Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic changed our lifestyle completely, making everything around us digitized, various online platforms, e-commerce, education, entertainment faced stiff competition.
The consumer seems to be spoilt for choice with numerous online ventures to choose from. Here comes the vital role of playing the flag bearer industry, the Digital Marketing industry, which is doing a great job helping the businesses reach out to their target customers.
The digital marketing industry has grown at a breakneck pace and, since then, has become a desirable target for cybercriminals. If you own a digital marketing organization, your work directly exposes you to online threats. As your career depends on different information systems, you are more vulnerable to data breaches and ever-evolving cybercrime. And what do these data breaches put at stake? Due to the nature of work, involving direct interface with clients, the digital marketing individuals often have access to companies’ sensitive details. A data breach of such data can severely damage public relations and lead to a loss of trust with customers.
Pay Attention to Protecting Your Website
With Cybercriminals getting access to new technologies, cybercrime has evolved and become more complex than ever before. Websites that are not configured to protect themselves against cyberattacks must pay attention to the security loopholes and fix them. So, it becomes essential for Digital Marketing companies to be aware of various online threats so that you can act proactively on the security solutions to secure your website completely.
Secure Your Website with SSL Certificate
When it comes to running a successful business, building customer trust forms your conversions’ very backbone.
Securing your website by investing in an SSL certificate, in the first instance, gives users the visual trust signal of padlock or HTTPS before the URL of your website. These graphic symbols of trust instill confidence in the visitors that their crucial information shared on your website is safe.
Hence, SSL certificate security adds to your customers’ user experience and increases the chances of conversions. When an SSL certificate is installed on your web server, the HTTPS protocol encrypts all the communication between the user’s web browser and web server, protecting it from any hacking attempts. In addition to providing security, SSL Certificate provides authentication and improves your website’s ranking on the Google search engine result page.
If your website is not SSL secured, Google warns the visitor with the message “This website is not secure “which causes the visitor to leave the website immediately. You miss the opportunity of prospective conversion. Hence, providing an SSL Certificate to secure your website should be on the top of your list.
Password Theft is one of the most widely encountered cyber threats that has been the cause of concern for a long time. Hackers depend on two main strategies to get hold of your password. The first strategy is called educated guessing, which involves collecting your personal information on social media and making intelligent guesses to get your password. The second strategy being used by hackers these days is Brute Forcing, in which a program is used that bombards your website with thousands of words until they get the password right. A password breach can give hackers access to the database of the website causing real havoc.
So, to protect your data, use a stronger password, and in addition to this, use multifactor authentication for admin access. Most importantly, having a backup of the website data can help if the hackers do any system changes to break into the system files.
Denial of Service Attacks (DDOS) can put the entire website under siege by denying services to its customers and bringing the server down by overwhelming traffic flow. DDOS attacks have increased multifold, with the aim of such attacks holding up crucial data and asking for considerable ransoms in exchange for disabling the attack.
For protection against DDOS attacks, continuous monitoring of the incoming traffic must be done when any fraudulent visits are discovered. They should be immediately blocked.
SQL Injection Attacks can cause hackers to access configuration files of your website by sending commands to online forms or search boxes. A weak configuration of the website makes it more vulnerable to such attacks.
Cross-site scripting is when malicious code is injected into your website to steal crucial information from users who visit the website.
For blocking SQL Injection Attacks and Cross-site scripting, placing your website behind a web application firewall (WAF) puts your site behind a virtual wall that keeps an eye on the visiting traffic. Hence, it can block any cross-site scripting and SQL Injection Attacks.
Protecting Your Emails
Distributing malware through phishing emails is one of the most popular modes among hackers. Spam emails, email account hacking are some other ways to carry out a cybercrime. Using strong passwords and multifactor authentication must be practiced, and organizations should put email filters in place to block malware and spam.
Don’t Ignore Security of Social Media Accounts.
It is common to take the security of social media accounts very casually. Hence these accounts get hacked very easily. Pay attention to protecting your company’s social media account using strong passwords, multifactor authentication, and restricting access to social media accounts only to those required to carry out specific jobs.
It Is Crucial to Protect Your IT Systems
Protecting your internal IT systems, including your local networks, servers, PCs, is crucial. If cybercriminals can intrude into these systems, it could inflict heavy losses to your organization. You must ensure that all your systems are securely configured, with strong password protection, and the use of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) should be encouraged.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can say that even a single data breach can bring the reputation of your company crashing down, resulting in severe business losses and substantial financial distress. By focusing on safeguarding your online platforms, you are only putting in your time and energy to build your company’s trust and reputation. So, don’t ignore cybersecurity; instead, have a foolproof security policy in place for your organization and educate your employees to follow the best online security practices, and see your business grow by leaps and bounds.
