By: Henry Ng & J.C. Yee
|14 Feb 2020
Over the years, the Verz Design team, especially our Managing Director, Henry Ng has gathered a lot of concerns when it comes to cybersecurity. By learning various issues on malware, passwords, and data privacy, he was able to glean into prized solutions that sooner or later, enabled the company to provide valuable web security services to businesses in Singapore.
For this article, we sat down with him to know more about the most common security-related matters website owners face and what would be the best piece of advice he can give to our clients.
1. Understand the Responsibilities of Your Hosting Company
Client’s Concern: “Shouldn’t the hosting company or web development agency be held liable if something happens to my website?”
Henry’s Advice: The hosting company is akin to a landlord who leases you a property where you can stay. In this case, the property is the server in which your website is hosted. If something happens to your home, like when your valuables get stolen, your landlord won’t be held responsible for the accident. Similarly, hosting companies or web development agencies aren’t legally obliged to provide support if your website’s been hacked or plagued with malware.
While competent web hosting companies implement a certain degree of protection to their servers, they still can’t guarantee full protection or recovery. As such, we strongly advise business owners to learn how to regularly back up their website to make way for a full recovery should anything goes wrong.
2. Conduct a Regular Backup of the Website
Client’s Concern: “If full protection isn’t guaranteed in the first place, then the web development agency must constantly backup my website in case anything goes wrong”.
Henry’s Advice: Web agencies may or may not constantly back up your website, depending on their process or service standards. Since websites nowadays are dynamic, business owners personally update and manage their contents via the Content Management System (CMS). When this happens, the web development agency will be unaware of the changes made to the website, which is why it’s impossible to know when a backup is necessary.
With this, we advise you to engage reliable web agencies like Verz Design that can provide you with hosting services which come with automatic weekly backups. However, we still recommend that you regularly backup your website, especially if you always update your website’s content. It will protect you from losing important and sensitive data, as a backup will serve as a safety net for recovery of your website especially in the unlikely event that your web hosting company’s backup fails or gets corrupted.
3. Change Your Default Password Immediately
Client’s Concern: “My website went live and my web development agency provided me with a complex cPanel and CMS password. I’m thinking of not changing the password because they may need to access it in the future. If I do change the password, I may just reset it into something that’s easy to remember.”
Henry’s Advice: We don’t need to know your password after project handover unless you need our backend support. It’s just like lending your key to your house decorator. Once their work is done, they won’t be needing your key anymore. Instead, you ask for your key back to ensure the security of your place.
In terms of your cPanel and CMS passwords, it’s important to change them as soon as your website goes live. Never use a simple or easy to remember the password, otherwise, you’ll be putting your website or business at risk. By rule of thumb, it must consist of letters, numbers, and even special characters. Since access to cPanel and CMS won’t usually be on a daily basis, you can keep such complex password on a Word or Notepad document, and put them on a safe folder in your computer.
In addition, avoid sharing your cPanel password with everyone in your team. If a member of your staff needs to update or manage contents, you can just give them your CMS password to do so.
4. Safeguard Your Visitors’ Personal Data
Client’s Concern: “How do I ensure that my website complies with the Personal Data Protection Act and that I won’t be penalised by the Personal Data Protection Commission?”
Henry’s Advice: Your website is strongly required to have an SSL Certificate particularly if it has a feature which asks for a user’s personal details like their name, contact number, email, among others. If you still don’t have an SSL Certificate or unsure about having one, please consult with us.
Beyond that, another way of providing users with a safe and private environment is by refraining from asking too many personal details, like their NRIC, especially if they aren’t necessary. Keep your request for personal information to a minimum at all times.
Moreover, you must also ensure that you’re fully compliant to Singapore’s Personal Data Privacy Act because once your website gets hacked and a breach in privacy occurs, the PDPC will check the following items below:
These things will allow them to know if you are using the best practices for your website, or if you’re just saving costs for the sake of putting your business online. Bear in mind that engaging a competent web development agency and a reliable hosting provider is more cost-effective in the long run, with the chances of a breach or attack being reduced drastically.
5. Be Familiar with Malware
Client’s Concern: “I’ve been informed that my website has malware. Can you explain what malware is and what will happen if I do not remove them? Is there any web hosting provider that can guarantee a malware-free website?”
Henry’s Advice: Malware in website or server is akin to a virus inside humans. There are different types of malware and they have varying effects on your website. While some malware redirects your visitors to a potentially harmful website, some steal credit card information.
With this in mind, not removing your site’s malware will have varying consequences depending on its severity. In extreme instances, your website can be defaced and will no longer load. The malware can also be suspected to be phishing for credit card details. When this happens to your website, you will be contacted and investigated by the Singapore Police Force.
Minor malware-related incidents may cause the web hosting company to suspend the website or limit its admin features, including not being able to edit the CMS, and disabling all enquiries and orders.
When malware starts to occur on your website, we strongly recommend you to immediately work with a reliable web agency who can remove the malware, at the same time find ways to prevent another one to surface.
Unfortunately, no web hosting company can guarantee that your website won’t suffer from any malware, just like no doctor can provide you with an all-in-one vaccine which can protect you from all known illnesses. However, most web agencies or hosting companies offer website packages that include support to remove malware.
If you think you need professional help on your fight against malware, talk to us.
6. Be Careful About Some Bad Computer & Internet Habits
Client’s Concern: “Apart from learning to regularly backup our website and to keep our password complex, is there anything else we need to know?”
Henry’s Advice: We recommend you to only access the cPanel and Content Management System on computers you trust. Otherwise, your site’s login credentials may be exposed to malicious entities especially if the computer doesn’t have any anti-virus or anti-malware software installed. Other safety measures include:
7. Know That Anyone is Prone to Attacks
Client’s Concern: “I am only a small business owner, and only a few people visit my website. I am sure my website won’t be prone to hackers or malware. I don’t even see any news about small websites being attacked by hackers or malware.”
Henry’s Advice: Malware harms websites, computers and even servers of any kind, regardless of size and popularity. They are intentionally designed to attack digital entities with weak security protocols, so unless you observe proper security and maintenance on your website, know that you are very vulnerable to threats from the cyberspace.
Even if you aren’t able to read or hear about any news on small websites being attacked, it’s unwise to assume that there are little to no cases about them. In fact, there are hundreds or thousands cases of SME websites being affected by malware. In this day and age, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Stay Protected with Verz Design
Explore more guides and frequently asked questions on how you can unleash the full potential of your website in terms of cybersecurity, as well as other things by tapping our very own knowledge base.
Having built over 3,000 websites, we know and understand the importance of web security in businesses. Our experience and web security solutions provide us with reliable expertise to help safeguard websites from an array of cyber threats.
Want to know more about web security? Contact us at 6841 1680 or email us at enquiry@verzdesign.com for a free consultation.
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