Protect Your Website with a Professional New Jersey Web Development Team

Protect Your Website with a Professional New Jersey Web Development Team

What is Cybersecurity?

In the world of computers, security involves both Cybersecurity and physical security. Organizations take both types of securities seriously to protect unauthorized access to sensitive data, servers, and other computerized systems. The CIA triad of confidentiality, integrity, and availability come under Information Security, which falls under Cybersecurity.

While talking about Cybersecurity, the question arises, "What do we need to protect against?" And the answer to that question is three fold. You need to protect against:

• Unauthorized Access
• Unauthorized Modification
• Unauthorized Deletion

These form the CIA triad and are commonly referred to as the three pillars of security. Most of the organizations in the world design their security policies encompassing these three pillars. The Reclaim Digital New Jersey web development team believes it is important to have a review these fundamentals:

1. Confidentiality: Confidentiality is to protect the information of your client by keeping it only between you and them. You should not share this information with others.
2. Integrity: In the context of Cybersecurity, integrity means to make sure that the data stored is correct and real. It should be protected from unauthorized modification.
3. Authentication: Authentication allows you to offer the user the ability to access their data and resources any time they want, from a specified location.

Why do we need Cybersecurity?

According to our New Jersey web development team, the truth is that the people in today's world live on the internet. The normal public is clueless as to how the random bits of the 1's and 0's are transferred through the internet in a secure manner. In today's world, it is a great thing to be a hacker. Since there are so many access points available—including public IP's, heavy traffic, and sensitive data to hack—the black hat hackers have a huge opportunity to exploit the vulnerabilities in software and hardware. They can then exploit these vulnerabilities by creating malicious software that can be injected into a compromised system. On top of that, cybercriminals are evolving more by the day and becoming more sophisticated with their attacks. They are developing smarter malware that can bypass the firewalls and anti-virus scans, thus leaving people in a perplexing situation.

Hence, arises a need for a kind of protocol that guards us against these cyber attacks and ensures that the data is kept private and secure to prevent it from leaking into the wrong hands. This is why we need Cybersecurity. 

Types of Cyber Attacks

The New Jersey web development team wants to enlighten you about the types of attacks that are possible on your website and servers. These are some of the common cyber attacks plaguing the market.

1. Malware: Malware is described as any software that aims to harm your system or steal your data. Some of the different kinds of malware include ransomware, viruses, spyware, trojans, etc. Malware is developed by a team of hackers and used to make money illicitly. The team can decide either to sell the malware on the Dark Web or carry out the attack themselves. It cannot lead to physical damage of your system, but the attackers can steal your data, change computer configurations, hijack your system for money or spy on your online activity. The most frequent ways to get infected by malware are through the internet and email.
2. Phishing: In this form of a cyberattack, the attackers choice of weapon is a disguised email. The main aim is to trick the recipient of the email into believing that the email is a genuine message, convincing them that this is something they want or need. It will ask that the recipient download and install an attachment or simply click on a link. For example, a banking request or a request from a company employee could be a phishing scheme. The unique thing about these attacks is how the attackers masquerade as a trusted party that the recipient might personally know or would be interested in doing business with. Even though it is one of the oldest forms of attacks, it is still highly prevalent and the emails are becoming more sophisticated.
3. Password Attacks: It has been noted that passwords are the most common technique used to authenticate the users of a service, as it is an easy and cheap method to implement. Hacker's target systems that contain this sensitive information to learn the passwords associated with users. They spend a lot of time devising methods to leak this information. There are ways to leak the password as a human error, for example. It could involve entering your user credentials in response to a phishing email, writing them in an exposed place or sharing credentials with someone. The most frequently used techniques used to crack a password are through brute force, dictionary attack, and key-logger attack.
4. Distributed Denial of Service: In this type of attack, the attacker aims to disrupt the intended traffic of a server, network, or service. The attacker sends an overwhelming amount of requests towards the target server, forcing the saturation of the server’s resources, which in turn leads the server to reject the requests from genuine traffic. Multiple computers are used to generate the necessary amount of traffic in this attack. It is similar to a traffic jam on the highway preventing other cars from reaching their destination. This attack is targeted on the layer where web pages are generated on request and delivered in the form of a response.
5. Man-in-the-Middle: In this scenario, the attacker positions himself between a client and a server to eavesdrop on the conversation or mask himself as one of the trusted parties, so it appears as a normal conversation between a client and a server. The main aim is to steal sensitive information such as login credentials, card numbers, or account information. The target servers are usually hosting the services that require users to login with their own credentials. It would be as if a mail delivery person read your private letters, stole the information written in the letters, resealed the letter, and then delivered it to the correct destination.
6. Drive-By Downloads: This attack can infect your system with malicious code that can be downloaded on your device simply by visiting a website. This attack is called a "drive-by" download attack because you do not have to click or stop somewhere on the infected website. Without the user's knowledge or permission, simply viewing the website causes infection in their system. The attackers adulterate a legitimate website by embedding malicious software in the website pages. Then, upon visiting the website, the user's browser loads the malicious software, which can cause unprecedented damage to the system security.

Protect your website against cyber attacks

There is a common misconception among website owners that they do not have any information on their website that is worth hacking. In reality, websites get hacked all the time. The attacker's aim is not only to steal your website's data. They could also use your website as a temporary server to store their malicious software or use it as an email relay for spam—just to name a few.

Here are a few tips provided by our New Jersey web development team to keep your website safe from such attacks.

1. Update Everything: It may seem like a simple tip, but it is surprisingly ignored by many. It is crucial that you keep all your software updated in order to keep your website secure. This is valid for the operating system of your server as well as all the software that is being used to run the website. If hackers find security holes in the software, they can quickly exploit these vulnerabilities. 
2. Make your passwords strong: It is common knowledge that you should use complex passwords, but it is still widely ignored. It is important that you use a strong password for your website and the administrator area. You should also make sure to implement a good password policy for your users so that they too end up with an effective password.
3. Avoid File Uploads: It can be a big security risk if you allow the users to upload photos from their personal devices. This allows the attacker to pose as a user and upload malicious files that could infect your website. You should not rely on the file extensions to make sure of the validity of the file. Instead, there is an option to rename the file and take away its executable permissions so that it cannot be executed on your server.
4. HTTPS protocol: This protocol provides security over the internet. It ensures the users that the website using this protocol is the correct website and that no one can be eavesdropping or modifying the conversations.

Some other tips that you should take care of:

• Use a website security tool
• Include validation on both browser and server sides
• Protect your website against XSS attacks
• Protect your website against SQL attacks

How can Reclaim Digital help?

There are many digital marketing agencies out there. What sets Reclaim Digital apart is our commitment to our clients. We provide a professional New Jersey Web Development team that can build a website according to the client's needs and ensure all the security features are embedded inside. We want to do our part in making sure that you get one of the best and most secure websites!