Many businesses and individuals alike are developing websites for marketing and selling products, services or as a hobby. Some of the advantages of using a website for marketing products or services are the comparatively low cost and that the website is easily accessible to anyone anywhere in the world throughout the day and on all days of the week. However this ease of access can also create web security problems since hackers and cyber criminals from anywhere in the world can access the website and hack it to make it unusable, spread malware or steal data.
All this makes website security monitoring important for a website owner, since the website owner would like to ensure that the website is functioning properly at all times. If the security of the website is breached, and the content changed or data stolen, the website owner would like to be informed immediately so that they can take corrective action and ensure that the website is restored as soon as possible. The greater the delay in detecting the security breach, the greater the loss to the business due to issues like loss of leads, orders and damage to reputation.
A security breach in a website can be of different types and the severity depends to a large extent on the type of website. Some businesses are selling their services or products online through their website, and their website often times will have a database with details of customers, pricing and other information. If a hacker breaches the website security and is able to steal the customer information, it can cause losses to the business especially if there is a lot of competition. This security breach is sometimes extremely difficult to detect, since the hacker will leave no trace that he is accessing the confidential business data.
There are other cases, where the hacker will hack the web hosting account and use it for illegal activities like phishing. They may install phishing websites on the domain and web hosting account, due to which the domain may get blacklisted or the web hosting account may get suspended. Hence the legitimate customers and other visitors to the website will not be able to access it, resulting in loss of leads, orders and business. Removing the blacklist or getting the web hosting unsuspended is a fairly tedious and espensive procedure, since the business will have to prove that they are not responsible. Additionally, there are other types of hackers that will actually hack a website for making money from advertising, installing malware to get control of computers or because they do not like the website owner or its content. This hacked website can again adversely affect the business website and reputation, since visitors will not find the information they are looking for.
If the hacking is detected immediately by the use of security monitoring, the damage caused will usually be considerably less. So it is advisable to use the best methods for monitoring your website security so that action can be taken immediately if the site gets compromised or hacked. It is always cheaper and better to be proactive than reactive, and that is especially true in the case of website security.
