The Basics of Dental Website Security
Nearly all dental practices now have websites for various reasons: most companies use these as some form of online advert/business card, while others use them to as a tool for online bookings.
However it is becoming increasingly common for these to be attacked with many larger organisations even falling as victims of such attacks for example TalkTalk with a chink in their onlone security..
There are many different methods Cyber Attackers use and below are a list of the most common types of attacks.
DDOS Attacks
These aim to consume massive amounts of resources in a short period of time (causing the site to become unavailable) in Q3 2015 attacks had increase 179.66% since Q3 2014 (according to akamai’s report) while everyone thinks it won’t be them that’s DDOS’d one of the biggest reasons for a DDOS Attack was for “revenge” (ex-employee, unhappy customer/competitor)
Website Hack
These take place to allow the hacker to make use of the web servers powerful sub systems in order to hack other sites and potentially build a “bot net” of compromised systems to DDOS/mass spam e-mail other systems
The latest trend of website hack’s is a spin from the Crytplocker virus CTB Ransomware which has been modified to encrypt vulnerable websites (http://thehackernews.com/2016/02/ctb-locker-ransomware.html) encrypting the site with irreversible AES encryption and holding your website to ransom.
Now I know your all asking…. How do I prevent this from happening to me?
To help prevent smaller DDOS’s – Plan to use more resources than you actually will
o It’s very common to only plan for what you need, why would you pay for more than you need? however this gives no room to breathe should you incur a smaller DDOS attack
To prevent a larger DDOS
o This needs the assistance of a special mitigation service who specialise in stopping these attacks at their hardware only passing clean traffic to your hosting provider
Keep web Scripts up to date to prevent your site being vulnerable
Invest in a WAF (Web Application Firewall) to filter attacks against your website
Make sure you have and keep regular backups of your website
We carry out remote dental website backups for many clients and you also receive FREE 12 months support when purchasing a new dental website from us.
For cyber attack emergencies on your dental website simply call us on 0330 133 0635 as soon as possible.
