Practical Steps to increase Website Security

Your website is your reputation!
A website should be properly maintained and updated to ensure the website technology is reliable and secure. There is a lot more to a website than the aesthetic design. Data needs to be kept secure and interactions between web visitors and your website should also be secure.

There are various ways to ensure your website is protected. Large organisations with big budgets can afford to implement several security layers to protect their website and the visitors.

As a smaller organisation, you will not have such a large budget, but there are some basic methods that will help keep your website secure.

• Use a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate on your website (HTTPS)
• Use a reputable hosting company to host your website
• Ensure your website technology is kept up-do-date
• Monitor your website to identify unusual site traffic
• Ensure you implement Captcha security on contact forms
• If you are using a Content Management System (CMS) ensure you maintain and change strong passwords

Regularly we hear news of a major corporation or public institution suffering from a web security attack. Web security is a challenge for all organisations even for those with big resources. It's even more challenging for smaller organisations with fewer resources - but you have to start somewhere.

The above steps will not give you the most secure website possible - but it will certainly add a level of protection for your website and website visitors.