Top 5 Cybersecurity Threats That Can Kill Your SEO Efforts

The web has become more than just a place for people to share information, it’s also become a place for cybercriminals and their malicious software to wreak havoc. Cybercriminals are becoming better at targeting websites that lack the necessary cybersecurity measures. When a website is taken down or brought to its knees, it can be tremendously costly to the site owner and its visitors. 

In the fast-paced world of Internet marketing, setting back your SEO progress doesn’t take much. In an instant, cybercriminals can exploit any flaw and use it to their advantage, as well as steal your valuable private information, spread viruses and malware on your computer systems, or perform DDoS attacks. While the most significant cybersecurity threats might not be ranking factors directly, an attack on your website can lead to serious penalties from Google.

Unfortunately, many companies neglect to invest sufficient time and resources in learning about cybersecurity risks and the steps they need to take to mitigate them. Indeed, those who have been victims of cyberattacks can tell you how harmful they can be. There have been numerous high-profile data breaches over the past few years, but there is also different kind of threats to website owners — which steal visitors’ trust and SEO performance by attacking your website’s security vulnerabilities unfound. As these threats grow in number, it’s important that you take proper steps to protect your website from being a victim.

What Are Cybersecurity Threats?

The top cybersecurity threats, such as phishing, ransomware, malware, and viruses, have been around in some form or another since the creation of the Personal Computer (PC). This means that everyone is vulnerable to security breaches, which can come from an outside breach or from the computer’s owner. Obviously, the word “threat” is synonymous with “danger”, so this would be an easy question to answer. The problem lies in determining exactly what constitutes a threat. 

• By definition, cybersecurity threats are the various types of risk and harm an organization, individual, or system could be exposed to through intrusions into computer networks and/or systems, as well as any malicious activity by an intruder via unauthorized access or use of data. This can result in the theft or destruction of data and physical property.

Source: Reciprocity

Cyber attacks are commonly perceived as destructive events that have large-scale consequences. To combat these security threats, cybersecurity professionals need to understand what the threats are before they can develop strategies for protecting against them. Depending on the scale or impact of this event, the costs to clean up after an attack may run into millions of dollars. Cybersecurity vulnerabilities are a common threat to any organization, large or small. These risks can threaten not only your network and systems but also your reputation, finances, and very survival. Creating a vulnerability management framework can help you secure your company, reduce business risks, and avoid potential lawsuits or fines for complying with data privacy regulations worldwide.

How Does Security Affect SEO? 

There are two main effects of exposure to cyber threats on your SEO:

1. Google’s blacklist — In the wake of Google’s statement about HTTPS as a ranking signal, the importance of cybersecurity has become increasingly more significant on the web. HTTPS provides a secure connection between the site owner and browsers (specifically, search engines) accessing their site. Google’s algorithm was designed to punish websites that are not using HTTPS encryption by lowering their ranking on search results pages or even blocking them.
2. Distrust of users —  With the increasing number of cyber attacks, websites that do not have a secure connection on their web pages are often considered unsafe by many internet users. From malware and phishing attacks to security-related product recalls, having your website come into contact with compromised data can bring down your site’s traffic, increase bounce rates, and cost you the trust of your users — all of which impact SEO.

In order to get a complete check-up on your website regarding the state of your SEO efforts, it can be useful to use an SEO tool. Ninja Reports is the ultimate SEO tool that allows you to get the most out of SEO techniques and increase the traffic flow of your website. NinjaReports.com makes an overall SEO audit, conducts deep technical SEO scan, checks keywords ranking, carries out an on-page SEO analysis, and many other things that, in turn, improve your online presence. All these will definitely help you to make use of the data to make decisions regarding your web presence. 

The List of Cybersecurity Threats: How to Avoid Them?

1. Lack of an SSL certificate

No one in their right mind opens up a bank account or pays for a flight by doing it over an unsecured connection. Website security is an issue that’s growing in importance with new data breaches and privacy concerns around the use of cookies on a daily basis. Poor website security can be bad news for your business, as it will undermine customer trust, and search engines may punish you too. 

Source: Sectigo

A lack of an SSL certificate is usually shown as a huge red flag for website visitors. There are plenty of instances where a lack of an SSL certificate has compromised sensitive information. An HTTPS connection ensures safer connections between website and browser and helps site owners further protect the personal information of their users. An SSL certificate does this by encrypting all the data being transferred between your website server and browser. It means that even if someone was to record this data as it passed through the wires, it would still be unintelligible to them. Encryption helps scramble data so that it can’t be read by unauthorized users. 

You can also see how secure a website is by looking at the URL bar in your web browser when on a secure site. Website visitors can see “https” at the beginning of the URL and the padlock icon in front of it when they visit an HTTPS-enabled site. Google has announced that they prefer all websites that communicate over HTTPS and will give a slight rankings boost to websites using an HTTPS connection.

2. Using an unreliable firewall

A large part of your website’s security relies on a firewall. If you have an unreliable firewall, it may fail to block attacks. It breaks down or cannot create filters for a given request type (attack method) or set of attack types. A poor-performing firewall leaves a gaping hole in your security. An unreliable firewall exposes your web server, database server, and any other important resources on the Internet to malicious hackers who are out to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, and more.

A reliable firewall is a necessity for any reputable website. A WAF acts as a shield that prevents unauthorized access to your private network. It can effectively block attacks such as data hacking attempts and brute-force attacks from reaching your site. Web application firewalls can help to prevent various web-based attacks, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. As well as protecting the target website, a WAF can also stop malicious bots and crawlers from indexing your site. WAFs are designed to identify malicious traffic and block requests that originate from known untrusted IP addresses and URLs. Allowing malicious traffic to pass through your network can result in serious data loss. If you run a website, it’s essential to secure it with a WAF.  

3. Malware 

Malware is another word for a malicious program. It is software that’s been developed with the intent to cause damage. Malware is often used by cybercriminals to gain access to your computer or website, steal personal information from you or your users, or display unwanted and intrusive ads. Websites that get infected with malware are hijacked, and visitors are redirected to shady websites that could drop even more malware on their computers. There are many different types of malware, such as viruses, worms, spyware, and Trojan horses, that trick users into installing programs on their computers without their knowledge. This happens when something appears to be a normal download but actually contains malicious code that steals information, installs unwanted programs, and alters critical settings on the victim’s computer. 

Source: Avast

Wiping this type of harmful software from the system is crucial to protecting sensitive data and ensuring a sustainable online presence. Antivirus software is the most effective way to detect malware infections and prevent cyber attacks. Antivirus software can be used to scan your site for malicious software such as Trojans, viruses, spyware, and dialers. If malware is found, it can be eliminated without harming your system. 

4. Unsecure hosting provider

Many websites hosted on third-party servers have a history of security lapses. A typical insecure hosting provider that doesn’t pay attention to security measures can lead to your website being vulnerable to potential cyber-attacks. The hosting provider’s security may be compromised and your website could be at risk as a result. This may eventually lead to a severe downtime, in which your business may lose thousands of dollars in revenue. 

If you run a business that relies on the Internet, then you probably want to take the necessary security precautions to protect your website and customer data from potential cyber-attacks. One of the best ways to do that is to make sure that you choose a provider that is PCI DSS certified and has good security measures in place to protect against cyber-attacks. This will ensure that you do not need to worry about data loss or sensitive information being compromised.

5. Outdated software

Having outdated software is one of the main reasons for security vulnerabilities, which can be exploited by attackers to gain access to your system. Security holes in older releases of software, including web servers, CMSs, and themes, are common and known to the attacker community long before they are fixed by the developer. It’s easy to forget about your website when you’re busy running a business, but this is important – every time an update comes out, you should apply it as soon as possible. This will ensure anything new or recently discovered vulnerabilities are patched before they ever become an issue. 

If you have updated them regularly when new versions are released, you are already “ahead” of cyber threats and don’t need to worry as much about any attack. You can manually update it using security patches, or you can get a service that will do it automatically for you. The latter is a low-cost, fully automated process that can be set up to happen overnight. You should also use an automated update mechanism that determines when updates become available in a variety of ways and then automatically applies them when they are appropriate.

How Can Google Punish Your Website?

• Pessimization of  the website’s positions

The pessimization of a domain’s position is the actions taken to lower the website’s position on Google SERPs. If a website is found to be lacking in cyber security and has been hacked or compromised, Google can lower the ranking of the website in its search engine results. This can severely harm the website’s overall performance in SERPs and could cause enormous losses. 

• SEO penalties

An SEO penalty is a punitive action Google takes against a webmaster or website to maintain quality and improve the user experience of search results. The potential penalties include a website falling under Google’s filter that can lead to removing the website’s pages from the index. If your website isn’t secure and someone finds a security flaw, it could damage your reputation and keep users away. 

Conclusion

Cyber security is an important concern for online businesses. Google encourages website owners to implement a variety of security measures in order to protect their websites from potential cyber-attacks, as well as to ensure that their websites are safe for users. Implementing the measures mentioned above will not only help protect your website from malicious activity and prevent bad actors from performing cyber attacks on your website but will also likely improve your overall user experience. This may even positively impact your ranking in the search results. 

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