October The National Cybersecurity Awareness Month: A Guide to Protect Your Website
Launching your website is like unlocking the door to your home with the safe open. Most business owners don’t consider security as something which is critical and important for every site. Website security extends far beyond protecting sensitive information behind a firewall. With more than 43% of cyberattacks targeting the small business data, security is a top priority.
As we consider October as the national cybersecurity month, it is important to consider the present landscape and also remind ourselves of some of the crucial steps that we need to consider to safeguard the website from threats.
How Microsoft Helps to Manage Security with its Products and Services:
There is no doubt that Microsoft has built security into all its varied products and services and also offers the best infrastructure with the goal to ensure protection up front. For this, Microsoft developers have taken the responsibility to work on advancing and optimizing each product and have actively contributed to the safety of their varied products and services.
For Microsoft partners, the company has recently introduced security requirements that are designed to mitigate threats. This is done by including the multi factor authentication for all the users and adoption of the Secure Application Model Framework.
The company has also announced the general availability of Azure Sentinel and the SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) + SOAR (Security Orchestration and Automation Response) solution that allows you to invest in the security of your website without worrying about the infrastructure or the website maintenance. With the built in intelligence and the cloud, security threats are also detected and solved faster than ever.
Vigilance is Key:
In spite of adopting great security practices, there may be times when things might go wrong. Keeping an eye on the website is important as it helps to take precautions and essential steps even in our personal use of emails, internet and social media. Enabling the multi-factor authentication will help to block about 99% of the automated attacks. An adding of the recovery phone number helps to mitigate the majority of bulk phishing and any other attacks that happens on a daily basis.
Also Read: 5 Critical Security Risks and How Sitefinity CMS Handles Them
What About Getting Rid of the Password Altogether?
Practicing a password hygiene is good for your site, but getting rid of the password altogether can be an effective means to protect your personal information. Another practice that you can adopt is to use caution when opening a link or attachment from any untrusted sources that may contain a malware that gets installed when the user clicks on the link.
Implementing Some Other Preventive Measures:
Business and website security often begins with adopting some preventive measures and best practices that help to keep the cyber criminals out in the first place. For most business owners, this means securing everything that is under your control.
Automating the Updates of Your Operating System:
Hackers are aware of the fact that small businesses and individuals don’t consider updating their OS to the latest version. This gives the opportunity to exploit it and bring the organization to their knees.
Using the 2 Factor Authentication:
These days using the strong password together with a 2 factor authentication is what you need to protect both the accounts of the customers and your data. Many OS, web platforms and network software allow you to enable strong password requirement for the customers and the admin accounts. Many even require the users to change their passwords periodically.
Secure the Emails and Other Business Procedures:
Email attachments that are infected are the major cause of large numbers of network attacks, hacks and also data breaches. Despite the security protections like spam guards and virus scans, the hackers can find their way to the computer system by using simple tricks. So, businesses should adopt the best security practices that include both the employee security and automated scans.
Also Read: How to Configure the Security Policies and HTTP Response Headers