Your business relies on marketing to reach customers. In this connected world, not being on the internet is a business crime. Not only will you lose potential customers, but you could lose your business as well.
Hackers are people who take advantage of a website’s security lapses, like lack of SSL feature, domain locks, and WHOIS security. So why do they do this? Here are 5 things hackers want to accomplish when they target websites such as yours.
1. Steal money. This is without a doubt, the most corrupt and popular reason for hackers to hack a website. What’s even worst is that online banking has made things easier for hackers to steal from people. They devote their time to find security vulnerabilities in banking websites. The money is theirs for the taking once they do so.
2. Disrupt services. Hackers’ usual efforts are targeted towards aiming to shut down a website, to slow or even render a website useless by shutting it down. One good example of disrupting a web service is through Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. With this, hackers seize control over a group of computers and then proceed to ping particular web servers to overload and even shut down the website.
3. Acquire data/information. Today, digitally stealing valuable personal information is easier than ever with people and businesses alike sharing their data/information. Identity theft is a dire issue wherein hackers exploit a person’s identity. An example of this is getting hold and using a person’s credit card information or social security number to open or drain accounts and even frame others.
4. Just for fun or for attention. Sometimes hackers hack for sport, out of sheer boredom, or just to get attention. This hacking can at times help businesses since it exposes vulnerabilities in online security, which results in an improved and a more robust system. Heck, sometimes good hackers are employed to find vulnerabilities as well.
5. Take advantage of the WordPress platform (if you use it).
WordPress is the most vulnerable platform due to its popularity. Targeting them means targeting thousands of websites which leads to using them. Many believe that WordPress websites are safe, but the truth is that they are not so in reality.
There’s a lack of proper website security and based on a recent study, online hacks cost medium and small businesses more than $188,000 annually on average. Almost 60 percent of these companies are disabled because they can’t survive the financial damages. What’s sad is that they could still be operating today – only if they had a good security system in place.
If you’re yet to get hacked, just survived one or experiencing one, it is never too late until it is over. Guarding against hacks is possible if you take a few necessary precautions.
Start by having your site inspected by your hosting provider or use their monitoring as a service. One such service is SSL Certificates, which provide the highest levels of industry-standard security to get safe and secure online transactions, protect passwords, credit card numbers and secure your customer’s information. As with any problem, the best way to prevent it is to be prepared in the first place.
