How to Protect and Secure Your Site | Complete Security

Securing a website is the main task of not only the system administrator or the person performing his role, but also the direct owner of the Internet source. 

It's scary to imagine what neglect of the security of an Internet resource can lead to. This can be both a deterioration in the site's search positions, and a decline in the company's reputation in the eyes of its potential and existing customers, their complete and irrevocable departure. For example, if a visitor visits the website of an organization and while working with it, infects his operating system, the impression will remain clearly negative, and in some cases, the current situation will cause an outbreak of aggression towards the owner of the website.

In addition, when infected with a serious virus, a complete loss of your site can occur, which will lead to significant financial costs to develop a new one to replace the lost one.

For these reasons, one of the highest priorities for an entrepreneur or organization leader will be to provide comprehensive protection and security for a functioning website.

It is worth noting that the virus itself on the site, only in rare cases gets to it randomly, in the overwhelming majority it is part of a deliberate attack, during which the viral code plays only a certain auxiliary or (in some cases) executive role in the complex. accompanied by other methods of attack. Thus, the protection process must be built not only against malicious scripts and code but also against various methods of attacks. For example, the most popular Dos and DDoS attacks among hackers are the first step to finding vulnerabilities, which will entail the process of planned infection or "injecting" a "Trojan" - a type of virus whose main role is to steal any kind of data.

The Main Types of Threats

Unauthorized access

Unauthorized access to personal data of users, confidential information, as well as to any information stored in the database of the site. Attackers can gain access to the web resource database by infecting a site with malicious code or by finding various types of security vulnerabilities.

Dos and DDoS attacks, already mentioned by us earlier, although not related to the infection of the source with a virus code, can cause big problems for the owner of Internet resources. Until now, there is no reliable 100% protection against this method of sabotage. The principle is based on sending bulk requests from one (Dos) or multiple networked devices (Ddos) to the server hosting the web resource. As a result, the system goes into protection (an error code is issued) or it "freezes", which makes it possible to detect "holes" (in the language of hackers, denote vulnerabilities) for further actions, including downloading a Trojan virus that will steal and/or redirect confidential important data to your "owner". Dos and DDoS attacks are the most popular ways to check the protection of an Internet resource because they are associated not only with theft of information,

All methods of protection against this type of attack are associated with the proper configuration of the server hardware and the software installed on it. Choosing a reliable hosting provider is another important and integral part of a comprehensive security system. A ban on receiving data from users with foreign IP addresses will make it difficult for intruders or gain time.

It is also worth mentioning SQL injection, that is, queries through the address bar (using GET parameters) directly to the database. By applying a special combination of SQL-query and allowing this possibility on the part of the site, attackers will be able to gain full access to the database (DB), including the ability to download, delete, change.

To protect against this way of manipulating the database of your website, you will need to use only parameterized queries, stored procedures, regular expressions, blocking functions in your code, and disable error messages. It is important that an experienced webmaster and programmer (not lower than the "Middle" level) are involved in updating the security system. Do not try to do this yourself without the appropriate knowledge, as this can violate the integrity of the system and lead to the failure of the web resource.  

XSS attack consists of the "theft" of information on another level - "cookies", which will allow access to information of user accounts. The method of action is based on injecting a script code (js) into the website page, which will be launched automatically when the user enters the site. In most cases, the server on which the site is stored is hacked, or it becomes infected with a virus. When committing an XSS attack, attackers can not only steal user account data, but also redirect it to other websites, open additional windows, and infect users' PCs. The methods of protection are the closed and the possibility of sending POST and GET requests to the database directly, without preliminary verification, as well as those measures for closing vulnerabilities that were used for SQL injection.

On the part of the website owner, you need to be always ready for this kind of attack, especially when it comes to a highly competitive niche where every customer attracted is worth its weight in gold.

Block or restrict website availability

Blocking or limiting the availability of a website on the Internet is another common problem and threat that companies of various levels periodically face.

It also leads to the deterioration of positions in the search results of "Yandex" and "Google".

Malicious code can get to the site, both through deliberately planned attacks and in a random way, for example, by transferring a virus from the PC of the administrator who manages and maintains it.

Site Infection

Infection of a site with the aim of obtaining an opportunity to attack site users and further spread of the virus on the Internet Usually associated with fraudulent activities, the main target is website visitors and their devices. In most cases, the infected web resource is just a carrier that launches a special script that spreads the virus code to users' devices. In addition to sabotage activities, it can carry out functions to collect any kind of information from PCs, laptops, smartphones, and tablets (most often bank card numbers and application data from a client bank).

Specific Threats

There are several more types of threat - “Specific”. They are not directly related to viral infection, but they can significantly harm the company's business. The first of them is "phishing", which consists in creating and placing on third-party Internet sites a copy of a site with data entry forms. The purpose of this activity is to steal confidential personal data of visitors and customers of the company. It is scary to imagine what a hit on a site copy that completely repeats Sberbank Online can lead to. The only protection against phishing is user attentiveness. Although all popular systems are fighting this type of threat, duplicate sites periodically pop up on the Internet.

Another type of threat to the company's website is the massive purchase of low-quality external links to a competitor's website, which will drive it under the “search engine filter”. Often, the drop in positions in organic search results is associated with the action of malicious code, although in fact, the reason may be precisely in this factor. To protect yourself, regularly monitor the positions of the website, view the information in the "Webmaster" panels. Pay special attention to such an indicator as TIC. Its unreasonably fast and sharp growth, as a rule, is caused by intrigues of intruders.

How to Find Out If a Website is Infected With a Virus?

The first signal that a web resource is infected is a violent and acute reaction when visiting it from the "standard" antivirus complete security installed on the PC. Another alarming factor may be a sharp deterioration in the site's position in organic search results. It is also possible that a warning message appears in the snippet of the website that the source is infected (unnatural text appears on the pages), the operation and loading of pages differ from the standard ones.   

To check a web resource, you can use the services of Yandex Webmaster and Google Webmaster, or using the service: rescan.pro

Webmaster's tools diagnose websites on a regular basis and display status in real-time.