SPF for Your Website: Three Simple Steps to Protect Your Online Presence

As the days get longer and the mercury rises, we’re reminded yet again of the importance of remaining vigilant when it comes to applying sunscreen to protect ourselves from summer’s damaging rays. It’s a simple yet necessary precaution that if neglected has both short-term consequences – the painful agony of sunburn – and long-term ramifications – skin damage and increased risk of skin cancer. The same holds true for our websites. If we are not proactive in taking the necessary precautions to keep our online presence safe, problems will inevitably arise. Here are three simple measures you can take to apply SPF to your website that will safeguard the integrity not only of your brand’s online presence but its reputation as well:

(S)ecure your site against SQL injections.

Websites that feature data-driven applications can be vulnerable to attacks known as SQL injections, whereby malicious code is added to an entry field, then run and executed. These attacks exploit security vulnerabilities in problematic code, attacking your site’s database and performing any number of actions, from adding unapproved content to your public-facing site to allowing the hacker to download your entire database. This is a prime example of why rigorous testing is absolutely critical prior to launch. If your site is already up and running, consult with your web team to make sure that it has undergone thorough testing and is protected against such hacks. If you want to take additional precautionary measures, there are also security companies that specialize in detecting these types of website and database vulnerabilities, and they can provide you with a security audit.

(P)rotect your domain name.

It’s common sense that you must pay to acquire the domain name where your business will reside online. However, it’s important to remember that you have to continue to pay in order to retain the rights to use that domain name. Essentially, when you purchase your domain name, you’re not buying it outright. Rather, you’re renting that name for a specified period of time. Most registrars (Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Register.com, etc.) allow you to secure a name for anywhere from 12 months to 99 years. If you allow your registration to lapse, however, the domain name becomes available for purchase again and is open to the public for anyone to acquire. Bear in mind that there are actually companies that profit handsomely from business owners who neglect their domain registrations. They monitor domains that are nearing expiration, taking ownership of them the moment they become available. If you have the misfortune of having your domain acquired by one of these companies, usually you can negotiate having ownership transferred back to you, but it will cost you dearly. Unfortunately, while this is a shady practice, it is not illegal. If you allow your domain name to expire, it is fair game for anyone to register it – including these types of companies. Before your domain name expires, your registrar will likely send you many notices prompting you to renew. I start getting domain name renewal notices six months or more before the scheduled expiration date, and as that date gets closer, the notices start coming more and more frequently. Still, despite this barrage of email notifications, there are still many companies that are unaware that their expiration date is approaching, and they either lose their domain name altogether or are forced to pay a king’s ransom to get it back. Often when this situation occurs, it is because the person who initially completed the registration process for the domain name is no longer with the company, and therefore the email address they used to register the name is no longer valid, so the multitude of email notices go unreceived. The company innocently thinks they are protected until one day they stop receiving emails (yes, your email is tied into your domain name), or a customer mentions that they tried to go to the site, and it was simply gone. Even though there is a grace period after a domain has lapsed that allows you to reclaim your ownership before it becomes open to the public, the lapse isn’t always discovered in time to take advantage of this safety net. To prevent this, it is critically important to keep the contact information for your domain registration up to date. Either contact your registrar directly or speak with your web team to make sure you know when each of the domain names you own needs to be renewed, and double-check to ensure that the contact information for your account is valid.

(F)ortify your forms.

Web forms are a staple of doing business online. In fact, rare is the site that doesn’t include a form of some sort that allows the user to input information to be transmitted to the site’s owner, whether its purpose is to make a contact inquiry, sign up for a mailing list, complete a purchase, apply for employment, etc. As anyone who has a form on their site can attest, however, not all submissions received via these forms are legitimate. This is called robot spam, which is created by spammers who write programs that send out spambots to indiscriminately fill out any and all different types of forms on the Web, looking for entryways to expose a site’s security vulnerabilities (see SQL injections above). If you find your inbox filling up with indecipherable junk submissions, it’s these bots who are to blame. To combat these spambots, you can install a CAPTCHA system on your form, which generates an image with a random combination of numbers and letters that the user must enter in order to submit the form. The spambots can't interpret these CAPTCHA images, so therefore they can’t complete the process of sending the form. While there is legitimate debate as to whether or not CAPTCHA is the most effective way to prevent bogus submissions, it still remains the most popular solution for web form security. However, the reason it’s important to block these bots goes beyond eliminating the annoyance of a cluttered inbox. A few months ago, my company decided to remove the CAPTCHA requirement from our contact form. We knew we would get a flood of spam submissions, but we decided we could deal with a little extra hassle on our end in exchange for reducing the inconvenience to legitimate users of having to interpret those squiggly letters in order to simply get in touch with us. As expected, the amount of spam we received increased dramatically, but it was still manageable. Then, all of a sudden, we stopped receiving any submissions at all. We also began seeing some of our emails to other people bounce back. What we discovered was that our web domain (which is where our emails originate from) had been blacklisted as spam by Microsoft (which is what powers our email platform). Apparently, all the bogus submissions from our website (which resides on our domain) to our email caused Microsoft to identify us as spammers. This is because our form submissions came from an email address associated with our own domain name (many web forms are configured this way). Obviously, we were not the ones generating the spam, but this strange series of coincidences conspired to get us blacklisted! Fortunately, it was an easy process to get our domain removed from the blacklist, and we quickly re-installed the CAPTCHA system on our contact form, but we certainly learned an important lesson about security and spambots along the way. If you allow those bogus entries to make it through, there is a risk that you, too, could find yourself blacklisted and unable to send email to some of your most important contacts.

Seize the day and stay safe.

Since summer is vacation season for many of us, business tends to slow down slightly as our clients and colleagues enjoy much-deserved time off. That makes this the perfect time to seize the opportunity to apply these S-P-F practices today to ensure that your online presence is well protected all year long.

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Goodbye, Marketing. Hello, Trustcasting.

You hate marketing. So do we. The truth is that marketing has earned its bad reputation with every unfulfilled promise, every misleading claim and every disingenuous tagline it broadcasts to the world. Marketing’s presence is inescapable. Its attitude is one of disrespect, demanding our time and participation on its own terms. Its conversations are one-way and its relationships are self-serving. Its terminology is that of deception — slick, glossy, flash, spin. Its influence on our culture is subversive, promoting the shallow and the artificial. Its methods are rooted in laziness, always chasing the most gain through the least amount of effort. In a world ruled by marketing, loyalty is a commodity to be bought, not earned. The race comes down to who can spend the most, talk the loudest and be heard above the din of the competition. The day has come when marketing is no longer an immovable force standing between companies and their customers.Fortunately, the day has come when marketing is no longer an immovable force standing between companies and their customers. The methods of communication have been revolutionized, creating unlimited channels for conversations not only between one person and another but between people and business. Almost simultaneously, economic uncertainty has created a generation of discerning consumers that are no longer willing to passively absorb the web of lies concocted by marketing’s spin doctors. Together, these two major shifts have rendered the old systems of mass marketing ineffectual. It’s time to eradicate this insidious affliction from our culture. In the Trust Manifesto, we established that “In a marketplace founded by, built by and existing for the people, trust is the only fundamental currency.” If the new currency of business is trust, the new way to grow business is trustcasting. What is trustcasting? Simply put, it is the ongoing process of building and maintaining trust between a business and its customers. Following the first and most important principle outlined in the Trust Manifesto, trustcasting holds as its mantra that any and all resources dedicated to the promotion of business must directly or indirectly be founded in trust. Trustcasting approaches customers as people, not numbers. For those ingrained in the old practices of mass marketing, this represents a daunting ideological shift. The task of earning and keeping trust cannot be reduced to statistics or demographic segments. If the new currency of business is trust, the new way to grow business is trustcasting.As the world of business returns to operating at the human level, the crutches of marketing are stripped away. You can no longer gloss over serious issues with pretty ads; you can’t mask mediocrity with perfectly scripted commercials. In trustcasting, everything is centered around developing an authentic and reciprocal relationship between company and customer, a process for which no shortcuts exist. Trustcasting requires that you get to know your customers on a personal level and engage them in two-way conversation. Communication must be conducted in human terms and show human qualities — sincerity, candor, even humility. The quality of the interaction should demonstrate that you not only value their time and attention but have their best interests at heart. In all things, respect for the customer is paramount. Trustcasting recognizes that word-of-mouth is no longer a by-product of marketing but the primary medium by which today's customers are won. Therefore, rather than pouring untold sums into advertising, the real investment is made in the quality of the product or service. Listen to your customers and reevaluate what you have to offer. Strive to deliver a message they want to believe in, a product they want to own and a culture they not only want to be a part of but are driven to convince others to join as well. While the methods of communication employed by trustcasting agents may be revolutionary, the practices and principles of trustcasting are not. They are rooted in and based upon a timeless, proven approach to business development — the way business was done before marketing intervened in the relationship between companies and customers. When it comes to earning and keeping trust, there is no substitute for hard work, honest communication and real value. The time to begin trustcasting is now. Seek out an agency that is engaged in bona fide trustcasting practices, and launch yourself ahead of your competitors who are stuck in the old ways of marketing. At first glance, the new rules for doing business might seem formidable. In truth, trustcasting demands much more from companies than marketing. However, the payoff for the additional investment in time and resources required is getting and keeping the best kind of customers — true, dedicated fans that identify themselves with and become evangelists for your brand.

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