In a matter of minutes, a distributed denial-of-service — or DDoS — attack can bring your website traffic to a grinding halt.
In the past, these attacks were more of an annoyance than a serious threat, but this has changed. DDoS attacks are growing in both size and frequency. Major attacks saw a 967% increase between the first quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019. Recovering from an attack like this could cost a small business hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you are like most people, you use Google to search the internet for news, recipes, and pictures of cats. You type in your query, search, and most likely select the first link that Google returns. If you are a savvy user, you know how to use a colon to search specific sites or quotes to find specific words in your search. If you are a hacker, you most likely know how to Google Dork.
Google Dorking, or “Google Hacking,” got its start back in the early 2000s when a hacker realized Google could be used to uncover sensitive data with well-crafted queries. Fast forward to today, and the Google Hacking Database is brimming with over five thousand queries that can be used to find vulnerable information.
When building a business website or blog, it’s essential to make your website’s security a top priority. In addition to learning how to build a website, any small business owner or blogger should understand how to secure their website. Although the topic of website security might sound complicated, it doesn’t need to be a long, drawn-out process. Today’s post will cover useful tips for building a secure website or blog in thirty minutes or less.
1. Keep Your Website Up-To-Date
Much like graffiti in the physical world, website defacement attacks can leave a visible mark on your digital property. In carrying out this type of attack, cybercriminals typically replace existing content on your site with their own messages — whether those messages are intended to be political, religious, or simply shocking.
As a small business owner, you know that your website is a critical component of your business. It provides prospective customers with first impressions of your company and may even serve as a digital storefront. A defacement attack that makes visitors turn around and leave could have lasting consequences on your business.
Cybercrime’s unprecedented reach means that virtually every website is “at risk.” But how can you gauge your site’s risk level?
The SiteLock Risk Assessment is a predictive model that examines 500 variables to determine cybersecurity risks. It leverages the SiteLock threat database, which is built from more than 12 million protected sites. The variables fall into three key categories: complexity, composition, and popularity. Each category is rated as either high, medium, or low risk. According to our research, sites with a higher risk are 12 times more likely to be exploited than those with low risk.
Have you ever visited a website — only to be greeted by an alarming red screen that reads: “The site ahead contains malware”? That’s quite the deterrent, and chances are, you left the page in a hurry. That’s what happens when Google and other search engines blacklist a website.
Blacklisting websites is how search engines protect browsers from malicious content. Google and other search engines send bots to scan websites and flag anything suspicious. If your website is deemed a threat, then it’s removed from the search engine’s results page. And for small businesses that rely on their websites to capture and convert leads, this can have serious consequences.
What It Means to Be Blacklisted
Who doesn’t love free Wi-Fi? It allows you the flexibility to work from a coffeehouse or hotel room the same way you would from your office or home. Public Wi-Fi networks are convenient, allowing you to stay connected no matter where you are. But they’re also convenient for cybercriminals, as your personal data is less secure when you’re browsing on a public network.
Don’t expect alarms to go off when cybercriminals launch an attack. In fact, it’s just the opposite. What do cybercriminals want? Mostly to remain invisible. That’s why they make every effort to fly under the radar — and why attacks can go unnoticed for months or even years.
Take a recent cyber attack on Florida healthcare provider AdventHealth. The attack was discovered in February 2019 — a full year after cybercriminals gained access. Attackers used that lengthy window to steal the personal records of 50,000 patients and cover up the evidence of their crime.
No matter what industry you’re in, there’s a good chance that you conduct a lot of your business online. Most modern small businesses have one or more digital properties, including a website and various social media pages. Your website may or may not be your chief sales portal, but it’s usually the first place prospective customers go to learn about your brand, making it a vital asset.
Technology. It’s designed to make our homes more comfortable and workplaces more efficient.
But, every advancement towards realizing a 21st century quality of life comes with a wave of security threats, old and new. The consequences of which are not only born by companies who are the primary targets of cybercrime. Your home systems are more vulnerable than you think.
