Website attacks are growing every day, and hackers are getting smarter all the time. And given that your brand and your website are your first point of contact with your customers, that’s a serious problem for your customer relationship.
Website security is not a problem that your company can afford to ignore. Here are four reasons why website security should be at the top of your priority list this year (if it wasn’t already).
The past year has been a rough one for consumer trust. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica were the big scandals of the year, but there were bigger, more expensive breaches.
That rough year has seen a total shift in the way we think about consumer trust and data privacy.
Consumers are no longer willing to take security for granted. They want their private information protected and they want to know that your company isn’t going to sell their data–or be careless enough to get it stolen.
Without up-to-date website security, your would-be customers simply won’t trust you.
Your reputation is right there on the line with your consumers’ trust in you.
Customers of today are far more web-savvy than previous generations. They know what a sketchy site looks like. They also know the signs of a decent website that doesn’t have good security.
And if they catch a virus from your site or fall victim to a phishing scam after visiting, they aren’t going to come back. They’ll tell their friends to avoid you as well.
Your security is a sign of your investment in your customers’ welfare. If you’re careless, it’s a sign that your customers fundamentally don’t matter to you. And that’s a hit to your reputation that will be difficult to recover from.
All altruism aside, good website security is good for your marketing ROI.
That’s because HTTPS has been a ranking signal in Google’s algorithm since 2014. HTTPS sites load faster than HTTP sites (which means they’re likely to rank higher).
It’s basic logic.
Search engines are just as much in the business of serving their customers as you are. They want to give their customers the best possible user experience.
In order to do that, they need to direct them to the best possible search results. Not just results that answer their question, but results that won’t steal their data in the meantime. After all, if they continually direct users to unsafe sites, users will stop trusting them.
Finally, there’s the simple fact that cleaning up after a data breach is far more expensive than avoiding that breach altogether.
A 2018 study by IBM found that the global average cost of a data breach is $3.9 million. The average cost of each lost or stolen record is also increasing.
That’s not accounting for the damage control you’ll have to do after the fact or the work you’ll have to do to secure your site against future breaches, plus the cost of losing your customers’ trust.
It’s far simpler (and more cost-effective) to prevent the breach from happening in the first place.
Website security is not a single destination. It’s an ongoing process that demands your company stay agile and never stop learning.
Remember, hackers adapt to overcome new security systems all the time. What counted as secure this year may not work next year and definitely won’t work in five years.
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