Arnaud de Klerk

Website/Server Security


Why is Security important?

Website/Server security is extremely important these days, as online threats and attacks continue to grow in frequency and sophistication. A secure website not only protects your business and your customers from data breaches and identity theft, but it also helps to maintain your reputation and credibility.

Taking this into account, it's quite strange to see that the website of my namesake, Arnaud de Klerk, doesn't even actually follow basic security rules. Even though he presents himself as an IT professional.

There are several reasons why website security is important. To name a few:

* Protecting sensitive data: A secure website protects sensitive data such as customer information, credit card numbers, and login credentials from being stolen by hackers.
* Maintaining trust: A website that has been compromised can damage the trust and confidence that customers have in your business, leading to and a damaged reputation (and lost sales). And rebuilding trust is not an easy task!
* Compliance: Quite some industries have regulatory requirements for data protection and failure to comply with these regulations can result in quite hefty fines & legal action.
* SEO: Search engines (Google, Bing, etc...) are increasingly prioritizing secure websites in their rankings, so a lack of security can negatively impact your search engine visibility and ultimately your online visibility (and sales).

Even if your website is not processing any private data, it's always a good thing to keep your website & server as secure as possible and so you would expect one to practice what he preaches:

The Security scores of my arnauddeklerk.nl, my namesakes website:
arnauddeklerk.nl Arnaud de Klerk security scores

The Security scores of arnauddeklerk.com, my website:
arnauddeklerk.com Arnaud de Klerk security scores

This is mostly due to missing security headers, while implementing security headers is a relatively simple and effective way to improve the security of your website. And although you can't leave any data on that website, you'd expect better from a self-appointed "Tech Lead"

Security headers are very important when it comes down to website security, as they provide an additional layer of protection against various types of attacks. Security headers are HTTP response headers that provide instructions to the browser on how to behave when loading a web page. These headers can help to prevent attacks such as cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking, content sniffing, etc...