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SeCurInG

WeBSITe

DIreCTOrIeS:

How to

Password

Protect a

Website

Directory

hanks to a seemingly endless series of high- com was hacked in July of 2015, the hackers unique soft point in your cybersecurity profile --
Tprofile commercial hacks, cybersecurity is transformed their efforts into a public crusade. a vulnerability, which can be mitigated through
now the fastest growing discipline within the They demanded that the website be permanently the use of password protection.
industry of information technology. It seems as closed, and threatened to release their stolen
though each new day sees millions of people information to the public if their demands were The following method will work for any
holding their breath, wondering whether this not met. Ultimately, a long list of information directory you wish to keep password protected.
will be the day that their personal and financial was released to the public; it included identifying It is particularly effective for the domain website
information is stolen. Such information can be information, credit card information, and directory, as its protection will extend to the rest
put to nefarious ends across a broad spectrum of privately disclosed sexual fantasies of your website’s structure. For a close analogy,
activity, from identity theft to extortion. think of the difference between locking the front
Embarrassingly, for the website itself, the door to your home, and locking each individual
A hacked network can also be easily subverted: release included parent company Avid Life door inside: a hacker who can’t get past that first
its resources can be put to use against other Media’s executive-level emails. Worse still, it also barrier will be unable to do so much as view any
networks, and persistent malware can be left included private information which customers potential opportunities within.
on its connected systems -- to be transmitted, had paid to have deleted from AshleyMadison’s
potentially, to hundreds of thousands of clients network. By the end of this ordeal, AshleyMadison.
Password Protection for Domain
and customers. Without a thorough overhaul, it’s com had lost a significant portion of its userbase,
Websites
difficult to trust that a hacked network will ever and was ultimately forced to rebrand itself. Its
be as secure as it was beforehand. emphasis on its target market was significantly To password protect your root directory, you’ll
reduced. Avid Life Media also underwent a first need to make sure that there is content in
Companies spend millions of dollars each year rebrand, and CEO Noel Biderman was forced to that directory, or the process will fail. Create an
on redundant cybersecurity measures, following step down. The financial fallout is still being felt index.html file if you don’t already have one, and
successful cyberattacks. Many of these measures today, two years after the fact plug a few words of text (“Hello, world!” or “I like
are necessary simply for the reassurance of their
cheese!” are personal favorites) between top-
customers. They often have nothing to do with
The Domain Website Directory level HTML tags.
the vulnerabilities which were taken advantage of
by their attackers in the first place, and they fail One of the major vulnerabilities that too often Next, create an .htaccess file within that
to thoroughly address other conspicuous gaps in goes unaddressed, even by experienced web directory. The prefix of “.” ensures that this file
network security the majority of the time. administrators, is that of the domain website will be invisible to those who find their way to
directory. Also known as the “root directory,” your domain via the Web. Once you’ve created
The Dark Side of the Moon the domain website directory includes all of the this file, open it with a simple text editor.
content that loads in a visitor’s Web browser NotePad++ and Sublime Text are two popular
There are still darker motivations for when they type in (or click on) your domain text editors, for those who dislike working with
commercial-level hacking. When AshleyMadison. name. Its ready accessibility by visitors makes it a Notepad’s limited functionality.

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