Website security can be a complex (or even confusing) topic in an ever-evolving landscape. This guide provides a clear framework for website owners seeking to mitigate risk and apply security principles to their web properties. However, before we start, it's essential to remember that security is never a set-it-and-forge-it solution. Instead, we encourage you to consider it a continuous process requiring constant assessment to reduce the overall risk.
By applying a systematic approach to website security, we can think of it as an onion, with many layers of defense all coming together to form one piece. Therefore, we need to view website security holistically and approach it with a dean in-depth defenseategy.
Why is Website Security Important?
Website security can be challenging, especially when dealing with an extensive network of sites. Having a secure website is as vital to someone's online presence as having a website host. If a website is hacked and blocklisted, for example, it can lose up to 98% of its traffic. Not having a secure website can be as bad as not having a website. For example, a client data breach can result in lawsuits, heavy fines, and a ruined reputation.
An in-depth defense strategy for website security looks at the defense's depth and the attack surface's breadth to analyze the tools used across the stack. This approach provides a more accurate picture of today's website security threat landscape.
Why Websites Get Hacked
There were over 1.94 billion websites online in 2019. This provides an extensive playground for bad actors.
There is often a misconception about why websites get hacked. Owners and administrators often believe they won't get hacked because their sites are smaller, making them less attractive targets. Hackers may choose more significant sites if they want to steal information or sabotage. For their other goals (which are more common), any small site is valuable enough.
There are various goals when hacking websites, but the main ones are:
Exploiting site visitors.
Stealing information stored on the server.
Tricking bots and crawlers (black-hat SEO).
Abusing server resources.
Pure hooliganism (defacement).
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