Best Website Security Services & Software Compared

What Does Website Security Software Protect Against?

Website security monitoring software protects your visitors and business from data breaches, attacks, and malware infections. Hackers will abuse compromised websites by injecting SEO spam, drive-by-downloads, defacements, and malicious redirects. Keep visitors and web content secure by preventing vulnerability exploitation, brute-force (password guessing), and DDoS attacks. In our 2018 Hacked Website Report, we identify some of the most common types of malware and the blocklist authorities that block visitors from visiting compromised websites.

Website Security Solutions

There are a wide range of web security solutions that can help you mitigate risk to your website and prevent a hack.

Some effective website security solutions include:

• Website Application Firewalls
• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
• Intrusion Detection Systems

The Sucuri Website Application Firewall (WAF) and Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is bundled into the Sucuri Platform. These solutions protect your website from an attack, and if a compromise is detected will notify you immediately. These solutions can be used on any type of platform, including Magento, WordPress, vBulletin, ASP.NET, Joomla, or even custom websites. Quick set-up within minutes ensures that you’ll quickly have your website detecting, filtering and blocking attacks.

By blocking malicious traffic from visiting your site, you’ll be protected against attacks like Cross Site Scripting (XSS), Remote File Inclusions (RFI), Malicious Post Requests, SQL Injections (SQLi), Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) and other malicious attacks.

Web Security Features & Tools Every Website Should Have

Every website security service provider has different features and pricing. Some include web protection and website security monitoring, while others charge fees for malware removal. Here are the features and tools to look for in a website security provider.

1. Detect Security Issues

If your website has been hacked, you want to be the first to know. An intrusion detection platform (IDS) will continuously monitor your site looking for indicators of compromise (IoC). This includes malicious changes to your website content, files, and database. A good website security scanner will alert you when your site is blocklisted by search engines or suffering downtime and can detect changes to your DNS or SSL records.

2. Prevent a Future Hack

A website firewall keeps your site protected against brute force attacks, data breaches, and attempts to inject content into your web server. A complete website security system will offer a firewall that virtually patches security holes and hardens server settings. By detecting and blocking known hacking methods and behaviors, you can preserve your website integrity and avoid a security incident.

3. Incident Response

If your website has been taken down or hacked with harmful content, it helps to have an incident response team on hand. With professional security analysts and malware removal tools, a hacked site can be recovered with minimal disruption. A reliable website security team also gives you peace of mind when you have security questions or concerns about your website.

4. Disaster Recovery

In order to ensure the availability of your website, it’s critical to have a backup plan. Even if your website is secure, a misconfiguration or mistake can lead to data loss. Only a backup can save you if your custom files are overwritten or tampered with. A website security provider can offer secure remote storage, automatic backup scheduling, and an easy recovery process.

5. Performance Optimization

It’s important to consider how a website security system might impact performance. Fortunately, plenty of website firewalls include a content delivery network (CDN) that stores copies of your website in multiple locations for faster global access. This speeds up your website and keeps visitors happy while reducing the load on your web server.

Choosing a Website Security Provider

• Level of Support. Ask about the response time you can expect from your website security provider in the event of an emergency. You should consider whether you will require customization, setup, or troubleshooting. Read reviews or see a preview of the customer experience.

• Logging and Reporting. Investigation of a security incident is easier with access to detailed logs and audit trails. Talk with website security vendors about out what is possible, how reports are accessed, and whether the platform integrates with your SIEM system or security operations team.

• Compatibility and Deployment. Make sure that any website security provider you choose is compatible with your CMS and server software. This also includes concerns about server resources and bandwidth allocation. Ideally, you should understand what you are getting into when it comes to deployment and activation.

• Customization Requirements. If your website requires custom rule sets, load balancing, or high availability, discuss this with your website security provider. You may also want to ask about uptime guarantees, allowlisting and blocklisting, and any advanced security settings.

• Total Cost. Price is always a factor. There may be hidden costs and unexpected fees, not to mention upgrades and upsells. This is especially true when it comes to malware removal services. Make sure your plan covers what you need for support, features, and bandwidth.

• Attack Protection. A website security system should include methods to detect and prevent attacks, including signature and behavior analysis. You may want to ask website security providers about the false positive/negative rate, how often it blocks zero-day vulnerabilities, bandwidth limitations, and the number of global points of presence (PoP).

• SSL Support and Monitoring. If you have SSL/HTTPS on your website already, make sure the website firewall will support your existing certificate. HTTPS is automatically enabled on the Sucuri firewall servers for users who do not have a certificate. A good monitoring system will also be able to tell you if your SSL records change.

• Monitoring and Detection. A good website monitoring system will include continual supervision of your website activity logs, and content changes. Explore the alerting and reporting options of potential vendors. Ask whether they provide remote and server-side scanners and if they can monitor changes to DNS records, core files, and SSL certificates.

• Industry Research. To stay ahead of emerging cybersecurity threats takes constant work. Malware analysis and vulnerability research should be important to any website security provider. It’s also good to know whether the company specializes in your website software or CMS.

• Page Speed. When activating a website firewall, most providers will offer a CDN, caching, and compression that can be fine-tuned to suit your website’s needs. These performance options allow visitors to access a cached version of your website stored in different locations so your website is faster and more secure.