CyberEdge reports that over 80% of UK businesses experienced at least one successful security attack in 2019. Furthermore, the average cost of data breaches in the last 12 months for each business was around £2,670.

Some of the most common cyber threats for websites include phishing, distributed denial-of-service, and password attacks. When not anticipated, these cyber threats may harm a business website and damage its reputation.

Web security enables site owners to protect their sites and visitors from cyber attacks. In this article, we will discuss five roles website security plays in the UK’s business growth.

Secures Your Assets

Cyber security may have a massive impact on the overall health of a site as it will help protect its digital and physical assets.

For example, hackers may target the confidential data of a company by attempting bruteforce and SQL injection attacks or by distributing malicious code or software. If the company website becomes infected, its physical server may suffer from frequent crashes and freezes.

To ensure website security, choose a hosting provider that offers extensive data protection. Some aspects to look out for include robust firewalls, a backup policy, and secure sockets layer (SSL) support.

If you don’t know where to find one, Hostinger is among the best secure web hosting providers to consider.

Keeps Customer Information Safe

Website visitors are among the most common targets of hackers. As a business owner, you must make sure to keep your customers’ information safe.

Hackers seek out passwords, bank details, and phone numbers. If this data is unprotected, it may be acquired to be sold to third parties.

Using an SSL certificate is a great way to protect your customers’ personal information. It works by creating an encrypted funnel to secure the information transfer between users’ browsers and the site’s server.

Minimizes Website Downtime

A successful data breach may lead to prolonged website downtime. This may damage any business in a number of ways, such as:

• Revenue loss.

• Reduced employee productivity.

• Potential employee overtime.

• IT recovery costs.

Revenue loss is the most detrimental effect of an outage. An online business needs to remain up to improve its visibility and increase sales.

In case a business website is down, it may lose any potential customers to a competitor. What’s more, business owners may need to rework all of their marketing efforts subsequently to prevent further damage.

To protect a website from downtime, website owners can install an uptime monitoring plugin, like Jetpack. The tool will keep a record of how long the website is up and running. If it goes down, the webmaster will receive an instant notification via email.

Maintains Business Reputation

Website security is vital for the longevity of an online business. If hacked, a company’s public reputation and its website’s reputation on the search engines will suffer.

That’s because Google has the power to blacklist hacked websites. If this happens, potential customers won’t be able to reach a business website until it regains credibility.

Improves Customer Trust

Customer trust is a vital element of a successful business that results in improved engagement and loyalty. Without it, business owners may struggle to get ahead of the competition.

More often than not, breached websites lead to customers refusing to do transactions on them. Thus, providing a secure site environment is an excellent way to maintain customer trust.

It can be improved by using sensitive data responsibly, providing solid login security, enabling encrypted connections, and maintaining robust firewalls.

Ensures Cost-Effectiveness

Investing in website security can be expensive. However, it’s much more affordable than cleaning up a website, which may cost hundreds of pounds.

Removing issues from a breached website security is a complex process. What’s more, it doesn’t guarantee a 100% success rate.

For example, uninstalling malware isn’t enough to determine whether a hacked website is completely clean. Professionals will need to check every bit of the site’s code to ensure it’s safe to use.

Conclusion

In this article, you’ve learned five roles web security plays to ensure a business’s health. Here’s a short recap:

Secures your assets. Web security helps prevent damage to data and physical equipment.

Keeps customers’ information safe. As hackers make money by selling sensitive customer information, it’s imperative to prevent any data breaches.

Minimizes website downtime. Excellent web security practices help prevent a site from going down. One of the best ways to do this involves using an uptime monitoring plugin.

Maintains business reputation. Owners of hacked websites lose their public reputation and search engine rankings.

Increases user trust. Website security improves customers’ confidence in doing transactions and enhances loyalty.

Ensures cost-effectiveness. Investing in solid website security is much more affordable than hiring professionals to conduct a clean-up.

All in all, a robust security system is vital for any online business. By understanding its benefits, a business owner will ensure a smooth online experience for the site visitors and obtain their trust.

We hope this article has helped you gain more insight into how cyber security can help your business. Make sure to stay updated on the latest digital security trends.