How to tell if your business website is secure
Your website is like the front door to your business. For your current and potential customers, your website is a reflection of you and your business.
Imagine for a moment how one of these customers would feel if the first thing they see when visiting your website is something deeply offensive like a message from the KKK.
While having an offensive message plastered over your business’ home page might seem a bit extreme, it is far more common than you might think and there are much sneakier ways for hackers to misuse your site for their own purposes.
Top website cyber resilience concerns for small business
How to tell if your business website is safe to visit
Here are a couple of quick things you can do to check for yourself:
Check to see if your visitors can access your website securely
If your website traffic isn’t secured properly, some of your customers may be getting messages that its not secure or in some circumstances being shown something you haven’t put up there.
Google Chrome may be telling your customers your site is not secure.
To quickly see if this is an issue for your website try the following:
Open your website and check that the lock icon is showing in the address bar
Start filling out a form on your website and look to see if the lock icon changes
If you don’t see the lock icon or something like ‘not secure’ is shown when you start entering something into a form, chances are visitors to your website aren’t accessing it securely.
Check to see if you’re site has been reported to Google
Google (and others) may be flagging your site as unsafe if it’s used to host malware or phishing.
As well as flagging to Chrome users that sites they’re visiting may not be secure, Google will flag to anyone searching for you online that your website is dangerous if it or or domain has been reported for doing inappropriate things like hosting malware or sending spam. You can check to see if your site has been reported to Google here:
https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search
Google isn’t the only place your website could be reported, but it will have a significant impact on your business if it is.
Check to see if your website is being updated
Older versions of website software can leave your business vulnerable to attack.
One of the most common ways a website will get hacked is through vulnerabilities in the software it is running on. Making sure you’re running the latest version of any software, including your website, is an important way to keep it secure.
If you’re using Wordpress to host your business website you can use this free scanner to see if you’re running the latest version:
Things you can do to improve the security of your business website
The reason businesses find themselves with an insecure website is that for many of us we simply don’t have the time to do everything ourselves. If this is the case for your business you also likely rely on someone else in your team or an external partner to keep your website updated and current.
If you noticed any issues when going through the steps above, we strongly encourage you to look into one or more of the following:
Secure your website traffic by adding an SSL certificate,
Regularly check to make sure your website hasn’t been reported, and
Make sure your website is being maintained and updated whenever a security update is released.
These are the bare minimum steps you’ll need to take to keep your business’ website secure. If you’ve been managing your website yourself and can’t find time to do these things yourself it might be time to look into getting a bit more help or migrating to a fully managed website service like Squarespace.
Just the start, We can help
Securing your businesses online front door is one important part of demonstrating to your clients and customers that their business is safe with you. At Cynch we’re on a mission to make cyber resilience achievable by even the smallest of businesses by helping business leaders secure all aspects of their digital business.
To start discovering and addressing the cyber risks to your business, sign-up for a free Cynch membership trial today.