The Biggest Cyberattacks Of 2019 & How To Protect Your Website From Them

The world of web is increasingly becoming vulnerable to cybercrime. Not even the tech giant, Facebook, was spared from cyberattack that cost it the data of 50 million users in September last year. And this was just one of the breaches that made headlines and shocked the entire world; there are hundreds of other security breaches, malware injections, and other hacking incidents that take place every single day. Website owners not just need to be aware of the biggest cyber-attacks in the online world but also perform all the preventive measures to ensure their website is safe from such attacks. If you are a site owner looking to boost your website's security, this write-up sum up everything that you need to know.

Biggest Cyber Threats Of 2019

• SEO Spam Kits One of the biggest crimes in the cyber world today is done with the help of SEO spam kits. SEO Spam leads to the installation of this malicious software on web servers and the creation of new pages or content as per the requirement of the spammers. In this attack, while the users are viewing the original content by browsing through this infected site, the website owner is left unaware that the web crawlers are indexing something completely different. The malicious code is hidden from the site owners and keeps destroying the sites ranking undercover. By planting a number of bad links on site, spammers invoke spamming penalties and even blacklist your web pages.
• Adware Network Weaponizing The newer and advanced forms of adware can be undetected by antivirus and infect more machines by persisting on the host. The adware alerts shown by websites are often ignored by website owners and brushed off as little problems. However, with advancement in technology, adware networks are capable of showing more than simple advertisements and be a threat to the website.

• Backdoor Crypto jacking With hackers and cybercriminals becoming smarter with the increase in cybersecurity, the use of backdoors for attacking a website has skyrocketed. They launch crypto jacking attacks by breaking into a site or web server and uploading crypto miners. It does not show the owner that their site has been infected but takes over the computing processing power from the website visitors.

How To Protect Your Website From Cyber Attack

• Secure Data At Admin Level The data saved for the website should only be accessible at the admin level as hackers usually cannot access it. Not just that, the admin level should also be encrypted and secured by complex username and password that should be changed at a frequent interval as well. The admin login details should be kept a secret and there should be a limitation to the number of logins that can be done in a certain period of time to ensure that data is not susceptible to any cyberattack by the hackers.
• Double Validation For Data To add an extra layer of protection for your websites data, it is important to add double validation. This could be done at both the server and the browser end. While the browser can find the mistakes or issues in the data, the server can detect any malware including malicious script, code, or application. This would prevent any malicious thing from entering your website. Moreover, with double validation at the server and browser front, the fields accepting external data would also be monitored and checked for the injection of any malicious scripts.
• Keep Updating Staying updated is one of the most effective ways to ensure your website is not prone to cyberattacks. Websites are loaded with a number of extensions, templates, plugins, themes, applications, softwares, etc. Not updating them regularly with the latest security patches might make them susceptible to malware attack. Not updating it with new security patches would only make it even more vulnerable as hackers would easily get access to the site through the unsecured additions of the website.

• Disable Auto-Fill Enabling form auto-fill for the users on your website might seem to boost user-experience but unknowingly be a reason behind that breached cyber security. While users might be happy and relieved to have auto-form fill in, in case, the device of the user is hacked or stolen, it might make your website vulnerable to cyberattacks. Disabling auto-form fill feature on your website is the wise choice to make here.

• Encrypt Intranet Intranet used by companies for private sharing of information might also be vulnerable to cyberattacks. By encrypting the intranet facility, the website owner can add to the security of the website from internal as well as any external cyber threats. The Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is an important element in encrypting the intranet and protecting it from malware.

• Install Web Application Firewall WAF aka Web Application Firewall should be implemented by the website owners to fight back any malicious internet bots. This is one of the most popular and effective security tools to ensure all data transmitted to and from your website are free from any malicious content. Adding a WAF to the website would stop the transmission in case it finds any malware or spam.

Knowing about the biggest and scariest cyber threats in today's world is not enough; one also needs to follow the effective ways to protect the website from cyberattacks. The aforementioned tips are not the only ones. There are many other ways to protect your site from cyberattack and also ensure that your site does not attract any malicious content surfacing on the internet. While no one can eradicate cybercrime, following these tips would make your site less vulnerable to these hackers and cyber attackers.