As your organization is working to secure your infrastructure, one component that can fall through the cracks is your company’s website.
While it might not be top of mind, there are impacts of not having a secure website. A website that is not secured:
- Allows for the possibility of multiple vulnerabilities and misconfigurations to exist, which can be the entry point hackers need to infiltrate your IT systems. These attacks can cause a loss of customer trust and a diminished brand reputation.
- Lowers the ability of clients and prospects to find your website as when delivering search results Google and other search engines prioritize sites that are secure. This translates to lost business opportunities.
- Delivers a poor brand impression with the display of a warning in search engine results. This notification alerts site potential site visitors that the website they are considering opening is not secure.
- Hinders your ability to partner and do business with government entities. When working with the government in any capacity, it’s even more important to have secure systems, including your website.
How do you determine if you have a secure website – and what does that mean?
The easiest way to know if your site is secure is to look at the URL of your website. If it begins with “https” instead of “http” it means the site is secured using an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate.
SSL is a networking protocol designed for securing connections between web clients and web servers over an insecure network, such as the internet. As the standard security technology, it ensures that all data passed between the web server and browser remain private.
How else can you secure your website?
- Produce more secure code – and make certain that your web applications minimize these risks. For your developers, that means following the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) guidelines. The OWASP Top 10 the most critical security risks to web applications and, consequently, to your website. Being proactive and protecting your organization against these threats, is effective in changing the software development culture within your organization.
- Conduct penetration testing of your website. Pen testing can be used to test the vulnerabilities of your website. In this case, a pen test would be performed by attempting to exploit your organization’s website to determine if its protective controls can be bypassed. As threats to your IT infrastructure and your website are constantly evolving. pen testing can help your organization gain a fresh perspective with a third party looking at your security from the viewpoint of an attacker.
Take steps to secure your website now and reap the benefits including:
- Protecting the privacy of web visitors
- Improving user experience
- Elevating search engine presence
- Safeguarding your brand reputation
As you work to secure your web applications, give us a call. As penetration testing experts we can help identify flaws and misconfigurations within your internal and external infrastructure as well as other valuable assets.