Today the Internet plays a crucial role in businesses. The Internet has gone from just being a communication platform to one where transactions are made daily. Along with the latter, personal data like credit card details are indiscriminately captured, manipulated, and even sold.

Governments all around the world are stepping in to protect the privacy of its citizens. Besides internal corporate policies and business legal documentation, regulators are introducing requirements for companies to have policies and documented procedures to safeguard personal data of their users.

Below is a list of policies that generally all corporate and online vendors should have on their website and internally within their organization.

On every website, below are some baseline policies you would want to include on your website. The first three would be a requirement by law.

• Cookie acceptance bar

• Cookie policy

• Privacy policy

• Terms of Use

Within an organizational, the following internal policies would supplement the above policies.

• Human resource policy

• Information security policy

• Data Privacy policy

If you are running an eCommerce business, you might further need to have the following policies

• Listing policies

• Payment policies

• Refund policy etc.

Do note the above list is not exhaustive as each industry have their own sets of governing regulations which would require them to take domain-specific policies. Take, for example, if you are in the financial sector, you need to further comply with Anti-money laundering policies as required by respective financial regulators.

This post was written to enlighten and help our reader in understanding what some of the legal documentation and policies they need to have in place to safeguard their online presence are. The list outline in this post should not be viewed as the final and complete listing of all policies and legal documentation need internally within the organization or on the website. Ultimately all companies have different business models and offer various services operating in different industries.

We strongly recommend that you check with your legal team or a specialized third-party legal service provider to ascertain what are all the complete set of policies and documentation needed.

Google has been focusing on speed as a ranking factor for the last eight years.

In Jan 2018, Google formally announced that it would be updating its speed update algorithm sometime in mid-2018. This update will be a significant one. This early announcement gives website owners some heads up to start taking actions to improve their site downloading speed.

Why Is Google doing this?

The reason that Google is making this speed update is that speed matters to a user, especially as more and more users are surfing on mobile devices, which typically has a slower connection compared to desktops.

The user’s patience for a slow downloading site is waning. If a website takes too long to download, they merely move on to another website. Users expect to move through a brand’s site and pages at lightning speed. A web page that loads quickly will increase user satisfaction.

A key ranking factor

One of Google search’s key ranking factors is a site’s download speed.

So what does this mean to you, a website owner?

If your site is not downloading fast enough, visitors will abandon your site and move on to another. In time, your ranking on Google search engine page results will drop.

If your competitor’s webpages are downloading faster than yours, your site will rank lower than theirs. Hence you can see, speed matters.

What contributes to a website download speed?

Many factors determine the performance of a website.  They generally fall into two parts – front-end and back-end.

Front-end would refer to the webpages and all its associated resources, as rendered by a browser. The components on the front-end  that has an impact on the loading time would include the

• HTML codes

• CSS files

• JavaScript

• media  sizes (images, video, etc.) and

• the use of caching

• the use of redirects

The back-end would refer to the webserver delivering the page to your browser. Below are some of the

• location of the webserver,

• connection speed,

• PHP version,

• the number of HTTP requests etc.

Optimizing both front-end and back-end is critical in achieving optimal website performance and ranking higher on search engine result pages.

Let’s have a conversation if you would like to do a web page speed audit or improve your website speed.

However, there are some sensitive pages on a website that we recommend site owners not allow search engines to index and display as it could pose a security breach. One such weblink would be our Content Management System (CMS) login page.

Should a hacker finds out the link to your CMS login, he/she could try to brute force themselves into your CMS and take control of your website.

Fortunately, there is a way to ‘tell’ the search engines not to display these sensitive pages by way of a file, robots.txt. In the file, you can list the webpages you do not want search engines to index and make it discoverable.

The robots.txt file is essential to search engines too. A crawler bot from a search engine while indexing your website will also look for the robots.txt file on your site. They will take a peek into it, to see if there is any website for them to avoid displaying. If there is nothing in the robots.txt, they will, by default, make all pages discoverable.

Displaying a sensitive page to the wrong audience (i.e., hacker) could result in a hacker hacking into it, leading to a compromised site, something no human or search engine wants.

Hence search engines need your help to keep the Internet a safer place. They need site owners to specifically list webpages that they do not wish to be displayed.

Do reach out to us if you need any assistance in this area.

Many activities are happening at the backend of a website – you will be making changes on your website, adding new capabilities, configuring them, doing back up, etc.  Though it may not seem important when you are building your website, however, when things go wrong, you want to be able to quickly understand what you have done on your website as things do and can go wrong from time to time.

Track changes

One of the primary use of a logging feature is to track changes. An audit log is something that will result from it. With an audit log, you will have a better understanding of what is happening on your website.

An audit log can advise on changes done, and some can also highlight the criticality of the changes.

Ideally, the audit log application should be able to send off an alert on these critical issues when it detects them.

Some audit log application can also send off an email alert if there is an abnormality (i.e., file size changes)

Multiple users

As more users work on your website, the complexity increases. The need for accountability increases. With a logging feature, you now know who has access to the backend of the website and what action they have taken.

Without an audit log, you wouldn’t know who has done what. Pinning down responsibility would be difficult.

Access by an external vendor

From time to time, you may encounter issues beyond your or your team’s capabilities. You need outside help.  You need to grant access to an external third-party vendor.

When you allow that, after the work is done, you want to have a peace of mind that they do not leave any backdoor application, which they can later use to gain access to the website.

Having this assurance is essential.  Otherwise, you will have sleepless nights. You will constantly be wondering whether you have made the right move in getting a third party to help out. You will be wondering have you solve a problem but created a greater problem of vulnerability that can be exploited anytime by the vendor.

Cyber incident

Audit logs are most useful and critical if there is a cyber-incident or data breach. In certain circumstances, an investigation is required by law. Intimate details of the incident – when it happens, how it happens, what path it took, what systems were involved, etc., would be needed to understand the scope of the damage and how to prevent it from ever occurring again.

The information provided by the audit log will be handy during this moment. It will significantly facilitate and shorten the investigation. It would also reduce the number of days for hiring a cyber-forensic specialist to conduct the investigation.

Think of an audit log like an in-vehicle camera. When something happens, the camera (i.e., audit log) will provide clarity of the incident. While sometimes, it may not give the full picture, but it does narrow things down somewhat.

Backup error

Surprise, surprise, but backups do fail too.

Failures could happen anytime when there is a software conflict within the CMS. When it happens, this might cause the last backup not to restore itself properly.

Your next course of action is to determine what has happened between the last and prior backup. You might want to know who has access to the system and what steps have they taken.

If you have been actively working on the CMS, you want to know what work or actions you have undertaken during the period between the last two backups.

By taking a snapshot of the activities before doing a backup, you will gain some understanding of what you have worked on.

That will save tons of guesswork from stretching your mind trying to recall those activities.

From the above scenarios, the benefits of deploying an audit log application are overwhelming. Its use becomes more critical when the site gets larger or when there are more users in your CMS.

Beyond the initial website creation effort, a whole sleuth of activities (i.e. link up to search engines, website optimization) needs to be carried out. Thereafter, the site will go into maintenance mode (i.e software updates, new developments) to keep it running. This is something the website owner needs to fully understand and factor in.

In this post, we will examine the pros and cons of outsourcing a website’s development and mainteance for a small business owner. Below are some essential factors that need to be considered when starting on creating your own website. In this comparison, we take it DIY as the business owner managing the site by his/her ownself.

Complexity of your site. If the website is a simple informational website, this is something the business owner can consider to undertake his/her own self. However, on the website, there probably would be a sign up form to collect visitor’s email addresses, this is a security issue. A website with a sign up form is susceptible to SQL injection attacks. The attack would allow the attacker to gain direct access to the backend website contacts database. This could result in a personal data leak and attract the attention of the authorities. .

Time to market. All content management solution has a learning curve. As the website increases in functionality, so will be the learning curve. So depending on how much time the business owners has to focus on the website, otherwise it is prudent to simply outsource the development and maintenance of the website to a third-party vendor.

Frequency of change. Content changes from time to time. It is a minor text change, the small business owners can undertake the changes themselves. However if changes are in the form of enhancing the website, then considering a third party outsourcing provider would be the recommended way to go as it will consume a lot of the business owner’s time to research, implement, test and monitor these changes.

Frequency of updates. Business owners need to understand that all software needs to be update from time to time. Each updates need to be reviewed and updated. Once updated the website needs to be checked to see if anything is impacted by the updates. This takes time, depending on how many additional functionality was added onto the base website.

Data confidentiality. Data confidentially is very important especially when private data is concerned. Once a breach happens, data owners are obligated to inform the relevant authorities. Ideally the data owners (i.e business owner) should be the first to know of such a breach and not be the last to know, so you can better manage the breach.

In this respect, business owners need to fully understand how to protect their databases. If not, it would be best for them to outsource the development and maintenance of the website to third party vendors who would be in a better place to protect the data.

Note even though your website is hosted on a third-party hosting provider, ultimately the business owner is still responsible for the safeguarding of the personal data provided by it’s users.

Cost. Cost is always at the top of the mind of a small business owner. He/she is always looking at ways to minimize the cost of operations. Doing it internally could be cheaper financially, however, it takes time off on other operational issue. This is something the business owner as to weigh carefully.

As you can see from above, the decision is not a straightforward one for the small business owner.  The final decision to do it in-house or outsource, would also depend on the resources available and the environment he/she is working in – is speed to market important?

If you need further clarification, do drop us a note and shall we have a conversation before you embark on this important decision.

The primary mission of the search engine is to create a good user experience for those who use their search capabilities. To achieve a satisfying experience, a search engine has to consider many factors.

However, these factors can be broken down into three broad categories.

Relevant content

Long before Google, there were already many other search engines on the Internet. Search engines like Alta Vista, ask Jeeves, Excite, etc. were household names back then lie how Google is today. However, while these companies understood the importance of search engines on the Internet, they did not understand the power of quality relevant content. Many a time, during those days, when you search on these platforms, the results that come back were disappointing.

Hence when a search engine (i.e., Google) that provided more relevant content came along, users migrated to the new platform. Users want quality relatable results. Being able to provide appropriate quality results is vital. If you do it right, your visitors will come.

Quality results, in turn, depend on the right keywords and relevant content. With good content, visitors will spend more time on the webpage, and they might even share the page out. These actions are signals to search engines that the webpage has some relevance to the user and potential users.

Download speed

With more and more users using their mobile users to surf the Internet on the go, download speed becomes increasingly important.

Download speed over mobile devices is typically slower compared to devices physically connected (i.e.,LAN) to the Internet. With the already slow connection, any webpage that adds to the slowness of the download will irk the user. This slow download would constitute a poor experience in the eyes of search engines. The website will be penalized by being ranked lower to a comparatively faster website. Hence, optimizing a website for faster download is critical.

It is imperative to check on your website download speed from time to time, especially when adding something new to it. The newly added image, functionality, may impact your site download performance.

Secure website

As cybercriminal activities intensify, search engines are increasingly putting more emphasis on website security. A new, more secure transmission protocol emerged because of this concern – HTTPS. With HTTPS in place, information that is transmitted between the web server and the client desktop or device is made more secure through encryption. Sites that run the HTTPS protocol have their domain name preceded by HTTPS in their URL.

In 2018, search engines like Google took it a step further by displaying a little padlock beside the URL of the website. Google even went further by providing warnings of unsecured webpages they are about to visit, to its users.

While doing all of the above three things doesn’t guarantee you will appear on the first page on any search engine result page, it will, however, provide you with the assurance that you are in line with the search engines’ mandate.

With over 100+ ranking factors to optimize, getting the above right will serve as a good foundation for your optimization effort to rank higher within the search engines.