Now, I presume that we’ve all used the internet to make purchases. You surf the web, see something you like, and check your bank account to determine if you can splash out on that new pair of trainers or umbrella you’ve seen. You make it to the checkout and you have to enter your card details. I’m sure that everyone, at some point or another, before they enter their card details online, has wondered if it is safe to do so. If you’re on the right website it will be. But how do they make their website secure?
Firstly, the most common and essential method of website security is having what is called an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate is short for what is known as a Secure Socket Layer certificate. What an SSL certificate does is encrypt the connection between the user and the web server that hosts the website. This means that any data sent to the website/ any data that is provided by the user is scrambled so that if the data is intercepted by a 3rd party it is made unreadable. So if you were to enter your card details onto a website that had an SSL certificate, you can be reasonably certain that your details will be safe.
You don’t require any technical knowledge to acquire an SSL certificate, and they are often provided by a web host provider. This makes making your website secure for your user quick and simple.
Another method of securing your website is ensuring that you have/ use secure passwords. If your passwords aren’t secure, information stored on your website can be easily accessed and stolen.
Having secure passwords means that if someone were to access the web server that your website is hosted on, they wouldn’t be able to access private and confidential data.
Keeping your website updated is essential for keeping your website secure. If you are running a website and it is using outdated software, there is a very high potential for hackers to take advantage of bugs within the software. This leaves your website vulnerable to attacks, leaving your and your user’s data at risk.
If you keep the software on your website up to date, software creators usually regularly update their software with security patches to prevent people from taking advantage of their software.
Regular backups. This helps secure your website as if the worse were to happen, you would still have a copy of your website on hand so that you can quickly and easily recover lost data, or conduct a full reset of your website. Having a backup saves you time, money and effort that would have to otherwise be put in if your website were to be lost completely.
Backups can be made of only essential files to save space, or they can be full backups of the website. You can create backups manually, automatically or if you have a good web host, they will do it for you
Keeping websites safe is essential. No matter what you’re doing online, whether you’re shopping, looking for cinema tickets or even looking at the news – it is essential that you and your data are kept secure
