The Significance Of Web Security In The Web Development Stage

The Significance Of Web Security In The Web Development Stage. Image credit: AdobeStock

The significance of web security in the web development stage

(Partner Content) To build your website secure from the ground up should be a priority. That will save you a lot of hassle down the road. It is important to detect web application risks throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC) and choose effective solutions.

The Significance Of Web Security In The Web Development Stage

The Significance Of Web Security In The Web Development Stage. Image credit: AdobeStock

Do you treat your website security with as much attention as personal computer security? If not, there could be devastating consequences to your business and customers. With nearly 30000-50000 websites getting hacked everyday web security matters, now more than ever. Implement your website security right in the web development stage to keep your website and data secure from all sorts of threats.

Cybercrime has reached an all-time high – nearly 56% of all Internet traffic is from automated hacking tools. If a hack is successful, your website risks the spread and escalation of malicious software, site visitors can get infected, and hackers can even steal the data your site holds. Because of this growing threat it has become increasingly challenging to keep sensitive information on the web secure. 

Why Web Security is So Important?

Hackers can target your customers. If your website is not protected, hackers can use malware to steal data, hijack computer resources and infect site visitors. These automated hacking tools are mostly targeted at your potential customers and site visitors. So website security is important for safety of your customers.

Loss of business reputation and dipping revenue. Google and other search engines will warn customers if your website is not search engine optimised. 

If your website is without SSL certificate, Google will mark it as ‘insecure’ every time a visitor attempts to visit. SSL or Secure Sockets Layer ensures security, data integrity and privacy for both your website and your users. If a potential customer visits your site and receives security warning or gets infected, there’s very less chance the customer will revisit in future. 

Customers lose trust on hacked websites, which leads to business reputation loss, which can often dent the digital marketing prospects of your company. 

Website clean-up is costlier than website protection. According to Local Digital, a digital marketing agency based in Australia, once your website gets hacked, the first thing you’ll need is a professional to clean up the site for you. It’s not an easy task and can indeed be expensive. Even then if you don’t get an expert malware clean-up service provider, you cannot be sure if your website was properly cleaned. 

Quite a hefty price to pay – not just for website clean-up, but also for the lost revenue and reputational damage. It can take up a lot of time and money to recover from these.

Website blacklisted. If your website contains malware or something harmful to the user, Google will blacklist it and search results will show a message like “This site may harm your computer”. Such a warning prompts most users to stay away. Your website can lose almost 95% of its organic traffic, which will adversely affect revenue. 

You can clean-up your site to become relisted by Google. But you will need to beef up web security measures so that your site is not susceptible to cybercrime again.  

Therefore, your web application should be armed with the highest standards of security.  A web security system should be able to protect critical business data and resources and maintain their functionality. It is important to perform web application security testing to identify the potential risks and fix them before the application goes live. 

Security concepts to consider during web development:

  • Data Confidentiality
  • User Identity Authentication
  • Authorization of User
  • Data Integrity 
  • Ease of Information Availability

Web Security is a complex task but ensures your web application is protected against potential security threats.