Online security is a massive issue with hackers becoming increasing educated on how to expose flaws in a websites programming code. Recently we have seen many large companies such as PayPal and even some of the government websites being accessed by unauthorised people and this often results in private data being stolen which is often then sold on. This causes not only an issue for the website owners but for all of their customers and can really have a detrimental effect on their reputation.
There are many ways a company can try and protect their website from becoming exposed although there is no solutions that is one hundred percent guaranteed. Making sure that the website has been programmed in the correct way is one along with ensuring that all servers, applications and plug-ins etc are up to date. Ensuring data is continually backed up will not help in terms of data being stolen, but can mean that if the website is tampered with, it can be restored quickly with little down time.