Which Is the Probability that Your Website Is Hacked?

The more you know the more you worry about Internet security on your website. And you realize the amount of vulnerabilities and bugs that are waiting for someone to feel like exploit and hack your web.

Nevertheless, companies are well aware of the importance of Internet security. Its method is to reward developers interested in security issues or ethical hackers. They discover their bugs through reporting. They pay for it so everybody wins. That’s a good way to ensure that they are limiting partially the access to intruders or malware.

However, this is not the case for most. In fact, very few companies allocate resources or personnel to cyber security or IT security. Maybe because protecting your web from attacks or malware is not important until you suffer the consequences.

So, how can I protect my website against hackers? In this post about website security for dummies  we give some clues, the basics.

The numbers are interesting, it’s obvious that the more websites the more attacks. And the annual growth is worrying, as we explain into the next paragraphs. Do not forget that after all the subject of hacking is trendy, very handy and arouses more interest than ever.

And, why we do not worry about Internet security?

Most people who have a web know about the importance of the security of the website. Whether a blog, a corporate website or e-commerce. And talking about choosing the hosting provider, it seems you try to do your homework. Or at least you probably demand secure hosting providers and is one important parameter into the election equation. However, most projects start with shared hosting. Which means all websites on the same virtual or physical server. This could result in many cases to the same IP and therefore attacks directed at a client affecting the rest.

DDoS attacks

DDoS attacks affect anyone that shares network resources in a attack, including:

• Other customers of your hoster
• Customers who stay in your own server if you have a shared hosting
• Customers who share your network segment. And this is regardless of having shared or dedicated service

This type of attack can be avoided with network issues. Broadly speaking, specific equipment and a large bandwidth that can withstand powerful attacks. The attacker always exceeds expectations and volumes handled are amazing. In this case, the owner of the site may only require certain levels of security to your hosting provider. Or hire in parallel external services like CDNs or automatic replicas of the web in different geographical locations.

Some interesting facts about attacks

You may think that you’ve suffered ‘attacks’ only a couple of times in years on your hosting provider. However, the number is increasing and malware or hackers attacks that can make a lot of damage can also be avoided with proper security maintenance of your website.

To give the required importance to this problem, we will make a simple comparison. According to the CNI: In 2009 the number of incidents rose to just 200. A year later, at 450. In 2011 the figure already stood at 2,000 cases and in 2012 doubled to 4,000. In 2013 he reached the last 7,500 to 12,000 years, which shows a constant evolution, multiplying year after year the number of incidents.

The National Cryptologic Center in Spain notes that 18,232 cyber incidents were managed by their response unit. This represents a 41% increase over 2014. And 2016 is predicted to end up with 40% more attacks on websites than the previous year.

Numbers, yes. But soon we give some information on cybercrime in Spain, and sometimes the numbers speak for themselves.
Another curious fact is that most web masters, bloggers or who is responsible for the content of the page that have not suffered any attack believe they are not as well known as to be the target of a hacker or hacker. And you may be unaware that they already have malware on their website.

It is important to remember that hackers are no longer computer freaks attacking large companies. With the right information,  anyone who handles minimally internet, our neighbor or the kid of any country that plays to see if he can ‘break’ a web  doing lots of damage.

 How many attacks on websites are held on the Internet?

We must differentiate between a hacker attack and to put malware on your website.

We can see clearly how the hacks have increased at the most famous sites. But not only in the most famous sites, which are the more visible. There are attacks and infections daily suffering bloggers, freelancers, small businesses that probably not even be aware. One day your website stops working, or goes slower, and nobody gives solution.

And according hackamaggedon, one of the reference sites cyberattacks statistics, over 70% of attacks are cyber crime, not hacktivist (political issues) or espionage, as we might think. And in that 70% is where ‘normal’ people are.

The norsecorp map of cyber attacks in real time is hypnotic. Despite being somewhat swollen with things that really are not attacks. It’s simple: shows you the attacks that are taking place in the world in real time.

Attacked websites and cyber attacks becoming increasingly important

What is clear and all the studies point out is the growth of a sector and its concern. Not only for the large and medium enterprises but also small one, start ups or freelance whose business is based on the internet.

We could analyze the number of sites and the number of attacks to give a statistical estimation of exact probabilities. But what really matters is to be aware that website security will be a key point in the success of your online business and the reputation of your brand.