When designing a website, you have to think about lots of things. You need to make sure it’s interactive, that layouts, fonts, and colors all match up, and that it works well across devices, to name a few things. And, of course, all of these are vital for how your site will look and feel. However, security is as essential for your website’s success, but there’s much less talk about it. So to help you get that side of your site in line, let’s talk about how to incorporate cybersecurity in web design.
If you do everything by the book, you’ll ensure your users’ data is safe, but you’ll also ensure that your pages rank higher on the SERPs. On the bottom line, good web design can increase your income, so you should do your best here. Google likes a safe site, and so do its users.
Here are some of the best practices to follow in 2022 to make your site safe.
Hire a Cybersecurity Expert
Although it might appear simple from time to time, it’s crucial not to forget that web design is a lot of work. Setting everything up is far from easy, and you’ll have to deal with maintenance on top of that.
Of course, depending on the approach you take now, you’ll have more or less work when it comes to maintenance later on. And for that reason, it’s always a good idea to have a web design security expert in the team. You’ll minimize the running costs of your site and keep your data safe at the same time.
That said, if you don’t want to keep a specialist in-house, you can always outsource their services. You’ll pay them more by the hour, but you’ll pay them only when you need them, which is a nice save.
If you want to incorporate cybersecurity in web design, the first step is to hire an expert in the field.
Ensure You’re Following the State Policies
If you’ve been following the news, the chances are that you heard about the new laws for security standards for companies and individuals working online. There are many policies and requirements that you should follow if you want to maintain the security of your site.
Here are a few examples to better explain what we’re talking about:
- Data breach response
- Data backup
- User identification and authorization
- Disaster recovery
- Personnel security
You should pay special attention to these policies if you take online calls. These conversations might contain sensitive business info, and you want to keep those as secure as possible. So, be sure to look into solutions to protect yourself and your customers when they call a number from your site.
Use Only Strong Passwords
If you let people create accounts on your site, especially if you let them add content, you want to ensure they all use strong passwords. And the easiest way to do it is by asking your users to follow specific rules when creating them.
Here are what those rules should look like:
- Use at least eight characters
- Use both lowercase and uppercase letters
- Add at least one number
- Use at least one of the special characters (@, !, &, ?, #…)
By requiring visitors to follow these rules, you’ll incorporate cybersecurity in web design and make your site a safer place. Hackers won’t be able to brute-force their way into users’ accounts, which will turn them away.
Use Multi-Factor Authentication for Logging In
If you want to take things a step further from secure passwords, the next thing in line is multi-factor authentication. As the name suggests, it means that besides their login credentials, users will also have to provide some other factor. So, for example, you can ask for an additional passphrase, ID number, one-time password that they’ll get in SMS, or even biometric data.
Once you get to this point, you’re making it much harder for hackers to get into user accounts, as they have more and more codes to crack. However, this isn’t the way to make your website more user-friendly. So, the critical thing is to find a balance between keeping your site extra safe and easy to use.
Multi-factor authentication is a high level of login security.
Use SSL Encryption
The abbreviation SSL is very common online, and you must have seen it if you’ve been reading about cybersecurity recently. It stands for Secure Sockets Layer, and it’s like a veil protecting your site from phishing attacks. Let us explain what we’re on about here.
In essence, the job of SSL is to encrypt all data or info that’s transmitted from one place to another, thus making it unreadable.
As an example, suppose you have an eCommerce store on your website, and your customers prefer to pay with their cards. Naturally, they’ll need to send you their banking info. However, a skilled hacker could intercept that data while they’re transmitting it and get all the same information as you.
Without SSL, this would be bad news. However, with it enabled, even if the attackers intercept the transmission, they won’t be able to read anything from it. So your data will remain safe, and you’ll protect your business and your customers.
If you don’t have it already, make sure to get your website an SSL certificate as soon as possible. Some hosting providers provide it for free, but it’s not a big deal even if yours doesn’t. You can always get this certificate from a separate party, and the feature will work as well.
Adjust Your Site’s CMS Settings
If you didn’t hire a designer to build your website from the ground up, you probably made it yourself using a site builder of some sort. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that if you know what you’re doing. With the knowledge of the secrets of good design, any decent drag-and-drop builder will be more than enough to create a top-notch website that’ll convert.
However, you might want to work a bit on your Content Management System (CMS). And you don’t have to do anything complex here. It’ll be enough just to play with settings and ensure that not everything is on default. Customize your CMS to suit your needs better, and you’ll make it harder for attackers to hack it.
There’s nothing wrong with using a CMS to manage your content, as long as you don’t leave it on default settings.
Conclusion
Maintaining your website’s security can be a scary task. However, you can make it much more manageable if you incorporate cybersecurity in web design while you’re building your site. Follow the right practices, hire experts to help you with it, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.
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