A Guide to Choosing a Secure Web Hosting Provider and the Value it gives to your Website

Every day millions of businesses communicate with their customers sharing sensitive information of payment and privacy. With the current pandemic, online business has become an integral part of our lives today. No matter what kind of website you run, security is one of the most important elements to consider. Lack of a secure website can be detrimental for any business, in the long run, inviting cybercriminals and chasing away potential customers. The Internet is an open network with infinite windows to explore, unfortunately, has people prowling for vulnerable windows to exploit.

WEB HOSTING AND SECURITY

Many people often overlook the importance of choosing a web host with up-to-date security settings, which potentially compromises their cybersecurity and that of their customers. The success of your business can depend on your choice of website hosting. Your website needs a robust security provider. A good web hosting will provide certain levels of security when it comes to hosting your data. It includes customer data and your business-sensitive data protection and your payment information encryption. In your search for good web host providers, for instance if you are in the UK, check reviews and blogs at Hosting Foundry to get all the information that you need.

Before you jump into choosing a web hosting service for your website, here are some of the must-have security features your “HOST” (web hosting) should provide:

Up-to-date SSL

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer is an encryption-based internet security protocol. This encryption protects your customer’s details when making online purchases. If you run an e-commerce site, you must have an SSL certificate to ensure your customers’ safety. SSL can help prevent customer information from being stolen and also keep the security of credit card or banking numbers, name, address, phone numbers and other personal information.

FTPS/SFTP

Both are a Secure File Transfer Protocol. FTPS/SFTP both allow you to upload files to your hosting account. SFTP and FTPS implement strong algorithms like AES and Triple DES to encrypt any data transferred, they both offer a high level of protection. Any user IDs and passwords supplied over the SFTP connection will be encrypted.

Optimum Server Maintenance

The servers are pretty much what keeps your website running. Simply put server maintenance is the process of keeping the server updated and running to ensure that your website network is operating smoothly. Regular server maintenance is crucial to your business. Such maintenance involves

•   constant monitoring
•   Analyzing how the server is functioning
•   Pre-emptive measures

Web application firewall

Firewall acts as the name suggests a wall that filters out external unwanted activities like spam, unwanted traffic, malware virus, and blocks malicious attempts to access your server. To secure a single website Web Application Firewall may be the most efficient and quality security available.

VALUE OF SECURE WEBSITE

Protects your customer

In a secured website all the information your clients give you over the internet is protected. Their data moves from server to server safely until it reaches your site, its final destination. All the processing is carried out efficiently and securely. The above-mentioned features such as SSL, HTTPS are designed to carry specific task and to set a hallmark of a secured website wherein the information of customers are very well protected. 

Business reputation

GOOGLE backlist a certain website that does not meet their secured website criteria. Such listings will badly damage the companies/website reputation. You can recognize the sites by seeing the display message “This site may harm your computer” in the search results. When a website is in a blacklist, the search engine is expelling a site from their list. When a website is blacklisted, it loses almost 95% of its organic traffic, which can rapidly affect revenue. 

Better SEO ranking

There are more than a billion websites in the world wide web today and people rely on search engines when they want to reach information on those sites. Therefore search engine optimization is more important than ever. Having a secured website increases your ranking in a search engine. There are trained SEO experts who design your website to boost your ranking. But some web hosting providers provide such assistance with the package that you choose to enhance your SEO ratings. 

Image Source: Pixabay

Efficient and responsive

A secured website will be able to function without much hassle even when the traffic increases. A good host will make sure that all the features and services that your website provides will be available for all the customers 24*7. In case of an error or malware, a secured website will be ready to tackle such issues swiftly and effectively. Such unwanted activities will not hinder your daily business. One of the most under look attributes of a good hosting service when it comes to security is the responsiveness. Timely response to any queries or errors is the key for a robust secure website.

The above mentioned are some of the features of a good security host and the value of a secured website in today’s world. The security keeps on evolving in response to the nature of the attacks and vulnerabilities. You should keep yourself updated with your Host (web hosting). You can always go the extra mile by adopting complex passwords and logins, using strong hashing encryption algorithms like SHA-2 and setting up external backups for safety. It is always better to be prepared beforehand.