Keeping your company and your customers safe is always a top priority. This is especially true when you run an online business. Without the property security measures in place, hackers can infiltrate your systems, stealing company or personal customer information.

There are a number of steps you can take to help ensure your business is safe, secure and ready to handle your customer’s next purchase. Here are some of the most common ways you can protect your website from intruders.

Maintain updates

When things get busy, it may be easy to ignore those messages that ask you to update software, your antivirus software and any other element of your website that relies on regular updates. Without these updates, your computer or your server could experience hacking and may go unnoticed without regularly scheduled updates and analysis of your system.

Limit admin access

Access to your website and all of its elements starts at the admin level. If you are giving access to this level to all of your employees, you may find that employees not familiar with hacking tactics may leave this access vulnerable, giving hackers easier access to your business. Admin access can be restricted with many measures including difficult passwords, limited login attempts and not sending login details through email or text.

Disable auto-fill

An auto-fill form is one way that a hacker can get access to your website and still look like a legitimate user. Anyone logging on can have their credentials saved to a computer or mobile device. Because your business doesn’t know who has access to these computers, it is best to not let any auto-fill saves happen on your website. While it may be a bit inconvenient for the user, it can be just what they need to protect the personal information they have trusted you with.

Use SSL certificates

These certificates give your website an extra layer of security. The SSL protocol is encrypted and prevents viewing personal and financial information during the transit process. This is especially important for businesses that provide customers with an ecommerce element or long applications with detailed personal information. SSL certificates are also a public way to show your customers that you are looking out for their information every time they log on to your website.

Keep a backup schedule

You can put in place every security option available, but there may still be vulnerabilities that you are not aware of. Sometimes, it’s vulnerabilities in software that haven’t been discovered yet. Other times, it can be something as simple as a natural disaster or accident that can wipe out a system hard drive. If this happens to your business, the best thing to have is a recent backup of your website and any data you collect.

It is recommended that you have a system that backs up your data multiple times a day. Without this, you could lose a day’s worth of work or more. Also, it is important to have multiple backup systems so that there is both an onsite backup for quick fixes and an offsite backup for major issues.