If you run a blog, safety might not be your most immediate concern. After all, you’re not a serious business or an online shop, so why would the need for security apply to you?
Security is, however, something your readers and fans appreciate and expect. If you want them to visit your blog and interact with you, you’re going to have to invest in some online defenses. If you haven’t done so already, here are a few important things to consider.
Protecting information
Even if it’s just an e-mail address, people do not want their information getting into the wrong hands. As such, anyone visiting your blog and inputting their own information to subscribe or contact you runs this risk if you haven’t arranged any sort of protection that makes it much more difficult for hackers to read the data being sent back and forth.
While you might not have the resources of an in-house IT department there are, fortunately, a few cheap and effective ways to add security. You can use safe encryption with SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, to encrypt any data being sent between your website and users. As a result, anyone ‘listening in’ wouldn’t be able to decode the information being exchanged.
Similarly, if you invest in an extended validation certificate, you will see a green padlock next to the URL on most web browsers. This is a little touch that reassures readers your of the precautions you’ve taken for their benefit.
The visitor experience
Similarly, there are other forms of attack which aren’t about acquiring personal information. Direct Denial of Service attacks, or DDoS, slow down your website by constantly bombarding the server. The end result of this is that your blog becomes inaccessible and, even if someone does get on, it will be slow, unresponsive and unpleasant to use.
As a consequence of this, visitors would have a very bad experience with your website. If they have no reason to believe things would be different later, why would they return? Similar to SSL, DDoS can be prevented by efficient firewalls and other measures. There are many companies that offer these and they all ensure such attacks are spotted as early as possible, preventing as much damage as possible.
Hopefully, these two points should show you the many dangers of having an insecure website for your blog. Whether your server is targeted, or the information itself, visitors will have a bad experience if you don’t have protection and you don’t want your site to have a negative reputation.
