Every website on the Internet is somewhat vulnerable to security attacks. The threats range from human errors to sophisticated attacks by coordinated cyber criminals.

According to the Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon, the primary motivation for cyber attackers is financial. Whether you run an eCommerce project or a simple small business website, the risk of a potential attack is there.

It’s more important than ever to know what you’re up against. Each malicious attack on your website has its specifics, and with a range of different types of attacks going around, it might seem impossible to defend yourself against all of them. Still, you can do a lot to secure your website against these attacks and mitigate the risk that malicious hackers target your website.

Let’s take a closer look at 10 of the most frequent cyberattacks happening on the Internet and how you can protect your website against them.

The 10 Most Common Website Security Attacks

1. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

A recent study by Precise Security found that the XSS attack is the most common cyberattack making up approximately 40% of all attacks. Even though it’s the most frequent one, most of these attacks aren’t very sophisticated and are executed by amateur cyber criminals using scripts that others have created.

Cross-site scripting targets the users of a site instead of the web application itself. The malicious hacker inserts a piece of code into a vulnerable website, which is then executed by the website’s visitor. The code can compromise the user’s accounts, activate Trojan horses or modify the website’s content to trick the user into giving out private information.

You can protect your website against XSS attacks by setting up a web application firewall (WAF). WAF acts as a filter that identifies and blocks any malicious requests to your (Read more...)