Cybersecurity For Your Small Business Website

Do Your Customers Feel Safe?

Online trust is everything these days, especially since the economy is largely driven by e-commerce fueled purchases. Customers flock to online shopping carts over stores, and buying purchases (regardless of type and size) is as easy as clicking a button.

It’s this convenience that has people thinking twice before they leap wondering if the website they’re using is safe. Will their information stay secure? Will this (YOUR) company keep them protected each time they rely on you? In order to keep your current customers and attract new ones, online security needs to be at the very top of your priority list.

First, Secure Your Website

According to recent studies, 59% of businesses say that cybersecurity is a “big concern” for their organization. Small business owners know that a hack can be detrimental to an organization, especially if cyber criminals succeed in grabbing the most valued asset – customer data, especially financial details.

Leveraging Pratik Dholakiya’s Small Business Trends “5 Simple Tips to Secure Your Website from Hackers”, here are some checklist items to safeguard your site:

Ensure your software is up-to-date: While program updates may seem tiresome and unnecessary, think before you click “remind me later.” Providers issue these updates as essential tools to plug holes in their systems that may make your company (and your customer data) vulnerable to attacks. Update yourself as soon as these patches are made available, including third party plugin updates.

Make your site a fortress: In building your secure layer, first establish a web application firewall. It will analyze incoming traffic, identify malicious requests, and offer protection from spam, online attacks, cross site scripting, SQL injections, and other major threats. Firewalls are no longer limited to hardware. Through Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) providers, small business owners can use cloud technology to access robust security solutions at more affordable prices without hiring expensive security experts.

Switch to HTTPS: When your website is moved to the HTTPS protocol, you are adding an encryption layer of TLS (Transport Layer Security) or SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to your HTTP. Doing this will make your data more secure from potential hackers. As an added bonus, making the shift from HTTP to HTTPS can also help boost your search rankings in Google.

Change your strong passwords often: Hackers have gotten really good at coming up with your username and password, so you need to make it much harder to uncover. Your password should be a combination of alphanumeric characters, symbols, upper and lower case characters, and at least 12 characters long to prevent attacks. And needless to say – do not use the same password for all your site logins! Keep users’ passwords in encrypted form (preventing hackers to access actual passwords), and change your strong passwords on a frequent basis.

Hide admin directories: When hackers use scripts to scan your webserver directories, they tend to look for folders called “admin” or “login”, so they can focus all their energy on attacking this vulnerable sweet spot. Rename these admin folders (only known to your webmasters) to help reduce the possibility of a breach right now.

Now, You Can Invite Your Customers In

Once your website is safe and protected, prove it to your customers! In his Wall Street Journal article “It’s Vital to Reassure Shoppers that Your Systems Are Secure, or Else They Won’t Buy,” Javier Espinoza provides smart strategies to make your customers feel safe. We’ve generalized and summarized the main points for you below:

Obtain and place a secure badge: Users, especially those new to your site, are immediately reassured upon seeing the trusted third-party seal from a provider such as McAfee Secure or Google Trusted Store. This badge, which is easy to obtain through a step-by-step process, proves that your website meets specific safety criteria and is constantly monitored by experts for potential problems. Once you have this badge, put it in the most prominent spots on your website for customers to see.

Look good: If your site looks unsophisticated and unpolished, people may not feel safe enough to proceed with the purchase. Your site should be clean, modern, and inviting customers to make a transaction.

Talk about it: If you’ve made new improvements to make your site safer and more secure, reach out to your customers and tell them, especially in your newsletter. If you do it well, enhanced security is also a great way to stand out from your competition.

Run, don’t walk: If there is a breach, be proactive. Tell your customers everything you know – the problem, the steps being taken, and the long-term solution. Additionally, if there is a problem that is not impacting your business specifically, address this hot-topic with information and resources that customers can take to protect their own information, even beyond your site.

Keep the Lines of Communication Open

Above all, don’t bury your head in the sand when it comes to online security. Be transparent, helpful, and honest. Discuss the topics at hand, answer questions, and ensure your customers that you are doing everything in your power to keep them safe, now and in the future.

Are there any other specific ways that you safeguard the online customer experience? Share tips with us here!

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