Creating a website on the internet for your business will make your site vulnerable to data miner, hacking attempts, phishing, and much more. There are a lot of possible things that can happen to your site that might affect your business in a bad way. To deal with these things you need to protect your site with some cybersecurity.
Most of the people check the lock icon on a certain site to know if that site is secured but unfortunately, that is just the first level of protection and it still not safe. It is critical to protect your site from hackers and other online threats to keep your business information safe. Here are the top Cybersecurity checklist that can protect your site.
Make That You Have a Sitewide SSL
The lock logo on the top left side of your URL means that you are using SSL connection although, it does not mean that the site is secured from outside threats. To make sure that you are using the full advantage of SSL, the SSL should be enforced and at the same time, it should be sitewide.
This should be done since all information that has been transmitted outside of SSL connections passes through in clear text and the problem is that it is easily be intercepted by outside threats. It can compromise the entire site when a single sensitive data or even password that will be taken out.
Ensure That You Verify Your SSL Certificate
You need to know when does your SSL certificate expires. Knowing this is vital to the safety of your website. To make sure that your SSL certificate will not expire, there are types of machines that can be added to your website to warn your people that your certificate is already close to its expiration.
Some major certificate providers can provide an automatic update to their users if your certificate is near to expiration. Although, it is safer to just ask your certificate provider about the information.
Always Update Your Encryption
If you are still using the previous SHA1 encryption, then its time to update that with the latest one since it is no longer secure. The SHA256 encryption is the safest and most reliable encryption that you can have. You should always have the latest encryption because outside threats are always finding ways to get your important information.
Deactivate Not Secured Cipher Suites
Although you have the latest encryption in your site, it still does not mean that your site is 100% safe to threats and problems. The default options of most servers permit SSL cipher suites which are deemed insecure like the RC4. It should right away be disabled on your web server so that no one can force their way to your server and gather important information.
Hide Header Information
Publicizing the version and type of your web server on the internet will only help those people that have an intention to harm your data. That is why it is recommended to hide these headers and do not present any identifying information to your site visitors. Since this is not a default option, other production servers have these headers open to people and sometimes they just don’t realize it.
Activate HTTP Strict Transport Security
This web security policy system will help ensure that your browser will only connect to a certain website that is covered by SSL. Unable to do this kind of measure to your site will result in an unexpected man-in-the-middle attack which is bad.
Only Use HTTPOnly Cookies
It will make sure that important information on your site will be private and cannot be taken by any deceiver. The HTTPOnly cookies will limit access to cookies in which client-side scripts and other cross-site script defects will not able to take the upper hand to the stored cookies.
Use a Secure Cookies Only
Secure cookies are the only thing that can be transmitted into an SSL connection. This will help prevent cookies that have sensitive information from being taken away by outside threats while in transit between the server to the client.
Secure and Prioritize Web Server Processes
A certain webserver process should not be working as a Local System. On certain operating systems like Linux, most of its servers are running on a dedicated user that has limited privileges, but you still need to check it thoroughly to know what kind of user it is and what kind of permissions a certain user has.
On Microsoft Operating systems, the Local System is the standard configuration that is why it should be changed. Doing this will help stop the harmful webserver from causing further damage to other resources by restricting and isolating the webserver account uses.
Make Sure the Forms Validate Input
If you have certain forms that are accepting user input, every data input mechanism should be thoroughly validated to make sure that only proper data can come in and stored on the database.
Protect Your Server From SQL Injection
One of the most important things that you need to do to protect your webserver from SQL injection is to make use of the stored procedures instead of open queries to do database functions. By doing some restrictions to your web application and run stored procedures, any attempts to inject SQL codes to your forms will automatically fail.
Shield From Denial Of Services
A denial of service attacks usually flood servers with packets and connections until the server will overload and unable to respond to any legitimate requests. Since they are usually using legitimate lanes, there is no exact way to prevent this kind of attack.
Although, there some measures to minimize this from happening. Make use of cloud mitigation providers like Cloudflare that can minimize DoS attacks which are the main cause of your problem.
Routinely Test Configurations
One of the most factor in hardening a certain server is its visibility. Without the idea of the situation of the server will eventually make the server weaker over time. That’s why you need regular testing for configurations to give your IT teams a time to fix security weaknesses before it will be taken advantage of.
Security Assessment
You need to have a thorough assessment of everything and make sure that you will look into any vulnerabilities of your web servers. You need to start from the baseline until the end so that you will be able to inspect any weaknesses.
Spam Emails
Most outside attacks are from emails that have been sent to you. That is why you really need to secure your email first. Take advantage of services that are designed to reduce spam and can also minimize the exposure to attacks.
Secure Your Password
Apply for a security policy on your webserver. Like for example, minimize the usage of USB file storage access, limit user access, and do a user screen timeouts. By doing all of these things, you are securing your password.
Security Understanding
You should always train your users often. They should learn about email attacks, data security, and other procedures and policies. There are a lot of companies that provide this kind of services.
Doing an Advanced Response and Endpoint Detection
You need to make sure that all of your important data are secured from cyber attacks, viruses, and malware. You can do that by using advanced endpoint security. It is more effective compared to using anti-virus.
Use Multi-Factor Authentication
Make use of multi-factor authentication to protect your web site from outside threats. It is an additional protection to your web site if your password was hacked unexpectedly. They won’t still be able to access your files.
Update Your Program and Computer Often
By updating your programs and applications like operating system, java, and adobe, this will also help build better security for your data. There are some online sites that you can search for if you wanted to know more about these things like robots.net.
Set Folder Permissions
You need to review all your files and data to ensure that only authorized people re allowed to access your files. Make this a serious matter because losing important information or data can really harm your business.
SIEM( Security Incident And Event Management
Utilize data engines to evaluate all security logs and events from your website. By doing this, you are protecting your website from outside threats. If you will able to see some problems, you can fix it right away.
Secure Web Gateway
It provides a defense from online threats by doing company security and filtering all malicious online traffic in real-time. A secure web gateway can also provide filtering to URLs. It will also help prevent data leakage which is very important if you have important information that you need to protect.
Have a Mobile Device Protection
It is possible that a certain hacker will use the mobile devices of your employees to get your data and other important information. That is why you need to have a mobile device security for your employees and for yourself.
Firewall
A device or program that can monitor outgoing and incoming network traffic. It can also block or permit packets depending on security rules. The main purpose of this program is to create a barrier between the external and internal network sources.
It is Important to Do Backup
There are a lot of things where you can store your important data. It can be on an external hard drive, cloud, and other backup programs. You should do this often and always check your backups to know if it is still available or secured.
Disaster Recovery
A type of security planning that will protect all your data from your website if there are unexpected disasters. It will also help your business to quickly go back to normal. That is why you should consider having this type of security.
Be Attentive to Traffic Surges
If you manage to encounter so much traffic to your website in which you can say that it is no longer normal since it is significantly higher compared to other websites. This can also be a sign that there is something wrong.
Always Update Login Information
If you are doing some scanning and updating your website, you need to regularly change or update your login information. Traditional passwords like “ 123456 or password” can easily be broken down. That’s why you need to have a unique password.
Use Web Inspector
A reliable tool for scanning a website, the Comodo Web Inspector. It comes with great security features like blacklist monitoring, daily malware scanning, and immediate threat notifications. It can scan your website for weaknesses so that you can fix it right away.
Takeaway
These are the top 30 cybersecurity checklists that will help you protect your website for any future threats. It is critical that you need to know all of these things especially if you have websites that are not yet protected.