If you’re a business owner, and you don’t want to lose sleep over the next few weeks, definitely avoid this article on hacking statistics. On second thought, cybersecurity is one of the most important aspects of any modern business. If you’re avoiding thinking about it because you’re worried about your current cybersecurity architecture and practices, let this be the wakeup call you need. Let’s look at five key stats, to get an idea of the scope of the global hacking threat.

• A business is attacked by cybercriminals every 39 seconds.

• Cybercrime is a bigger industry than drug trafficking.

• 66% of businesses didn’t know whether they could recover from a cyberattack.

• According to 80% of hackers, humans are most responsible for security breaches.

• Hackers create 300,000 new pieces of malware daily.

Palms sweaty? Pit in the stomach? Feeling a little nauseous after reading those? If so, you can probably use some website security tips.

Hackers never sleep, they innovate every day, and there’s huge amounts of money to be made in cybercrime, hacking, data breaches, and more. This means that your company has to make cybersecurity a priority not just today, but as an ongoing project.

We’re going to get your brain started with the tips listed below, regarding what you can do today and on a regular basis to keep your website and data safe from hackers. However, you should also ensure you consult web security professionals, or better, hire them, to keep up with the updates, trends, and day-to-day of the cybersecurity world. Hackers and scammers are highly sophisticated and common these days, so keeping them at bay is a full time job.

Cybersecurity Tips For Today

Password Management Tools: One of the most common ways that businesses are compromised is through password hacks. Data breaches are becoming increasingly common (there’s even a website that can show you if your email has been involved in a data breach [hint: it probably has]), which means that passwords are often the last line of defense.

Once a password has been compromised, the next logical step is to try other accounts for the same password. If you’ve been lazy with your passwords, a hacker can instantly have access to everything you do online.

Password Management Tools are your best partner to prevent this from happening. They store all of your passwords into a single location, which is protected by an ultra-strong password that the tool helps you generate. By generating similarly strong passwords for all of your accounts, without the hassle of remembering all of them, a password management tool is a great way to reduce your chance of being the weak link in your cybersecurity system. Check out some password management tools here.

Conduct Regular Back-ups: While an ideal cybersecurity routine would completely protect you from hackers, the real world is a lot messier than this, and there’s no silver bullet against all hackers. This means that it’s also important to mitigate the damage of any possible hack.

Backing up your website regularly allows you to have peace of mind that, should your website be hacked and messed up, you can easily restore it to its original state once you wrest control back from the attackers. Many hosting providers will back up your website for you, but it’s important for this to be at the front of your web team’s mind too. If you're one of our clients, chances are we've already configured daily backups for you! Keeping an off-site backup is one of the most effective ways to prevent catastrophic damage in the case of a cyberattack.

Always Disable Unused Features: Some of the easier ways into your website are through the old, dusty, unused, forgotten or irrelevant features that you once used. These features are like a rusty old screen door, for an entrance you never use. However, burglars’ eyes light up when they see something like this, and cybercriminals are exactly the same.

Any type of features on your website that you don’t use, whether they’re themes, plugins, or anything else not critical to your website’s functionality and user experience, has got to go. For example, if you don’t need comment functionality on your blog, ensure you get rid of that plugin or component on the website’s back end.

Always Update/Patch Website Software: This tip is sort of the bizarro twin of the last one, for all of the features and functionality that are useful for your business. Software is constantly updating, primarily to help correct security flaws. Keeping all of the software that your website runs on up to date is a simple way to close any loopholes that the software company finds, before hackers can exploit them.

Failing to update is like leaving your wallet on the ground, with bills hanging out; it’s extremely unlikely that every single bypasser is going to be a good samaritan. If you notice that there are plugin updates available for your website, contact Vrrb, or whoever manages your website, to properly roll out the updates without breakages.

Fight Fire With Fire: If your line of business deals with large amounts of particularly sensitive customer data, such as a bank, saving a few bucks by doing your cybersecurity internally can come back to bite you. With cybersecurity becoming a billion dollar industry, dedicated cybersecurity companies are making life easier for companies in higher risk client environments. If your business falls into one of these industries, leave your cybersecurity to pros like these.

Feeling any better about your cybersecurity? If you’re still feeling unsure, it’s probably best to go start implementing some of these changes immediately. While this blog post was intended to kick up a little anxiety, it’s also healthy to remember to leave it to the professionals. There’s no shame in asking for help, when so much is at stake.

There will always be a risk of hackers when doing business online, but that’s the cost of making your business accessible to the entire world. That’s why you need to face cyberthreats head on, and not let them take up space in your head, robbing you of sleep, sanity, and peace of mind.