In the last ten years, numerous organizations have been subject security hacks and data breaches. Why are so many websites being breached, and what can be done to prevent it?
While there’s no perfect solution to security (since humans develop software, and humans are imperfect), there are concrete measures that can be put in place that substantially minimize the risk. Here are some of the common security issues that ministries face, and what Radiant WebTools does to minimize those risks.
We get it. Budgets are tight, so ministries are always trying to find a good deal. But when that good deal comes at the expense of security, that risk isn’t worth it. Many of the websites we see these days (a lot of them being WordPress sites) use third-party plug-ins that are developed by students in their basements. We’re not saying that in itself is inherently bad—everyone loves a good entrepreneur. And we’re also not saying that developers are being malicious with their code (although we’ve seen that happen too). What we are saying is that ministries are often relying on dozens of these third-party plug-ins to power their mission-critical websites. All it takes is one of those third-party developers to miss a line of code (since they’re often thinking about “functionality”, not “security”), or as often happens, abandon the plug-in because they find a job somewhere—which inevitably means that the plug-in is not being patched with new security updates.
Is that a risk your ministry can afford to take? Is your donor’s data worth it? You might say to yourself, “Oh, they’re just being fear-mongers.” But 22 years of experience tells us that these mishaps are costing organizations millions of dollars every day. Here are some facts:
30,000 websites are hacked each day. (Read More)
According to data from Juniper Research, the average cost of a data breach will exceed $150 million by 2020 — and by 2019, cybercrime will cost businesses over $2 trillion — a four-fold increase from 2015. (Read More)
It takes most business about 197 days to detect a breach on their network. (Read More)
According to statistics from 40,000+ WordPress Websites in Alexa Top 1 Million, more than 70% of WordPress installations are vulnerable to hacker attacks. (Read More)
We recognize that code security is not something to be taken lightly. Instead of depending on third-party developers, we write 99% of our code in-house using our own senior development team. As for the other 1% (mostly JavaScript libraries), we review and modify the code to our liking. Because we’ve been working on Radiant WebTools since 2002 (which is actually a year before WordPress even launched!), we have a massive code repository completely customized for ministries.
Furthermore, our development team is continually improving on the tech behind Radiant WebTools, and if we ever see something that could pose a future risk, we address it immediately.
The headline here pretty much speaks for itself on this one. Often times, hosting providers are trying to provide you with the most cost-effective solution, not taking into consideration how mission-critical your site needs to be.
First and foremost, Radiant does not share its servers with anyone. All of our servers are completely dedicated to our clientele, and we don’t allow anyone to upload server-side code that could affect any of our other clients.
Secondly, we host our server farm in a 5-9’s facility which means that the building infrastructure is world-class-rigorous security protocols, diesel and battery backups, separate power supplies, multiple telco lines, etc. Within our server farm, we have state-of-the-art servers behind leading firewall technology.
Finally, critical data is backed up on a regular basis, so if an unlikely disaster struck, we have backups.
We see one of two things happen on a fairly regular basis:
Radiant WebTools is designed to be an enterprise-level solution that serves mission-critical ministries. We have a team of trained professionals who are constantly monitoring servers and support requests to make sure everything is as it should be.
That means you don’t need to worry about third-party developers (including friends of friends). Nor do you have to worry about fly-by-night hosting providers. The team at Radiant manages all of that so that you don’t have to.