The early 2000s saw an explosion in the number of activities that could be conducted online—everything from shopping to communication started to take place over the internet, and it is still the predominant way in which we interact with one another in 2019. While convenient, however, there are some significant risks involved when it comes to the transmission and storage of personally identifiable information.
While well-developed infrastructures and modern web development practices in countries such the USA and Canada have enabled them to mitigate the impact of cybercrime to some extent, not every region is as lucky. In particular, Caribbean countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, have undergone two drastic changes over the past decade—rapid increases in the number of internet users and the increasing local presence of high-profile financial service providers. The combination of these two things make the region an appealing target for cybercriminals.
It’s clear, then, that security should be of the utmost importance when designing and developing your website. Whether you rely on it to generate leads, inform consumers, or sell products, close attention to detail should be paid in order to ensure that your website is secured against all external threats. This article is going to focus on a few of the things that you should be focusing on in order to create a stable and secure browsing—and purchasing—environment for your clients and customers.
Fully Formed Code
What often happens when businesses turn to inexperienced web developers is that they’re delivered a final product that is functional, but incomplete. While it may seem that everything is as it should be, crippling PHP vulnerabilities can still exist behind the curtain—it’s possible for attackers to exploit this incomplete code by injecting infectious malware into your website through the use of Boolean operators and phrases. By staying aware of this possibility and conducting diligent code validations, however, you can mitigate this threat through the development of a functional, secure, and complete website.
Data Encryption
Regardless of whether you enable your users to enter payment information on your website or not, it’s critical that you ensure that all of the data that passes from the client to the server is encrypted in order to avoid theft. The most common way that this is done is by installing what is known as a SSL—or Secure Sockets Layer—certificate. Once these certificates are installed to your server, they generate sets of keys that correspond to one another and provide your users with a visual encryption indicator.
Thankfully, the presence of a SSL certificate on your site is incredibly easy to notice. Google goes so far as to alert users when they’re trying to access a site that doesn’t have any form of data encryption, so there’s really no excuse for not catching this crippling vulnerability early. Just keep in mind that SSL certificates do expire, so it’s critical that you stay on top of it to maintain a safe browsing experience.
Recurring Maintenance
The world of web development moves quickly—core features, functions, and tools appear and are subsequently made obsolete at lightning pace. This is why it’s critically important to entrust the development of your website to a dedicated team that is committed to ongoing maintenance, support, and optimisation. For some simpler sites, this process is as simple as ensuring that third-party plugins—such as those found on WordPress—are consistently updated with the newest versions. For custom-made websites built from scratch, however, this requires a bit more care since it’s the responsibility of the dedicated development team to conduct penetration testing and vulnerability assessments on each of the features and functions that they design and implement.
Businesses across the Caribbean are quickly becoming chief targets or cybercriminals around the world—rising internet connectivity rates with an underdeveloped security infrastructure is a recipe that’s ripe for data theft. Stop your business from becoming another statistic by investing in the development of a modern, secure website. While the tips outlined in this article are by no means exhaustive, actively following this advice will go a long way towards ensuring a strong security foundation for your website.