7 Essential Steps To Improve Your Website Security

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Your website is your online business identity, and your customers are the lifeblood of any business. So it’s extremely important to keep your website safe and secure, especially if you are running an e-commerce store.

Website security is a major concern for all businesses. Hackers are constantly trying to breach your network and steal your data, so it’s important to keep up with the latest best practices in order to keep your website secure.

Here are the top essential steps you can take to improve your website security.

1. Make the Most of Web Design and Development

Security is one of the most important aspects of any website. The last thing you want is for your website to suffer from downtime, data loss, or even a cyber-attack.

If you are planning on launching a new website or revamping an existing one, it’s crucial that you keep security in mind at every stage of the process. Working with an experienced web design company will be the game changer in this situation, as they will also cover all the fundamentals connected to your website’s security.

In any case, make sure your web design and development team is up-to-date with web security best practices. This includes implementing strong passwords, using secure protocols like HTTPS, and making sure your website is regularly updated with security patches which will be discussed more in detail below.

2. Create the Most Secure Passwords Possible

The first step to creating secure passwords is to avoid using the same password for all your accounts. By doing so, if a hacker manages to compromise one account, they could potentially gain access to all of them. It’s also important that you create long passwords (at least 12 characters) that include numbers and symbols. In addition, it’s advisable not to use names or words from popular culture such as Harry Potter novels or Star Wars movies because these tend to be easy-to-remember information that hackers can easily guess.

Finally, change your passwords regularly! If you’re using a password manager like LastPass, then changing your passwords should be automatic—but even if not, make sure this happens at least every few weeks or months depending on how often they’re changed within the apps themselves (some will require more frequent changes than others).

Pro tip: Always use two-factor authentication!

Two-factor authentication (2FA) ensures that only you have access to the admin panel on your WordPress site by requiring an extra step when logging in from an unknown device or IP address: usually by sending a code via text message or email or generating a unique code using an authenticator app on mobile devices (like Google Authenticator). In addition to traditional 2FA methods like SMS/email verification and hardware tokens, WP Engine offers multi-channel authentication options including Yubikey USB keys and FIDO U2F keypads so there’s no excuse for not using it!

3. Use Reliable Web Hosting

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Hosting is the most important part of website security, and you need to do your research before choosing a hosting company. When choosing a web host, look for reliability, security and affordability in addition to an uptime guarantee. If you’re using WordPress or another CMS (content management system), it may be possible to use free or low-cost hosting services that are built specifically for these platforms.

While this can save money on long-term costs like monthly fees and upgrades over time, it’s also crucial that you choose reliable hosts who will not lose access to their servers because they don’t have enough money in their budget when something goes wrong with their business.

In addition, make sure your host provider offers backup services such as daily backups and offsite storage of files so you do not lose any data in the event of a disaster or other emergency situation where there is no power available at all times due either directly or indirectly through an outage caused by weather conditions affecting nearby utilities.

4. Don’t Store Too Much in Your Browser

If you’re like many people, you may be storing passwords and other sensitive data in your browser. This is a bad idea for two reasons: first, it means that if someone gets access to your computer (which is not very hard these days), they can see all of that information. Second, when you clear out your browser history or cookies at the end of each day (or even just shut down), any data stored there will be lost forever unless it’s backed up somewhere else first.

For this reason, I recommend using a password manager such as LastPass or NordPass rather than storing your passwords in the same place where you also store credit card numbers and other sensitive information.

5. Keep Your Software and Plugins Up-to-date

Keeping software and plugins up-to-date is a crucial step to ensure the security of your website.

It is important to make sure that any software running on your web server is always updated, because many bugs are discovered in each new release of the same software. Also, some vulnerabilities are only fixed in later versions of the same software.

Plugin updates should also be applied regularly, as they often include security fixes for vulnerabilities. Some vulnerabilities may only be fixed in later versions of a plugin, so it’s important to check that you’re using the latest version available.

Using WordPress plugins are essential for improving user experience. However, it’s important to keep all of its plugins and themes up-to-date. This can be done automatically by using a plugin like Autoupdate or manually by going into each plugin’s settings and choosing the “Automatic Updates” option.

The same applies to themes: if you have any installed on your website, make sure that they are also up-to-date with the latest versions available in the theme’s repository.

You should consider installing third-party applications as well and make sure that they are always updated as well. These include things like Google Analytics, Akismet or Jetpack.

6. Back-Up Your Site on a Regular Basis

Backing up your site regularly is one of the most important things you can do to protect it. You should back up your site at least once a week, but preferably more often than that. If you have a lot of traffic on your site and you’re worried about being hacked and losing all of your data, you may want to consider backing up more frequently – even daily!

This way, if something goes wrong with your host or if they get hacked, your data will still be safe in the cloud! This can be done by using an external hosting service or by making use of the features offered by your web host. There are lots of other ways you can back up your site, but we also recommend using an off-site service like Dropbox or Google Drive.

The benefits of backing up your site include:

• It reduces the chances of losing content when something goes wrong with your website.
• It enables you to restore data in case of an emergency (such as a hacker attack).
• It allows you to update older versions of your website without having to start from scratch again every time there’s an update available on the market today.

Pro tip: Make sure that your backup copies are stored somewhere safe and secure – not on the same server as your live site. This way, if something does happen to the live version of your site, at least there won’t be any damage done to your backup copy as well.

7. Make Sure to get HTTPS and SSL Certificates

Last but definitely not least, one of the essential steps in your website’s security is to get an HTTPS and SSL certificate. This is a little bit of a complicated process, so it’s best to work with a professional on this one.

An HTTPS certificate will encrypt the information being transmitted between your computer and the server hosting your site, making it much harder for hackers to intercept. An SSL certificate will also encrypt this data, but in addition, it will verify that you are who you say you are by requiring a digital signature from you before allowing access to any sensitive information.

Concluding Thoughts

So there you have it, a simple checklist of things to do to protect your website. This should be the first step in managing any website because it’s so easy to forget these things when you are busy with other tasks.