Small business owners who are just starting with their web application might think, “My business is too small for any hacker to be interested in my website. There’s bigger fish in the sea.”

However, that is exactly where small enterprises fall into the malicious hacker’s trap. Unfortunately, hackers tend to target small websites and businesses specifically because of their lack of security. We all know the kind of destruction that they can wreak once they are in.

If you are one such small business owner who never really paid much attention to your website’s security, then this post is for you. Let’s explore some of the terrible things a hacker can do to your website and why cybersecurity is important.

1. Steal Your Sensitive Information

The biggest risk to your website with a hacker is causing a breach in your data and information. You might own a small website, but your website still collects dozens of private information from users. Personal information, bank details, payment records, and credit card credentials are all things your website would have collected over the days. All of this information is a literal gold mine for hackers. They can sell it on the dark market and rake in money.

2. Leak Your Intellectual Property

No matter how irrelevant you think your website is, your website would ultimately hold several intellectual property items. Websites usually possess confidential company data and information, leads on sales, and information on customers and vendors. Hackers can cause a breach in your intellectual property, which could eventually lead to a loss in business and even financial ruin.

Not only will your customers be exposed, but your reputation will be damaged, and you will lose the competitive edge that you once had. To top it all off, a breach in security for intellectual property on your website might even lead to hefty fines. At worst, it can even leave you tangled up in lawsuits for years to come.

3. Hold Your Website Ransom

If you think that you do not have any sensitive information or intellectual property on your website, which is why you might not be a likely target for hackers, then you might want to think again. Hackers are probably some of the cleverest people on this planet. They know every possible way in which they can make money off of your website.

If they can’t steal your data or intellectual property, then they might resort to stealing all of your content and holding it for a ransom. And without your content, where would you be? You would eventually make a huge dent in your finances by just buying everything on your website back from your hacker.

4. Add Dangerous Items To Your Website

Hackers can lay waste to your website by adding dangerous items, with you being none the wiser. For instance, hackers might add links to their websites to increase traffic, and they might do so by linking your content to their websites or adding some popups for your customers. This might not be so dangerous, you might think, but having a website compromised in this manner is even more foreboding.

This is because a hacker can also use your website as a host to start a malware campaign by adding crypto mining or ransomware to your website. Your web server will then become the source from which other organizations will be hacked. The hacker can add malware to hack into the various devices used to visit your website. This way, pretty much everyone and everything involved with your website are at risk.

5. Generate Spam And Send Messages

Once hacked into your website, all of your client data is now open to your hackers. They can then use all of this information to generate spam messages and emails that go out to all of your clients. Some hackers might even use your website to send other kinds of messages. It is not unique for a hacker to send across a political statement through a hacked website.

6. To Conduct Phishing Attacks

Vulnerable website applications are the prime targets of hackers who wish to implement phishing attacks. All they need to do is insert a code into your application to redirect your visitors to malicious pages and phishing sites. After this, you are extracting bank details, and payment information is a piece of cake.

The most critical part of all of this is that even if you are found to be innocent in this phishing scam, you might still be legally held responsible for the damage caused to your customers.

7. Conduct Illegal Distribution Of Content

Last but not least, hackers might be using your website to distribute illegal content on the internet. Unfortunately, this might leave you to face grave legal consequences if the authorities ever catch your website. What’s more, website hackers also try to abuse your bandwidth while distributing their content on the web.

8. Wrapping up

When it comes to website security, nothing holds truer than the old saying – “better safe than sorry!” Never think that you or your website are safe from hackers. Treat anything and everything you own on the internet with suspicion, and establish security protocols to protect yourself and your website visitors.