How to Ensure Your Website Redesign Doesn’t Create Security Vulnerabilities?
Ever thought that designing or redesigning a website could create security vulnerabilities? Yes, it does create an opportunity for cyberattackers to access your site quickly. You might be wondering, how can this happen? Design or redesign is related to the aesthetics and visual appeal of your site. It can surely hamper the security of your web solution if not handled properly.
But how did all this happen? A website redesign often involves restructuring your site, coding, and integrating third-party apps. All these processes can indeed hamper the security of your web solution. Your web solution can face issues such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), or cross-site forgery (CSRF), which can lead to account compromises, data breaches, and other malicious activities.
The subtle point to notice here is how effectively you will take care of these vulnerabilities that can exploit your business. It is wise to perform website redesign only when your web solution is under the supervision of experts. A minor coding error in a new feature can negatively impact your presence. Hence, every step requires precision that infuses expertise.
In this blog, we are going to discuss the importance of ensuring security while redesigning a web solution.
Importance of Security When Redesigning a Web Solution
It is crucial for a business to create a safe environment. Security is paramount when designing or redesigning a web solution. Redesigning a web solution creates more security-related questions for businesses. Hence, a business like yours must understand the significance of security. Ensure you opt for effective security audits or VAPT services to ensure your site remains secure.
1. Helpful in Protecting Data
Your website may contain sensitive data of users or your business. Will it be okay to lose them? Exactly, it’s not. That is why businesses that pay attention to integrating security during redesigns can protect crucial data. A secure website ensures that data is protected from theft, unauthorized access, and data breaches.
2. Building Trust
It's a key aspect that highlights the importance of incorporating security into a web solution redesign: trust building. A user prefers to share their crucial information with a site that is secure rather than a platform that is appealing but insecure. A secure web presence for your business builds user trust.
3. Maintains Reputation
Hackers or cybercriminals are always active, and they look for digital solutions that fail to follow security practices during their redesign process. The majority of attacks occur when a business undertakes a website redesign and fails to prioritize cybersecurity practices. Data breaches and similar attacks have negatively impacted a business’s market position. Thus, it is vital to ensure security in the redesign step of your site to ensure positive brand image and maintain the reputation of your business.
4. SEO-benefits
Search engine giants like Google prefer websites that are secure. Hence, investing in secure website redesign practices can uphold the rankings of your business in the search platform. This increases visibility of your site among users and generates more chances of organic traffic and leads.
How to Ensure Security When Performing Website Redesign?
This might look like a difficult puzzle to solve, but the part you are not giving importance to is the actual answer to your puzzle. This meant you must prioritize the basic steps to ensure a secure web presence for your business. Here are the ways that can help you:
1. Prioritize Security from the Start
Security is not just related to development. In fact, you must integrate security considerations into every phase of the redesign process, right from wire framing to development and deployment. Remember, do not consider security as an afterthought, because it is a crucial aspect to consider from the start. Also, conduct threat modeling early to get rid of the vulnerabilities. You can opt for vulnerability assessment services to get this done precisely to your business needs.
2. Secure Coding Practices
The web developers you hire must adhere to secure coding practices. This may include input data validation to prevent injection attacks and sanitizing the input by removing malicious characters. It is also advised that you use parameterized queries while interacting with the database to prevent SQL or other injection attacks. Moreover, access to your site should be limited to trusted professionals. Limit the number or assign different roles to the users.
3. Infrastructure and Configuration Security
Your website's infrastructure should be secure enough to bypass hackers' attacks. You must prioritize ensuring the use of HTTPS with a valid or updated SSL certificate to ensure that all data is encrypted. Also, you must disable insecure cipher suites or regularly audit your web server to ensure you end up with a secure and efficient web solution.
Conclusion
Website redesign can create security vulnerabilities if not handled properly. Various ways can overcome this limitation. Some of the main ones are illustrated in this blog; however, you must follow some other ways, like using updated third-party apps, vulnerability scanning, and regular testing. If these are used with complete precision, you will have a redesigned website that follows all the best security measures. Hence, it is wise to give importance to security when you plan to redesign your site.
