Following on from our recent webinar on the theme of website optimisation we have developed a series of three blog posts that discuss website optimisation. These are high level blogs and not intended to be all encompassing but rather have been designed to kick start thoughts on concepts such as analytics, SEO and some tips to keep your website safe..

Seven ways to keep your website safe

Broken links, badly formatted code, page errors and expired SSL certificates can hurt the quality and ranking of your site. Running a website isn’t simply a case of setting it up and forgetting about it. It’s not quite build it and they will come, you need to maintain it, keep it safe and secure it in order to maximize traffic, sign-ups and conversions. Here are seven top tips for a safe and successful website:

1. ...

While presenting at the HostingCon earlier this year, some particular figures in my slide deck jumped out at me: 1) Corporations are seeing their information double every two years; and 2) Each day, 600 million emails are sent containing unencrypted confidential data. Those are staggering figures on their own. Put them together, and the need to protect sensitive data online becomes glaringly obvious.

The booming popularity of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates and Extended Validation SSL (EV SSL) Certificates reflects the recognition that people and organizations must protect themselves from worsening malware, data breaches and other IT security threats. By validating user and device identity, SSL and EV SSL...

For the past seven years or so we've seen a common criminal practice of creating just-in-time phishing scams around breaking news or other current events. These scams consistently appear for predictable events such as tax time or even March Madness, but they also arrive very quickly when high profile natural disasters occur. Dating back at least as far as the Katrina/Rita disaster (and occurring as recently as February's earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand), these attacks seek to prey on concerned well wishers trying to donate money to aid disaster relief. The good news is that public awareness of this attack vector continues...

A recent New York Times article discusses the concerns held by online civil rights groups that oppressive governments around the world might work with certificate authorities (CAs) through either coercion or willing partnership to compromise the integrity of private and/or corporate online communications.

The article points out that proliferation of CAs around the world means that the world's browser and device vendors have given the tremendous responsibility of issuing certificates to a very broad variety of organizations. Given that the conduct of these CAs is not policed to any effective degree, unscrupulous CAs could easily allow governments to decrypt communications, use compromised information for a variety of political purposes and not face any retribution.

Such concerns highlight the need for individuals and organizations to look to longstanding responsible CAs...