There’s been a number of high profile website compromises in the last couple of weeks. One in particular appears to have seen thousands of pieces of very sensitive personal information taken and then published for anyone to see on the web.
So, it’s quite timely to be writing about this.
No matter what the size of your business or website, it’s important to take security seriously. Small businesses can be particularly vulnerable if there isn’t an IT or web specialist on the team. One of the best ways of keeping your site secure is to keep its software (the main ‘core’ plus add-on modules/components/plugins) up to date. Security patches and other updates are released regularly (for many websites, several updates per month), and looking out for them and installating them quickly are two vital parts of keeping your website – and your customer’s data – as secure as possible.
Popular website software like WordPress and Drupal have excellent guides on how to keep the software up to date, however in many cases it can be quite a technical job to install updates. We offer a service where we proactively look out for updates and install them for you, so your website’s software will stay up to date. Whoever updates your software, our advice is to make sure that you keep on top of it as a priority.
We provide loads of detail on why updates are important, the circumstances where you need to make sure your website’s software is up to date, and other key information in our Hosted SItes and Services Software Policy, which includes details of the responsibilities of customers whose sites are hosted with us.