5 Smart Tips for a Secure Loan Forgiveness Website

Website Security Website Tips and Tricks

In 2016, we saw some of the largest cyber-attacks in history. It’s now commonplace for a website to take protective measures to ensure data is not breached and sensitive materials are kept safe. You owe it to your clients to take steps to maintain a secure website.

Loan forgiveness websites handle people’s sensitive, personal information regarding loans and finances. This type of information isn’t something you want to be exposed.

But how do you know you’ve taken the right precautions when it comes to web security? Hackers are now able to get around multiple security measures, so it isn’t good enough to do the bare minimum.

The Proper Steps to a Secure Website

In order to provide protection and peace of mind to yourself and your clients, we’ve put together some tips for keeping your website safe. Following each of these tips should help lock your website down and prevent hackers from getting their hands on your client’s information.

1. Make Sure Software is Always Updated

Hackers like to find vulnerability within software as a way of infiltrating a website. In response, software companies are always providing updates that help fix security flaws. It’s important that you always stay up to date on these updates.

These updates should always be applied to each and every computer in your network. A single infected computer could be the way in for a hacker. Any content management systems or project tracking systems need to be updated as well.

2. Use HTTPS Protocol

The HTTPS protocol is becoming very common as a way to ensure security over the web. Seeing the “s” after “http” ensures that encryption exists between a server and the user’s browser. If users of your site are providing anything that needs to remain private, https should be used.

Many loan websites like navient student loan forgiveness include payment or login pages which are always delivered via the https protocol. There are services that will help you enable https for a more secure website. This service is now either quite inexpensive or free in some cases.

3. Keep Local and Offsite Backups

Restoring your website to the most recent backup is often the best way to recover from an attack. You need to always make sure your web server is being backed up every day. Talk to your webmaster and make sure that backups are happening and that they are being kept locally and offsite.

4. Keep Error Messages Secure

A secure website shouldn’t give too much information away in its error messages. Make sure any sensitive information like database passwords are excluded from error pages.

Never provide full exception details in error messages. This could make complicated cyber-attacks much easier. A good rule of thumb is to only show users what they need to know in error messages.

5. Maintain Strong Passwords

It’s very important that you always keep strict password specification for server and admin access to your site. Maintaining strong password practices is something that should never be overlooked.

When storing passwords, they should always be encrypted. Using hashed passwords is also highly recommended. Hashed passwords aren’t able to be decrypted, which helps limit vulnerability during an attack.

Reliable Website Security

Loan forgiveness websites owe it to their clients to maintain the highest web security standards. Don’t let yourself be caught off guard by an attack and risk exposing important personal and financial data.

SiteUptime provides advanced remote website monitoring services. Contact us today to learn more.