groups of computers known as “botnets” will target a website and attempt to overload the server with requests to bring the site down, or use brute force to gain entry, steal data or send out spam. It’s necessary for you to have the proper amount of website security in place so you don’t become a victim.
One of the methods to protect yourself from this type of attack is rate limiting, which configures your web server to accept only as much traffic as it can handle without impacting site availability. In addition to rate limiting, increased website security can be achieved by monitoring your site and separating good traffic from bad.
Most websites are now being transitioned over to HTTPS from HTTP because this protocol provides greater security. It helps gain trust with your users by showing them that they are connected to the server that they expected, and information being sent across cannot be intercepted.
Keep in mind that if you are collecting sensitive information, you always want to be on an HTTPS connection, especially if you are collecting data such as credit card details, or even login IDs and passwords. These are highly important to protect because users could be supplying you with a username or password they use for more important things such as their personal banking, and you don’t want to be responsible for leaking this information.
Additionally, moving your site over to HTTPS helps give you a boost in Google searches. Google prefers to show pages of companies who take security seriously. So, by switching your URL over to HTTPS you might just help improve your page rank. Check out this SEO guide to securing your website for more information.
Using a combination of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) and email verification adds additional layers of website security. If malicious bots visit your page, they will need to be very sophisticated to beat this dual layer of protection.
The majority of the time, a spam bot comes on to your page to attempt to push fictitious data into your site and fill out your forms hundreds of times. When using a CAPTCHA, you’re able to identify if the traffic filling out data is a real human or a piece of malware.
Email verification plays an important role by validating if the data entered is real, registered contact data. Email verification, when used in real-time, can prevent the user or the bot from submitting fictitious data.
Reducing your risk as much as possible is important and implementing a strong password policy is essential to help ward off hackers. Too often IT staff end up setting up new servers, sites, and software with basic logins such as admin/admin. Likely, they have the full intention of changing the password and end up forgetting. However, this leaves you vulnerable and your infrastructure could become compromised.
To combat hackers, create and enforce a complex password policy. Sure, it might be a little bit annoying, but it adds layers of security. A strong password should be required to contain uppercase letters, lowercase letters, number and special characters. For maximum security request users to create passwords that are at least 10 characters long.
It might seem obvious that you should update your software, but it often gets overlooked. One of the main reasons why software patches get released is because they are fixing bugs in the software that could lead hackers in through a back door. Therefore, it is incredibly important that you update your software version and apply new patches as soon as they roll out.
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