Steps to provide website’s security
Thousands of articles have been written to help you gain greater control over your sites’ security.
And all this concern is justified. But the fact that Drupal is the most secure CMS CMS doesn’t guarantee your web page will be protected 100% from hackers. You should constantly focus on a number of essential things that we will talk about here. It doesn’t take much time, but it will decrease your risk of running into problems.
Tips to secure your Drupal website
Upgrade and update to the latest version of Drupal
If you run the old version of Drupal, migrating your website to Drupal 8 is the most obvious first step to take. This will help improve your web performance with its high-level security. Don’t forget to do an analysis of the website before the upgrade. It is also a smart idea to consider updating within the core versions. Updates of Drupal provides not only new features, but security fixes as well.
Keep modules up to date
If you upgrade to the latest version of Drupal, you are on the right path. But running Drupal 8 alone is not enough to protect your web resource from all the security risks. So make sure your Drupal modules are up-to-date. Following this extra piece of advice, you can significantly reduce your website’s attack surface.
Choosing modules
Hold on! There are more tips concerning Drupal modules. It is great that Drupal allows users to extend the website’s functionality and provide useful modules. But you need to be selective when choosing a tool specifically for your website. Read more about it before starting to install specific modules.
On Drupal.org the contributed modules are organized into categories. The module versions that are available and secure for applying are highlighted in green. “Unsupported” or “deprecated” ones are displayed with warning symbols. Those modules are not covered by the Drupal security advisory policy. Use “recommended” tools to avoid security issues in future.
For security purposes, you should uninstall unnecessary Drupal modules. The reason is simple, but still important: some of them either are no longer properly maintained, or may contain bugs. If you are going to remove something, then contact the web support service. There may be some modules that should not be uninstalled.
Use Drupal security modules
Of course, the community offers superb modules to protect your Drupal website from falling victim to hackers. Here are some popular ones: the Hacked module, the Devel module, the Security Kit module, and many more. All of them have various features, so it’s best to ask a seasoned developer to select those that are essential to install.
Enable HTTPS
It is becoming more popular to move to the “secure web.” The main benefit for switching from HTTP to HTTPS is to provide privacy of the data being transmitted and trustworthy site authentication. There are some people who argue that there is no need to run some websites, like blogs or informational web pages, on HTTPS. But then the question arises, “Don’t you care about your login credentials?” Everything should be protected on your website, and running over a secure connection can only help harden your Drupal security.
Follow security advisories
The Drupal help team posts advisories to Drupal.org every Wednesday. If you are not yet following its news, start right now. It is a sure way to stay tuned in and not miss the releases of security updates you need. You can also subscribe to the security newsletter.
Use Drush
You’ve already learned the main purpose of updates. Modules, themes, core, code base tables and databases need to be updated. Drush is a good option which makes it easy to update everything on your Drupal website as well. To do this, you need to know only a couple of Drush basic commands.
Backup your database
Everyone knows about the importance of backing up the database for each Drupal website. If you own one, you should backup your database on a regular basis. Sometimes, it happens that automatic backups are not working. In such a case, we advise you to restore them to make sure everything goes well. All in all, following a robust backup strategy is the crucial thing in managing a website.
Conclusion
It goes without saying that ensuring your website’s security is the highest priority. Therefore, make use of our best tips to be protected 24/7. If you want to everything be implemented well, contact our Drudesk web support team. Stay secure!