Website Security Checklist: Protect Your Site from Cyber Threats

When the website of a business goes live, it is not only accessible to potential customers but also to potential security threats. The website is exposed to hacking attempts, port scans, traffic sniffers and data miners. Especially organisations that store sensitive customer data rely on the website for revenue, efficiency and insights about customers, or provide services are susceptible to these threats.

This makes maintaining a high level of security essential. Here is a website security checklist you can follow to maintain website security.

Website Security Checklist

As per a report, there are 2,200 cyber attacks per day. This makes it essential to implement security measures. Here is a website security checklist to follow:

Strong Authentication

Authentication is a process by which authorised individuals are recognised and unauthorised access is prevented.

Authentication can be done with a username-password combination, security questions, or PIN codes. Passwords can easily be hacked or guessed, therefore, a 2-factor authentication is recommended.

Mobile-generated codes or a physical key like Bluetooth or USB port also serve as a reliable way for authentication.

Additionally, a website can use biometrics like thumbprints or facial recognition to authenticate the identity.

Role-based Permissions

As the organisation grows, the number of members in the web team also increases. There may be front-end developers, back-end developers, web designers, content editors, etc.

Therefore, organisations must continuously edit and update role-based access. For instance, the “super administrator” may be the only person with access to edit all the settings. A person with “read-only” access will only be allowed to view the site analytics and nothing else.

Sitewide SSL

Have you seen a lock in the browser when you are on a site? This means that you are using an SSL connection. To benefit from SSL and verify encrypted connections, you should enforce SSL sitewide as information that passes outside the SSL connection can be easily intercepted by anyone.

SSL Verification

Here are the steps you should take to verify SSL certificates:

• Renew the certificate before it expires.
• There are three domain coverage certificates. Single domain certificates cover one domain, Wildcard Certificates cover all subdomains under a single domain, and multidomain certificate covers multiple domains. Make sure that your website has adequate domain coverage.
• Ensure robust encryption of SSL certificate with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and RSA-2048.

Use Secure Cookies

Secure cookies are only transmitted by HTTPS connections. Implementing secure cookies on the website ensures that cookies with sensitive information are not sniffed in transit between the server and the client.

Encrypting DNS traffic over HTTPS or TLS

A website’s content lives on a unique IP address. DNS lookup converts a URL into a machine-friendly IP address.

By default, DNS queries are sent in plaintext (UDP), meaning networks, ISPs, and other monitoring transmissions can easily read them.

Therefore, it is essential to encrypt DNS traffic over TLS or HTTP.

Hiding the Original IP Address

Attackers can send the traffic directly to the servers if they know the IP address of an organisation’s server. To prevent this, follow these steps:

• A mail service shouldn’t be housed on the same server as the protected web page. When emails are sent to nonexistent addresses, they are bounced back to the attacker, disclosing the email’s IP address and, eventually, the website’s IP address.
• Make sure that the web server does not connect to the arbitrary addresses users have provided.
• Rotate origin IPs since DNS records are in the public domain.

DDoS attacks

DDoS attacks happen when a large number of devices are trying to access a website or online services all at once. These attacks are intended to make the resources unavailable by taking them offline.

To prevent this, make sure that you keep track of traffic surges and stop bots on time.

Additionally, you should periodically validate the network and application’s security performance.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A Web Application Firewall can filter HTTP traffic between a web application and the internet. It protects against SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other common threats.

Updating the Software

To patch security vulnerabilities, you should keep all the website software updated, including the server operating system, CMS (like WordPress, Joomla, etc.), and any plugins or scripts.

As per research, half of the security vulnerabilities can be removed with just a simple step of updating the software.

Regular Back Up and Security Scans

Make sure that your website has both on-site and off-site automated backups to protect it in case of data loss or attacks. Run scans to ensure that any website security issues are identified and resolved quickly before they become a major problem.

Final Thoughts

Maintaining website security will not only keep the data and website secure but also ensure credibility and efficiency. Following the steps above, you can create a security layer that protects the website from potential attacks. Make sure that you keep on adding the latest security updates.

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