10 Features of a Secure Website

Website security is a primary consideration in web development but it is often not taken seriously by a lot of website owners. If you have built a secure website, then you must have sought out the services of a security expert who spots areas of weaknesses in your system and also carry out routine maintenance checks for new flaws and vulnerabilities. These are the minimum requirements for any safe website and I have grouped them into 10 must-have features for your website.

1. Registry lock

A skilled hacker can take control of an unsecured domain, alter the
configurations and redirect the site elsewhere. Apart from the embarrassment that such a breach might bring, there could also be potential legal consequences. In 2003, the New York Times had to deal with the consequences of such a breach.

With a registry lock feature, it becomes very difficult for a domain to be hijacked or its DNS configurations altered by a third party without rigorous procedures. A registry lock demands multiple party authorization from registrar and registry before alterations to the domain can be made. This is a fundamental requirement for bigger organizations especially. Installing this feature requires a bit of manual effort and companies typically charge around $300 to $400 for this service.

2. Hotlink protection

Some sites can take images and hyperlinks from your website and display them on their pages, essentially stealing your data. This process is called hotlinking. Hotlinking also affects your bandwidth and disk space of your site so preventing this is crucial. You can protect your website from this theft of your data by making use of special preventive tools available.

3. Spam stop feature

If you are a frequent user of the internet, it is impossible not to encounter ads and commercials and these are increasingly using up a lot of online space. A little pop-up here or there might be benign and users often want to support their favorite brands. Sometimes, these pop-ups are not so benign and can cause your site to become infected with spam and this could be bad for user experience. As a business owner, you want your audience to get a pleasant experience and one way of doing this is by investing in spam stop feature. Your web hosting company offers this feature so you should do well to ask them what they have on offer and how it can be beneficial to you.

4. DDOs attack protection

Distributed denial of service attacks are a common nuisance most sites have to deal with. But you want this attacks to be as infrequent as possible as they can cause your site to become spammed if they originate from multiple points. These attacks can also cause your site to run slower than normal. Your web hosting company can also provide protection against these kinds of attacks.

5. Secure sockets layer (SSL protection)

This feature provides privacy and security of communication done over the web. This is especially important if you want you want to sell products or services on your site. SSL protects the integrity of your website in two basic ways:

a. It creates a secure network between users and tracks every message that is exchanged over the internet. Some web hosting companies use an encryption service called a secure shell host (SSH). SSH reduces the need for additional security installations. SSL employs “optional session caching” in optimizing the connections between networks. This secures and optimizes the entire communication process.

b. It employs a mechanism called symmetric cryptography to maintain complete privacy during web communication between parties. It is also particularly useful when the communication involves transactions of a financial nature.

6. Two-Step verification

This is also known as two-factor authentication (2FA). It is a security feature that requires owners of online accounts to produce two authentication factors rather than one. Accounts that require just one factor for their authentication are known as single-factor authentication (SFA) accounts. An example of an SFA account would be one that requires a password for access while an example of a 2FA account would be your bank account as you would require your debit card and a pin before withdrawing money from an ATM.

The dual-factor authentication is a very powerful security measure and as a rule, you should never patronize a domain company that does not provide a two-step verification process for all its user accounts.

7. Secure administrative passwords

It goes without saying that a strong access password is crucial. A website with a weak password is an easy target for hackers, more so when it is hosted on an open content management platform like WordPress. Make sure you select a password that is lengthy and does not look like a word. It should also not be information about you or your business that can be easily researched or even guessed. Get a reliable password generator. The most secure websites will only accept strong passwords and will also require that the admins change their passwords quarterly. A tedious process no doubt but way less tedious than the problems you’ll have to deal with if your weak password is breached.

8. Bot Blocking

Search engines employ bots to go through websites to help them index and rank efficiently. Non-friendly spider bots can also get information the same way and this can be sold or used for malicious purposes. Bot can overrun your websites giving you skewed analytics and inflated traffic results. Distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) can also be caused by bots. They overload your website by attacking your network from multiple systems causing it to become overloaded, this slows down your website or can cause it to crash altogether.

A security-conscious web developer will take measures using available web tools to prevent malicious bot attacks.

9. Protection from cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks

JavaScript can be maliciously introduced into a website. This can cause unwanted effects like changing the content of your web pages or worse still lead to data theft from your website to the point of origin.

Your web security provider would want to focus on how user data can be obtained and manipulated by an external party causing it to be misinterpreted by the browser.

10. Data backup

Website data breaches and loss are always a possibility. As undesirable as they may be, it is wise to have a content backup plan in the event of a breach. Hosting companies offer data backup services that ensure you do not lose your data even if you are compromised and you will be able to get your website up and running within a few hours even if you come under damaging attack.