Are you afraid your web site could get hacked? You should be.

It's an unfortunant fact in the technology age that sharing data can leave you open to exploitation. One not-so-small issue associated with privacy, security and the internet deals with keeping your web site clean and secure. Hacking has made big news in recent years with big businesses from Sony to Target to Home Depot being targeted. Many small business owners don''t realize how big the risk for hacking is for their own business. I often hear from small business owners, "Why Would Anyone Target Me?" or "It's Can't Really Be That Big of a Problem." The scarey truth is that even if your business is not specifically targeted their are opportunists just looking for web sites that have not been properly maintained by their owner.

So what can you do to protect yourself? Well if your web site was built, maintained and hosted with Waves Web Design we have done a lot of the groundwork for you but there are additional steps you can and should take to supplement the measures we have in place.

What can you do to protect your web site investment?

If you follow the steps I have outlined below it will reduce your changes of having a web site security breach.

1) Take backups of your web site! This is the most basic and obvious step to take to protect your web site investment. Not only do we provide tools for our clients to take their own backups we take regular backups for all web sites we actively manage on a scheduled basis.  Make sure you or or web designer has a copy of your web site on your local computer or cloud storage as well as on the server. That way if the worst should ever happen you have a copy of your web site safely stored. Your web designer or web site developer can then take that file and restore your web site should any need including your web site getting hacked occur. If you find that you are too busy to take backups you can contact Waves Web Design to do this for you on a scheduled basis or to even schedule backups for you to a secure 3rd party data service like dropbox.

2) Add an anti-hacking software monitor like Securi to track your web site and scan for malware. Securi is a great service that I highly reccommend all small business web site owners running popular web site software like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal or Magento consider. This software will scan your site on a scheduled basis and alert you to any suspicious files or malware. To get Securi visit this link: http://affl.sucuri.net/?affl=2865d3c405bf6a0ca34a04781c37c61a

3) Keep your software and plugins up to date. It is absolutely imperative that you keep your core software up to date as well as the plugins used to extend the functionality of your core software. One of the most common methods nefarious persons will use to gain illicit access to your web site is through security holes in old versions of software. For our clients, we reccommend that you have us update your software on a regular scheduled basis. This is one of the most basic and easy steps you can do to protect your web site.

4) Have an ip blocking ulility added to your web site.

There are lots of additional tips and tricks that will increase your web site's security but if you are doing all three of the steps outlined above you will already have gone a long way towards protecting your online reputation and the security of your web site.