Top Ten Tips To Prevent Hacking
Hacking has been a never ending threat to the online community, which has IT gurus as their master minds. These master minds are high-end intellects, in the field of computers and internet. These people have that extra time and the little devil sitting in their mind, which leads to all the trouble created by them. However tackling this threat can become as simple as that, if you know what has to be done at the right time.We are here to discuss the top ten tips to prevent hacking, let’s see them one by one.
1. Usage of strong passwords still remains at the top and is that single technique one has to implement to be safe online. The stronger the password, the more safe you are. Stronger passwords are defined by various factors such as, password length, usage of numbers or special characters and usage of upper / lower case letters. It is a fact that with an increase in every character, the combination increases exponentially to break the password.
2. Updating security related patches is a must, to keep the hackers at bay. It is very important for you to get immunized against known attacking methods by using the security patches that are updated by your hosting provider. So, keep an eye for any security related updates and immediately take the necessary action, whenever an update is released. This will make sure you are secured and can have a peace of mind.
3. Securing the “PORTs” is another important way to prevent hacking. Ports are constantly opened and closed to interact with the server. It acts as the gateway for transfers, both in and out of the server. Handling of ports requires highly trained professionals and hackers are no less. So it is very important that any unused ports are properly closed, so that it doesn’t become the opening for the hacker to penetrate in to your system.
4. Avoid the usage of generic user names, like ‘admin’ or ‘administrator’. This would simplify the work of a hacker and might lead to many implications. One should understand that usage of user names is equally important and requires the same attention given to password handling. It is very simple, why give the hacker with an easy option to use rather than a complex one. This would for sure help you prevent hacking, at least by a few more percentage.
5. The next tip is about making sure that the CHMOD file permissions are correct. The CHMOD permissions control the access rights for all the files and folders in your server. The CHMOD settings of a file or folder can be changed using a FTP. So, making sure they are accurate is highly important to prevent any unwanted access. One must also make sure that their current CHMOD settings works with the hosts, as there are cases where the host doesn’t allow ’777′ considering the security reasons.
6. Make sure the data you store is secured by encrypting the same. You can also use MySQL database to store data in a secure way rather than storing them as a simple text file. Hackers tend to sniff your site space for any available data, which can be of any use to them. For example, if you get user’s email id’s and store them as a simple text. It becomes an easy job for the hacker to take that list and use it for malicious activities. So to encrypt and store them is always better and safe.
7. Always make sure to clear the cookies. Cookies can be place where the hackers can get valuable information such as user id, account number etc. Might be only once you used a public computer to do that important transaction, but you might find yourself in trouble because of that. So it is always better to clear the cookies whenever you make use of any public café to do urgent work.
8. Keep away from scams and spam websites, it is always good. Sometimes we tend to extend our search to sites that are popular not in the right way. By doing this not so threatening act, may invite the attention of unwanted customers that can lead to nothing but trouble.
9. Installation of third party scripts in your website should be avoided or, a thorough validation has to be performed before doing so. If you don’t understand the script then you can always seek for advice form community forums like digital-point or site-point. Knowing what they can do will help you understand the need of the scripts.
10. Lastly it is the prevention of comment attacks, a common means of hacking blogs and community sites. The usage of comments can increase the interaction between the author and the reader, so this becomes one of the needed features in blogs. But this can be used to cause trouble by using simple scripts. So, making sure the comments are validated before accepting them can be useful means to keep you off hacking issues.
The above discussed are some of the common tips to prevent hacking. With technology reaching great heights day by day, hackers can come up with more deadly methods to cause trouble. But one shouldn’t forget that the same technology can be used to prevent those techniques and make things secure.
This proves just one thing; technology when used for right cause, can take you great heights but can make you fall, if you try the reverse.