Every day, an estimated 30,000 websites are hacked globally1. This equates to nearly 11 million websites that are hacked on a yearly basis.
Yet, website security, despite its importance in today’s world, is a topic that regularly receives too little attention in the small business community and generally until it is too late. Any website can be at risk of being exploited. Reasons including lax security policies for employees, negligence, and human error.
So why is website security important?
Brand and Reputation
Lack of security for your website can have a dramatic impact on your company’s brand and reputation. A website that has been hacked can have a detrimental impact on building trust with potential new customers. Potential leads may be hesitant to engage with your website, make a purchase, provide sensitive information, or do business with a company whose website doesn’t instill a sense of trust.
Imagine, for example, that a business’s website was hacked and was distributing malicious content. When a new potential customer visits the website, their computer is instantly infected with malware. That prospective customer will now have to spend time, and potentially money, to remove the malware from their computer. It’s likely that that business will have just lost a new lead.
A real-world example that J.T.S. Design, Inc. encountered several years ago was when a new client came to us after finding pornographic and prescription drug content displaying at the top of their website. This customer’s website had been hacked due to outdated code. There is no telling how much potential business this client may have lost due to this damaging content being displayed on their website. Seeing such content, commonly known as SEO spam, displayed at the top of a website would likely lead to the inability to build trust with any potential leads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Lax website security can also have an incredibly negative impact on your search engine optimization. If a website is serving malware to its visitors or generating SEO spam, as mentioned in the above example, it can lower your ranking.
In addition, search engines will eventually recognize that a website is serving dangerous content. When that occurs, search engines may add a disclaimer to the listing in their
search results warning individuals that the website may contain malicious content. When a user clicks the search result, they may also be prompted with an additional warning that they may be visiting a website that is dangerous and that they do so at their own risk.
If the situation is serious enough, or isn’t resolved in a timely manner, a business may find their website completely removed from search engine results. Once that occurs, it could prove to be problematic to get listed again.
Both a disclaimer and/or removal from search engine results will have a huge impact on your brand and reputation.
Financial Loss
Lastly, website security is important because it can affect a business’s bottom line. A negligent website security policy can lead to financial losses in various forms.
If a business is using their website for any form of e-commerce, from online sales to accepting donations, and they are hacked, it could lead to customer data being stolen. Should their customer’s credit card data be stolen, and the business is found to be negligent, their merchant account could be cancelled which will result in the business losing their ability to accept credit cards.
In addition, a business who is found to be negligent could face regulatory fines. And, of course, the business could also find themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit from customers who were affected and be responsible for compensating them.
The average cost in the US for a digital data breach is $200,0002. This could be a big hit to a business’s financial health, particularly a small business. In fact, an estimated 60% of businesses in the US who suffer a data breach close their doors with 6 months of the attack3.
Conclusion
While often overlooked, website security is incredibly important for small businesses. It can affect a business’s ability to build trust with their customers, their search engine rankings, and their financial well-being.
Due to various reasons, no website should ever be considered 100% secure. Accidents due to human error or negligence can affect the security of a website. Old software or poor coding practices can also impact website security. For these reasons, and more, it’s important to be proactive and take steps to maximize the security of a website.
At J.T.S. Design, Inc., we recommend that our WordPress clients use Wordfence and Cloudflare to help protect their websites. For non-WordPress users, we recommend either Sucuri Security or Cloudflare.
Need help implementing one of these security solutions? Or need assistance cleaning up a hacked website?
For more useful stats on cyber security, visit “30 Crucial Cybersecurity Statistics [2023]: Data, Trends And More”.
1, 2, 3 Zippia. “30 Crucial Cybersecurity Statistics [2023]: Data, Trends And More” Zippia.com. Jun. 15, 2023, https://www.zippia.com/advice/cybersecurity-statistics/