We hear about major security breaches regularly, with large companies with substantial resources falling victim. What we don’t hear about are the hundreds of small and medium businesses who also suffer major data breaches.
While it is easy to believe that a data breach will never happen to you, or that you are doing everything right because you haven’t suffered a breach, it is important to consider the repercussions of a breach, from consumer confidence, to financial loss, to possibly crippling fines from the new GDPR.
To help keep your site safe, here are some of the common security issues that can be remedied to reduce the likelihood of you suffering a data breach.
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Password and permission policies
If you have entrusted a professional web development company in London, such as https://www.redsnapper.net, your password policies will certainly be set up correctly, but if you’re doing things yourself, here are some guidelines.
Firstly, entrust users, and even administrator accounts, with the minimum possible permissions to accomplish their goals. This means that if an account is compromised, you severely limit the amount of damage that can be done.
Secondly, ensure that users are required to adhere to password policies that will keep their accounts secure. This means that the password contains no personal information or dictionary words, uses a wide variety of characters, and has a minimum of eight characters length.
Software vulnerabilities
Just like your physical systems, websites are made up of a number of software elements, each of which can contain vulnerabilities. Left unchecked, these vulnerabilities provide clear avenues of access for hackers.
As with all software, however, security fixes are offered when vulnerabilities are identified. To protect your site, you need to ensure that the most up-to-date versions of components are used when the site is built, and you need to regularly check for and apply security updates when the site is live. Webpatogh.com can help you stay one step ahead by offering expert guidance for keeping your site up-to-date.
Secure stored data
No matter how good your security, there is the chance of a breach happening, so you should take precautions to minimise loss. At the most basic, this means encrypting user accounts, passwords, and other sensitive data, as well as keeping backups encrypted.
While security breaches can be a big deal when they happen, you can easily minimise the risk, as well as mitigate the damage.