Is my website secure?

Have you ever considered what information is stored on your phone?

Your contacts’ details, your diary, personal photos, access to your bank accounts, passwords for pretty much everything in your life…

It’s pretty safe to say that you wouldn’t want your phone to fall into the wrong hands, but even if it did, hopefully you would have a passcode to protect all that information from being accessed by any nefarious individuals.

But, when it comes to the security of your customers’ data collected on your website, are you doing all you need to protect it?

Who needs a secure site and why?

Many people think that having a secure site is only important for online stores, or websites that require visitors to input over-sensitive information such as credit card details, home addresses and financial data.

Of course, it is essential for these sites to be secure, but a secure website is important for everyone. If you have a form on your site that asks visitors to fill in their details (name, email etc) then you have a legal responsibility to manage their data securely (Data Protection Act 2018- GDPR).

On top of that, website security is also a ranking factor in search engines such as Google. Browsers such as Chrome, Safari and Firefox have begun issuing warnings that certain sites are insecure.

Secure websites also convey confidence to your audience and show you are trustworthy, making visitors more likely to do business with you. Having a secure site is essential, regardless of what your company does.

How to know if your site is secure

The first way to know that your site is secure is to check the SSL certificate. The SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer) is used to secure all data that is passed from the browser to the website’s server. Without SSL, your site visitors and customers are at a higher risk of having their data stolen.

Check the URL of your website and if it says “https”, instead of “http”, then this means your site is secure. The ‘s’ stands for secure encryption.

On top of this, if you look at the address bar, depending on your browser, you should see a small padlock just before the web address.

If you click on it, a message should pop up stating that “the connection to this site is secure”. It means that the communication between the visitor to your site, and your company, cannot be intercepted or modified.

SSL also protects your website from phishing scams, data breaches and many other threats. Ultimately, it creates a secure environment for both visitors and you, the site owners.

How do I make my site secure

If you want to secure your site (and let’s face it – who doesn’t?), contact our team and we can ensure your site is hosted on one of our super fast secure servers and provide your site with an SSL certificate meaning you are GDPR-compliant and your customers’ data is protected so that you can go back to sleeping easily at night.