You do not need to be a developer to ask the right security questions. Five checks any owner can make, and the questions to put to whoever builds and hosts your site.
Security has a reputation for being complicated, which leads many business owners to leave it entirely to their developer and never ask about it. Yet a handful of the most important protections are simple enough to check yourself, and the questions are ones any reasonable developer or host should be able to answer plainly. Here are five worth asking about.
First, is the whole site served over HTTPS? Look at the address bar. There should be a padlock and an address beginning with https on every page, including the ones with forms and your login screen. HTTPS encrypts the connection, so what a visitor types cannot be read on the way to your server, and browsers warn people away from sites that lack it. Also check that visiting the http version redirects to the secure one, and that the certificate renews automatically.
Second, how are passwords handled? Never store them as plain text. Properly built systems keep only a hashed form, produced with a slow algorithm designed for this purpose, such as bcrypt or Argon2, so that even the developers cannot read them. Ask your developer how it is done. Also look at your own habits. Every person with access to the admin area should use a long, unique password, ideally from a password manager, and where the option exists, two-factor authentication. A stolen or reused password is one of the most common ways that accounts are taken over.
Third, is everything up to date? Outdated software is behind a great many breaches. The framework, the plugins, the server software and the programming language all release security fixes, and those fixes only help once they have been applied. Ask who is responsible for updates, how often they are done and how you would know. If the honest answer is that nobody is, that is the finding.
Fourth, are there backups, and do they work? Ask where they are stored, how often they are taken, how many past versions are kept and when someone last restored one to prove it works. Backups should be kept away from the server they protect, because an attack or a hardware failure that takes out the site can take out a backup stored beside it. If a bad update, a mistake or an attack ruins your site, this is what determines whether you are back in an hour or start again.
Fifth, who has access to what? Each person should have an account of their own, with only the permissions they need. A person who only writes blog posts does not need to be able to change payment settings. When someone leaves the team or a freelancer finishes a job, remove their access on the same day. Shared logins make it impossible to tell who did what, and forgotten accounts are an open door.
Behind these checks sit some things you should expect from a competent developer, even if you never see them. Database queries written so that user input cannot alter them, which prevents a whole class of attack known as SQL injection. Forms protected against forged requests. File uploads restricted to safe types and checked by content, not just by name. Limits on repeated login attempts. And error messages that do not reveal how the system is built.
Consider what personal data you hold, too. If your site collects names, phone numbers, addresses or payment details, you are responsible for protecting them, and India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 sets expectations on how personal data is handled. Collect only what you need, keep it only as long as you need it, and use a reputable payment gateway so that card details never touch your own server.
Nobody can promise that a site will never be attacked. What you can do is make it a much harder target than the next one, and be able to recover quickly if something does go wrong. Start with these five questions, and if you would like a second opinion on the answers, we are happy to review your setup.