Thursday, March 28, 2024

How To Secure A Website Domain

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Is Ssl Good For Seo

Getting your “domain”: How to secure your website address on the internet

Yes. While the primary purpose of SSL is securing information between the visitor and your website, there are benefits for SEO as well. , SSL is part of Google’s search ranking algorithm.

In addition, let’s say two websites are similar in the content provided but one has SSL enabled and the other doesn’t. That first website may receive a slight rank boost because it’s encrypted. As a result, there is a clear SEO benefit to enabling SSL on your website and across your pages.

Check Name Servers Are Working

Make sure all of your domains name servers are active and responding.

If you have any inactive or unresponsive name servers this might cause traffic to services on your domain, including email and web, to work intermittently or stop working. If the inactive server is on an unregistered domain your domain is also at a higher risk of hijacking.

Check name servers to make sure they are active. Remove them if you do not use them or fix any spelling mistakes in the record.

Use A Trustworthy Registrar And Secure Your Setup

Protecting your domain name begins with registration. Use a registrar that has built up a good reputation over time and is responsive to customers in case you need help. ICANN provides a list of accredited registrars where you can look for registrars and select by country or territory.

You should also keep an eye on login security and your contact information when you first register the domain. Make sure to choose a password with a high-security level to avoid easy access to your domain name.

To make communication easy and seamless, give the registrar a permanent email address so that your domain provider can contact you if they need to.

Also Check: How Much To Purchase A Domain Name

Make Sure Your Passwords Are Secure

This one seems simple, but its so important.

Its tempting to go with a password you know will always be easy for you to remember. Thats why the #1 most common password is still 123456. You have to do better than that a lot better than that to prevent login attempts from hackers and other outsiders.

Make the effort to figure out a truly secure password . Make it long. Use a mix of special characters, numbers, and letters. And steer clear of potentially easy-to-guess keywords like your birthday or kids name. If a hacker somehow gains access to other information about you, theyll know to guess those first.

Holding yourself to a high standard for password security is step one. You also need to make sure everyone who has access to your website has similarly strong passwords. One weak password within your team can make your website susceptible to a data leak, so set expectations with everyone who has access.

Institute requirements for all website users in terms of length and types of characters. If your employees want to use easy passwords for their less secure accounts, thats their business. But when it comes to your website, its your business and you can hold them to a higher standard.

Create A Vulnerability Disclosure Policy

Builderall Domain Name Connection Issue

A vulnerability disclosure policy is a document which outlines the process your company takes when it comes to receiving and addressing vulnerability reports. When it comes to drafting a solid VDP, you may want to look into collaborating with a representative of your legal team. If youre new to the world of VDPs fret not there are numerous reputable examples and templates you can refer to in order to get a stronger understanding of what they should and can entail.

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Assign Domain Ownership To Corporate Entity

Never register a domain name under an individual persons name. To do so is to risk losing it if that individual leaves the company. And reclaiming ownership of your domain could take years and a lot of money. A domain name should always be registered to the name of a corporate entity, so that its continuation is ensured irrespective of the individuals who come and go from the business. If online anonymity is an issue for you, you can always activate domain privacy, a simple and inexpensive way to hide your personal details.

How To Secure A Website

Cybersecurity tops the list of online concerns for website owners and users alike. In recent years, large-scale data breaches affecting major banks, retailers, and other leading service providers have made headlines around the world and left users more worried than ever about the safety and security of sensitive personal data they share in the course of online transactions of all kinds. Reassuring users that their data is safe from hacking, identity theft, and other kinds of online crime is essential for keeping customer trust.

Learning how to make a website secure with SSL and HTTPS protocols is an essential steps for protecting sensitive data collected in the course of doing business and for signaling to users that a website is safe. If your site collects or uses sensitive data in any way, its important to know how these two protocols work and how you can use them to protect your website and customers from the latest round of cyber attacks potential vulnerabilities that could be viewed as malicious.

Recommended Reading: How To Determine Who Owns A Domain

Beware Of Phishing Attempts

If you use email , you could get targeted by an email phishing attempt.

It is always better to go directly to the website in question, verify its authenticity, and log in that way.

It used to be relatively easy to spot phishing emails, but they have become more sophisticated. Heres what you need to know to protect against todays phishing scams.

Pro tip: Use one email for your important accounts and another for anything that is public, such as the Whois record on your domain. Use a separate email account or purchase domain privacy, which hides your real information on the Whois so it is harder for people to trick you with a phishing attempt.

Keep Your Error Messages Simple

How to secure your domain name services

Detailed error messages can be helpful internally to help you identify whats going wrong so you know how to fix it. But when those error messages are displayed to outside visitors, they can reveal sensitive information that tells a potential hacker exactly where your websites vulnerabilities are.

Be very careful what information you provide in an error message, so youre not providing information that helps a bad actor hack you. Keep your error messages simple enough that they dont inadvertently reveal too much. But avoid ambiguity as well, so your visitors can still learn enough information from the error message to know what to do next.

Also Check: How Much To Purchase A Domain Name

Create A Strong Password

You should use a very strong password to protect your website domain. It is recommending to you that never use an easy password for your domain registrar account.

We are using very simple password to remember in our memory like as date of birth, mobile no, employee id, and 123456, which is one of the vital risk to your domain names security.

So, create a strong password for your registrar account and change them on a regular basis .

  • The password length should at least 10 characters long.
  • The password must have uppercase letters , lowercase letters , numbers , and special character , & , *!).
  • is a strong password and standard password

Learn More about How to create a strong password?

What Websites Need An Ssl Certification

Not all websites need an SSL certificate, but having an SSL certificate is essential for encrypting data such as:

  • Email addresses
  • Website subscription information
  • User registration data

For websites dealing with payment information or financial transactions, cyber security is of the utmost importance. Security experts maintain that an SSL certification for an e-commerce site is absolutely necessary.

An SSL or TLS certificate adds an extra layer of website security to any communications passed between browser and server. Certificates are deposited with the server and accessed whenever a website with HTTPS is visited. Site owners can choose from three different types of SSL certificates, depending on the nature of the site and the kind of information it collects from users.

Read Also: How Much Do Domains Cost Per Year

How Does A Domain Get Hijacked

To understand how a domain gets hijacked, you first need to understand how domains work.

A domain name is purchased from a domain registrar or a hosting provider that will give the buyer access to settings that control the domain. The buyer can specify all the domain details, ensuring that its clearly defined who the owner of record is, and identifying the website that the domain should direct to.

No one, aside from the domain owner, can access those settings.

At least thats how its supposedto work.

To access domain settings through your hosting provider or domain registrar, you need to enter two things: the username and password you set up when purchasing the domain.

The username is very often the buyers email address. Nothing could be easier to find! All a hacker needs to do is look up your website in the WHOIS directory.

Then, they will need to get a hold of the password that you set up for your domain account. There are many ways a hacker can get your password, or at least gather personal information that will help them break into your domain account. Here are two common tactics:

  • Identity Theft: If a lot of information regarding your identity is available on the internet and social media, hackers can use it to help them get past your domain account security.

These are just a couple of ways your domain can get hijacked. In the next section, well go over some things you can do to protect it.

Register Your Domain For The Longest Amount Of Time Possible

How to Change Domain Privacy Settings

A lot of times companies find themselves the most vulnerable to domain security threats when their domain registrations expire. This presents an opportunity for attackers to nick your brands primary and/or look-alike domains for the own dubious purposes.

As a result, its important to ensure that you minimize, if not completely eliminate any downtime between registrations. One great way to do this is to register your domain for the longest term possible. This significantly decreases the number of times your company will have to keep tabs on registration expiration and re-registration and as a result, provide you with a little extra peace of mind.

Also Check: Transfer Wix To Shopify

Use A Strong Password

The next domain security best practice is a big one: protect your account by using a strong password one thats nearly impossible to guess or hack to gain access to your account. And make your life easier by using a password manager.

Do not, for instance, use the same password for your domain account as you do for your email account. If you use the same password in multiple places, it makes it easier for someone to gain access to your other accounts.

Use this free online tool to check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach.

Related: 10 best practices for creating and securing stronger passwords

The Difference Between Http And Https

The HTTP at the start of a website address frequently goes ignored, but it is a foundational element of the World Wide Web. HTTP, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is the protocol used to load web pages using hypertext links.

If you use HTTP, your exchange of information is done in plain text. If a hacker wanted to eavesdrop on the conversation between your browser and the server, they could easily steal sensitive information, including names, addresses, and credit card numbers.

Secure HTTP adds a layer of encryption to that information. That way, hackers can still listen in on conversations between browsers and servers, but the information isnt readable because the hacker doesnt have the key to understand that information.

To create that secure connection, you need to install an SSL certificate.

Read Also: How To Find Who Owns A Domain

My Website Is Not Secure How Can I Fix It

If all this talk about tanking rankings have you questioning how you can make your website secure, youve come to the right place. Adopting HTTPS is far from difficult, so check out our five-step process to securing your website for site visitors and customers.

1. Install Secure Sockets Layer certificate

In order to make your HTTP site secure, youll need to install an SSL certificate on your website. When you install an SSL certificate, a few exchanges take place, which provides a secure version of your website to your site visitors.

  • Your browser will connect to a website and request the server identity.
  • The server will respond by sending the browser the SSL certificate
  • The browser will determine if the SSL certificate is trustworthy
  • If the SSL certificate is trustworthy, it will send the server a message
  • The server will respond with a digitally-signed document that gives permission to start a session that is encrypted by the trusted SSL certificate
  • The browser and server share encrypted data
  • If you want to learn more about securing your website for SEO purposes, feel free to contact WebFX online, or give us a call at 888-601-5359!

    2. Ensure that internal and external links use HTTPS

    If you want both your internal and external site links to continue to operate effectively, youll want to ensure that you change them all to HTTPS as well. This might sound tedious, but its crucial to ensure that HTTPS helps your website instead of hurting it.

    Take Precautions When Accepting File Uploads Through Your Site

    How to secure Domain name and Hosting (In Urdu)

    When anyone has the option to upload something to your website, they could abuse the privilege by loading a malicious file, overwriting one of the existing files important to your website, or uploading a file so large it brings your whole website down.

    If possible, simply dont accept any file uploads through your website. Many small business websites can get by without offering the option of file uploads at all. If that describes you, you can skip everything else in this step.

    But eliminating file uploads isnt an option for all websites. Some types of businesses, like accountants or healthcare providers, need to give customers a way to securely provide documents.

    If you need to allow file uploads, take a few steps to make sure you protect yourself:

    These steps can remove most of the vulnerabilities inherent in allowing file uploads to your website.

    Read Also: How Much To Purchase A Domain Name

    Know When Your Domain Name Expires

    This might seem obvious, but not knowing when your domain name expires could cost you your domain name. Permanently. Check the seventh line of the WHOIS listing to know exactly when your domain name expires. Then, mark your calendar so you can renew in time.

    If you do not renew your domain name before it expires, you might lose it forever. In fact, there are companies that automatically scan domain names and buy up expired names simply to sell them back to the original owner. If they get your address, they effectively can hold your domain name hostage, and charge whatever they want to sell it back to you.

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