Currently set to No Index

Locking Your Online Business Using Website Encryption

3 minutes 0 comments
Art
Art
Web Hosting Geek

For business owners leaving the doors to their stores wide open without proper security measures in place is no different than online business owners leaving their websites vulnerable to looters and thieves.

If You Build It, They Will Steal

The act of stealing website content is becoming such an issue that it’s now commonly referred to as “website hijacking.”  This increasingly sinister phenomenon is most detrimental to e-commerce website and other online business ventures.

As a business owner with an online venture to ensure that your website is protected against outside elements, encryption is the solution.  Encryption allows you to “lock up” the essential components of your website that you may not even realize are exposed to cyber thieves.

Typically, there are three main reasons website content is hijacked:

  • To harvest e-mail addresses for spam purposes
  • To copy design and layout content and code
  • To reveal and/or steal payment method links to be circumvented/stolen
RELATED:   Examining the Chinese Influence on International Data Control

Harvesting E-mail Addresses

It’s a global consensus that spam is excruciatingly annoying.  It’s even more of a nuisance when spam bots stealthily invade your website with the intentions to seek information, steal e-mail addresses and destroy your company’s reputation simply by storing hijacked e-mailed addresses in a database with malicious intent to flood customers with spam.

While many tech savvy customers are able to distinguish between spam scams and legit e-mail messages; unfortunately, for many others, they unknowingly fall prey to costly scams.  Each year millions of dollars are embezzled when cyber criminals steal customers’ credit card information and identities are snatched by manipulative spam e-mails forwarded to e-mail addresses obtained by website hijacking.

Spam is not only an issue for customers, but it’s an even greater headache for business owners.  Spam is also responsible for:

  • Loss of productivity for your staff;
  • Loss of valuable server resources;
  • Loss of revenue when important e-mails get lost in the shuffle.
RELATED:   Major Threats to Business Website Security

Copying Design and Layout

Setting up your web host account and website requires many resources including time and money.  Although it takes days, if not weeks to complete the initial setup, however, you may be surprised to learn that it takes less than five minutes for your website content and source code to be hijacked with just a few simple mouse clicks.

Online entrepreneurs soon discover the answer if they don’t “lock up” the doors to their website’s content.  Open HTML source code is easily accessible with a few clicks, and the process of hijacking is as simple as copying, and pasting.  Often Java Scripts are installed to thwart potential cyber thieves from lifting code as the scripts block code from being viewed; however it’s only the first step as it doesn’t protect from software based queries.

Pocketing Payment

RELATED:   Will the World’s Problems Affect the Internet?

Not only can a thief steal credit card information from customers; thus tarnishing your reputation, hackers can also alter your source code diverting payments to their own accounts, leaving you a responsibility to provide products or services to your customer without receiving payment.  Encryption is a definite necessity in any online business venture, especially when protecting customers’ credit card information

“The Lock”

By using available software tools to encrypt website code prevents information from being hijacked.  Encryption is extremely effective against all  types of informational breaches, including software queries and spam bots. The idea being, even if thieves access the source, the code will be indecipherable.

Basic HTML encryption tools are readily available online for free.  For novices, encrypting may sound complicated, however, it’s relatively quite simple.  Once you find an online HTML encryption tool, simply copy your existing code into the tool and it generates a secure encrypted code within minutes.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *