Hackers Are Everywhere – Are You Safe?
Security is probably one of the most important things in an online world. When I talk about security though I am not just speaking of those websites which deal in eCommerce or masses of personal information such as physical addresses or telephone numbers (a telemarketers dream!) but instead for all websites from the small business to the lone blogger with a modest following. We are of the day and age where technology is so advanced and readily shared that those maliciously minded have a whole wash list of tricks just waiting to jump out at you with. Often times they do not troll around looking for only the websites they believe might be the best target, they have software that does it for them, and for them any hacked website is a chance to dig out some sort of information or pass along their master plan. Often times people underestimate the probability that some attempt will be made on their website, and almost gravely underestimate the time it takes to get your site back together after someone messes everything up. Brace yourself, the article may make you a touch paranoid.
Riva Richmond over at the Wall Street Journal wrote a wonderful article which inspired this post. In the interest of ensuring credit is given where credit is due, I have included a clip here but ask that you please read the full article on the Wall Street Journal’s website.
Small businesses often assume that they are too tiny to catch hackers’ attention. But the truth is that hackers don’t care who you are. Most of the time, they use automated programs to exploit a flaw in some piece of common software used by millions and attack them en masse. “There’s a huge incentive for them [hackers] to infect as many Web pages as they can, so they can infect as many users as possible,” says Ian Fette, a product manager at Google Inc., of Mountain View, Calif. Small sites with less security expertise are often easy targets.