Website Security 101: Risks for Your Servers and Your Clients
Since the internet’s launch in 1983, its main concern has always been security. Every website is saved in a file or files and each one of these files is stored in a database somewhere in the world. A database’s main purpose is to store files and not really to protect it. There are certain precautions such as password-protecting a database but since the password itself is stored in a file somewhere in the system, this does not stop all attacks on the database.
There are two kinds of website security risks. Risks that are client-side and risks that are server-side.
Client-side risks are problems that your website’s visitors will probably experience. Even though this will not be a problem for your system, this could cause your website’s traffic to dwindle down and since a website’s traffic convert to sales, this would mean fewer sales. Even more, if someone reported you to your hosting company, your website could be banned and removed from their servers.
Server-side risks are problems that your system could experience. This is a serious problem as it would compromise all of your files and all of your work. One wrong move and you could delete all your files in your system. Having these problems with your system is no easy task and will probably give you several weeks of sleepless nights.
There are two different types of website security risks: hackers who want to change your website and hackers who want to get information from your site.
The first type (hackers wanting to change your website) could be serious or not. The serious type is when hackers go to your website’s database with the intent to delete or make it inaccessible to you. This would cause you to lose all of the hard work you put into making that website. Other serious problems are those that target your clients. The hackers go to your site, not changing a thing but give your visitors a virus or a Trojan for accessing or downloading something from your website.
There are not-so-serious types though. Good hackers (if there ever was one) are those whose intent is just to go to your website, access your database and change its content to tell you that he hacked your site. These hackers are doing this kind of things just to tell you that your website has a security problem and that you should locate and fix it. Other hackers would probably leave a note to tell you where you goofed.
The second type (hackers wanting to get information on your website) is serious especially for e-commerce type of websites. Client-side risks are those when the information (social security numbers/credit card numbers and even addresses) they passed on to your website are not secured and are maliciously used by these hackers. Server-side risks are when passwords or other vital information are hacked and causing you some unknown problems. These problems are very hard to track and will be a very big problem for your site.
Websites that have very sensitive data are recommended to use encryption and/or several scripting methods to make sure that their database are not easily accessible. These methods should always be updated as new and advanced technologies come to play. Website owners should also be updated on new security risks and making sure their site is safe from these problems.
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