The rise in technology has dramatically changed our world, and keeping up with these changes is essential. One way is by making sure your website is secure. It’s a highly complex topic, but it’s also vital for those with access to a website.
In this article, we’ll explain how to perform security checks and why it’s so important to take these steps.
Importance of Website Security Checks
To perform proper security checks on your site, you’ll want to make sure you have the following information available. This information will make running a thorough check on your website more accessible.
These security checks are necessary because web admins have done them for years. They are what hackers target when they are trying to get into websites.
So by ensuring that these steps are taken care of, you’ve made it much more secure than most other websites today.
How to Do Security Checks?
The first step to doing security checks on your website is to understand the different types of attacks that are possible. There are many different types of attacks, but there are four main ones that you should be aware of:
- SQL Injection
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
- Directory Traversal
- Buffer Overflow
SQL injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution (e.g. to gain access to data or manipulate data).
Cross-site scripting is a vulnerability that allows an attacker to inject malicious code into a web page, resulting in the execution of the code by unsuspecting users who visit the page.
Directory traversal is an attack to access restricted files and directories on a web/application server.
Buffer overflow is a computer hacking exploit where data that exceeds the buffers of a program is injected into the program, causing it to execute instructions or possibly crash, rendering it unable to execute more instructions.
Scan Your Website
The next step is to scan your site for those vulnerabilities. There are a few ways to do this: hiring a professional company and scanning your site with their tools, doing it yourself manually (using free tools), or using paid tools.
Paid Tools
You can use paid tools if you’re looking for more advanced scans and need more time or knowledge to do it yourself.
These tools will do a more thorough job of scanning your website for vulnerabilities and will also help you fix them.
Free Tools
Free tools will be the best option if you’re looking for a way to do it yourself. Many websites offer these services; all you need to provide is your URL.
You can search Google for “web security scanner” or “website vulnerability checking tool” and find many options.
The biggest drawback with this approach is that there needs to be a way of knowing whether the service does a good job at scanning and fixing vulnerabilities if they don’t tell you what vulnerabilities they found (or worse – if they lied about doing the scan).
Hire Professionals
If you hire a professional company, they will have access to much more advanced tools, which will find more vulnerabilities in your website. But you have to remember how often these scans should take place for them to be effective.
An annual scan should be suitable for most websites, but if you have a more complex website, consider monthly scans.
Website security checks are necessary because they help companies stay protected from hackers and other cyber threats. If you want to learn more about how to perform website security checks on your site, be sure to follow these steps!