6 Cybersecurity Tips For Law Firms

How to Improve Website Security While You Practice Lawyer SEO

Your website is the most important facet of your Lawyer SEO. Your website is where your links, landing pages, contact information, and content go. It's where you implement lead generation, optimizations, and content marketing for lawyers. When it gets hacked, it puts your security, marketing strategies, and SEO efforts at risk.

So, while you're trying to figure out the best law firm marketing strategy, implementing attorney SEO marketing, or finding a law firm SEO agency to help, make sure you're watching out for your security, too.

For anyone who runs a website, a security breach is a nightmare. Search engines like Google don't like sending users to potentially harmful sites, so when you do get unfortunately hacked, there will be a very obvious warning tag that discourages people from entering your domain. As a result, not only will your search engine rankings drop, but users also won't be able to trust you and will avoid your site at all costs.

Not to mention, if your site does get hacked, all your traceable login information and personal data are at risk—emails, passwords, other online accounts, etc. So you must learn basic cybersecurity tips to protect you, your law firm, and your clients from any type of cyberattack.

1. Secure Your Login Information

Having administrative access to a website, usually via the site's login details, is the simplest way for hackers to bring it down. Unfortunately, anyone with that degree of access is free to do whatever they want with your website.

To avoid this, make sure that people who don't need access to your website can't, that they don't have more permission than they need, and that any usernames and passwords you give them are changed as soon as their task is through. For example, someone you may have provided your login credentials to make a short modification on your website or fix a problem for you may still have them afterward, posing a security concern.

Remember: Logging into your website on public WiFi is one of the easiest ways to get hacked. This is because a lot of people are on public WiFis. A hacker can gain the login and password to your website using a variety of tactics such as packet sniffing and keyloggers. If you really need to connect to public WiFi, use a VPN.

2. Randomize Your Passwords

As long as you find a good encrypted password keeper, using randomly generated passwords is an excellent way to protect your login information.

Hackers sometimes either try to manually guess passwords or use software to run a trial-and-error of possible passwords. Randomly generated passwords are harder to guess and predict.

Though, of course, you can always think of a new secure password for every site you visit—but that also makes it hard for you to remember all of them. Password generators give you options on the length and characters to be used for every password you request, so you can make one as secure (and hard to guess and hack) as possible.

Remember: Do make sure that you're using a good and secure password keeper that encrypts your data instead of storing them in a way that it's still accessible to malicious users and software.

3. Update Software On Your Domain

Hackers are constantly learning new ways to circumvent old security measures. As a result, software upgrades are required since they include updated features that improve security. So it's critical that your website runs on the most up-to-date software features.

Remember: Malicious individuals always hunt for vulnerable websites with outdated components such as themes and plugins, among other things. These are easy to circumvent, so it's easy for hackers to acquire access to your website's restricted areas.

4. Hide Error Messages

When launching a website after it has been built, the site owner should hide any error messages. This is because those error messages can show information about the settings and the names of directories and files.

Additional information that could reveal the user's identity to the incorrect individuals should be hidden. Rather than presenting specific server errors, the developer can set a custom error page for visitors of this website, depending on the settings of the website.

5. Back Up Website Files

Whenever you work on a file or page, it is automatically stored in a backup file. If you do get unfortunately hacked and important data is compromised, modified, or stolen, a backup system can help recover lost data.

The web host should include a backup tool that allows you to back up your files and online content for a set amount of time—so look around for those settings if you haven't seen them yet.

6. Install Firewalls

A firewall is software that prevents unauthorized access and only allows certain types of traffic to pass through a computer system or network. Configuring a firewall is quite straightforward, depending on the level of control desired by the website owner. Even if the website owner does not have direct access to the firewall, most web hosts allow them to block certain IP addresses.

Another option is to protect the website's admin page from being accessed by anyone other than the owners' IP addresses. This prevents hackers from even accessing the login page.

Why Let LawyerLeadMachine Help You

Lawyer SEO revolves around your website. It's where potential clients find your content and contact information. So invest some time into your cybersecurity to keep your lawyer's digital marketing efforts, reputation, and user trust safe from malicious entities.

If you're new or too busy to implement SEO strategies, LawyerLeadMachine can help. LLM provides attorney marketing services to boost lead generation and rankings law firms in Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, and many other states. Whether it's content production, automation, or local SEO, you have options to work with us here.