Issues to avoid when transferring a website

Transferring websites to new hosting providers are among the biggest challenges. This is a daunting task that most website owners face. Most people do not know the recommended way of moving to an IP address or a new web host without encountering problems with Google. If you own a static site or can afford time where your website is between two IP addresses, things will be easier. If your site is dynamic with databases and other things, it is always trickier even though the principle behind it is the same.

Transferring a website can be done in safe ways. Make sure you look for a suitable web host and open an account. Ensure that data is backed up at the web hosts you opened. The other step is to change DNS in such a way that it points to the new web host. The DNS takes the time to propagate through the Internet so take your time. Once the Google bots have finished fetching data from the new IP address, the process is over.

Many companies are facing web security problems. Effective information technology approaches should be defensive and proactive. There are several widespread and significant web security problems that companies should avoid at all costs. The following are some of the common website vulnerability.

Injection flaws

This problem usually occurs as a result of failing to filter input that is not trusted. It may happen when unfiltered data passes to SQL server then to the browser or other places. The main problem is that the attacker may put commands to those entities resulting in loss of data. Clients’ browsers may also be hijacked as a consequence. The best thing to note is that protection against injection only involves filtering inputs correctly and determining whether certain data can be trusted. All data should be filtered properly unless they are unquestionably trusted.

Broken authentication

Multiple problems may arise as a result of broken authentication, but have different causes. Some problems may arise if you want to roll on your authentication code. The URL may contain session IDs that may be leaked to other people. Most passwords may not be encrypted. The sectional IDs become predictable at times, and frequent fixation may be possible. Sectional hijacking may also happen. These are some of the terrible situations that you do not want to find yourself. Such web security vulnerability may be avoided by using a framework. Educate yourself on other pitfalls so that you carry your operation safely.

Cross Site Scripting

This input sanitization failure is a widespread problem. An attacker usually gives JavaScript’s tags to your web application. When such data is taken back to the user in unsanitized for, the user’s browser executes it. Such problems may post cookies to attackers. The solution to this problem is to ensure that HTML tags are not returned to the client. The advantage of this method is that it defends against HTML injection. Regular expressions may be used to strip away all HTML tags as a method of sanitization. This is a big problem since most browsers can interpret broken HTML. The best thing is to convert as many characters as possible to their counterparts.

Insecure Direct Object References

This is the classic way of trusting the inputs of users and paying prices leading to the security vulnerability. Direct object references mean that internal objects like files are exposed to other users. The main problem with this is that attackers are in a position to provide the reference. If authorization is broken, the attackers can access information that they are not supposed to. Password reset functions relying on input from the user to determine the owner of the password are also vulnerable. An attacker may tamper your website and lead to serious problems of running it.

To prevent such problems, perform use authorization consistently and appropriately and list the choices. The entire problem may be avoided by ensuring that data is stored internally. It is also important to avoid relying on information being passed from clients. Most session variables in frameworks are suited for this role.

Security misconfiguration

Applications and web servers that have been configured correctly are less than those that have been wrongly set. A lot of configuration problems happen in different ways leading to security problems. Some of the configuration problems are; running applications with enabled debug in production, running outdated software, having an enabled directory listing that leaks valuable information and running unnecessary services. Other problems are the failure to changes passwords and default keys and revealing information that leads to errors. These errors occur more frequently than people think.

This problem may be solved by using automated processes that can run various tests on deploy. The misconfiguration security solutions are post–commit hooks. This prevents codes from going with development stuff that is built in.

Sensitive data exposure

This vulnerability to web security is about resource and crypto protection. You should always ensure that sensitive data is encrypted at all time. There should be no exception to this. User passwords and credit card information must be stored encrypted. The crypto must not be weak. It is important to make sure that sensitive data and session IDs do not travel in sensitive cookies or URLs. Ensure that sensitive cookies have a secure flag. The importance of these strategies cannot be over-emphasized.

To prevent these problems, only use HTTPS that have proper certificates. Make sure you do not have unsecured flags on cookies. Store data is sensitive in encrypted form. Credit card information should also not be stored because it might get exposed to random people.

Failure to set up a new hosting account is a general problem. A person may forget to change DNS on the server of your Domain. Most people cancel the previous hosting account. The old account should be left active for about a week. Getting rid of it may lead to problems in solving problems that may arise after a week or so since you will not be able to access certain details from the previous account. Transferring a website can be quite tricky, but conducting the process in a cautious way by considering the problems discussed will lead to safe transfers.