No website is safe from potential hackers these days but there are several advanced methods which will help to protect your site from potential hackers which we have discussed below;
Beware of How Error Messages Display on Site:
If detailed error message is displayed on the site, it will help you identify the codes which need to be edited but the same error message will be displayed to an outsider which is dangerous as you will be revealing sensitive site information to a potential hacker giving them a hint about exactly where is your website vulnerable hence provide limited error message on the site and keep it really simple so that too much information is not revealed.
2. Protect Against SQL Injection:
This is one of the most common website attacks on many sites. When you have a web form to be filled on your site or URL parameter where the user needs to supply outside information, the attackers can gain access to your database through it by inserting malicious code into them if you leave the parameters too open. The hacker can get access to your database where you store important user data hence you need to protect your data privacy. Prevent this by using parameterized queries which is available in most languages.
3. Prevent File Uploads:
When you give anyone permission to upload files on the site, it is a hazard as it can be abused to upload a malicious file which overwrites important site codes or uploading such a big file that your site would crash hence avoid external file upload but if it is unavoidable, then take proper precautions. A few ways of protecting your site from attack via such uploads is to set a maximum file size that can be uploaded, scan all files with antivirus software before opening, verify the file type and only allowing certain file extensions, rename the files automatically upon upload and save these files away from the root directory.
4. Enable Automatic Backups:
Even if you take high precautions, there are still chances your site may crash due to hackers hence always have backups available to restore back to the previous running version of the site. Updating the site manually daily is a huge task and you may forget this at times hence invest in automatic backups so that you always have updates from many days available to choose to restore from.
5. Watch Out for XSS Attacks:
This is another form of common website attack where hackers inject malicious JavaScript onto your web pages which then infects the user browser as well and can steal information to send back to the attacker, for e.g. if you display comments on a page without proper validation then the hacker may submit a comment which contains malicious script tags and JavaScript which would run on every user’s browser and steal their information such as login information which will give the attacker access to the account of every user who viewed the comment. Hence, you need to be careful of such malicious scripts and codes to prevent a data breach. Even after you do all the above, your site may get hacked. If that happens then instead of just focusing on fixing the site, also consider looking through the reason how this attack happened to fix the security gaps on your website.
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