With more peo­ple set­ting up their own home based, online busi­ness every day, the amount of vul­ner­a­ble web sites is increas­ing at an alarm­ing pace. And the blame for this lies mostly within the Inter­net Mar­ket­ing com­mu­nity itself. Why? Using the pow­er­ful tech­niques of per­sua­sion at their dis­posal, many so-​​called Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Gurus lure peo­ple into set­ting up their own online busi­ness by pro­vid­ing them with ready-​​made, plug and play web sites that con­tain basic secu­rity flaws. Do not for­get that most of these sites are made by mar­keters, not pro­gram­mers! And the con­se­quences for you can be disastrous…

One of the most com­mon vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties – and para­dox­i­cally the most eas­ily cured – is to ensure that each direc­tory on your site con­tains an index file. By default, web browsers, when directed to a direc­tory look first of all for a file named index. This could be fol­lowed by a vari­ety of exten­sions such as .html, .htm, .shtml or .php to name the most com­mon ones.

If the browser does not encounter the index file, it will dis­play the entire direc­tory in the form of a click­able nav­i­ga­tion list, dis­clos­ing all its con­tents for the world to see, thus leav­ing your pre­cious and often restricted con­tent wide open to any type of mali­cious action.

To pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing you should make sure that you have at least one or a com­bi­na­tion of the 4 fol­low­ing basic secu­rity mea­sures in place:

Secu­rity mea­sure 1:
Ensure that each direc­tory con­tains an index file by renam­ing the default page you want to be shown to index. Then make sure that all the inter­nal links to that page are updated as well!

Secu­rity mea­sure 2:
Cre­ate an empty index file. When arriv­ing at the direc­tory, a blank page will be shown, but you will no longer be dis­play­ing a direc­tory list­ing. You could also pro­vide a mes­sage and a click­able link on that page to take your vis­i­tors to the cor­rect page.

Secu­rity mea­sure 3:
Cre­ate an index file that con­tains a redi­rec­tion to the page you want to be shown. There are many free and eas­ily imple­mented code snip­pets avail­able that will allow you to do so and your vis­i­tors will not even notice that they are being redirected.

Secu­rity mea­sure 4:
If you have down­load­able con­tent that peo­ple have to pay for, do not keep it it the same direc­tory as the sales page, but keep it in a sep­a­rate, secure direc­tory and set up your pay­ment proces­sor to that direc­tory. This way you ensure that only peo­ple who have paid for the con­tent have access to it.

When sell­ing prod­ucts online as an Inter­net Mar­keter or oth­er­wise, you are more prone to peo­ple try­ing to get to your restricted con­tent so as to avoid hav­ing to pay for it. These 4 basic secu­rity mea­sures should help you dras­ti­cally reduce the risk of unlaw­ful access to your site and save you from a lot of headaches and worries.

Related posts:

1. Server Secu­rity– Under­stand­ing the Rea­sons with Pos­si­ble Error Rec­ti­fy­ing Measures
2. Antivirus inter­net secu­rity– How to choose the best one!
3. Aware­ness and impor­tance of web­site secu­rity seal
4. Reg­u­larly Audit your Web­site to Apply Improved SEO Techniques
5. What is a web­site secu­rity cer­tifi­cate? Why is it needed?