How Does a CDN Help You In Your Website Security
The Role Of a CDN in Website Security
Today, websites need to be consistent in delivering high performance to visitors. Websites have become an essential aspect of the marketing strategy for companies today, and a good website experience can both delight the visitor and convert them into a valuable prospect for the business.
High-quality user experience is not only defined by the front-end aspect of web development, but back-end optimizations are critical as well. A website that is fast, robust, and very importantly “secure”.
The Security and CDN Landscape
With so much information being passed around on the internet, which includes highly-sensitive user information related to bank details, user account login details, etc.; security has become immensely important. Data mishaps can quickly turn into a negative PR, and degrade your brand perception, impacting your bottom line in both the short as well as the long run.
Not only is security important from a user experience standpoint, but it is also very critical from an SEO perspective. The trustworthiness of a website is an important ranking signal, as has been proven within numerous SEO experiments. Sites need to ensure this by both guaranteeing a safe and encrypted communication between the client and the server as well as ensuring that it is following the best technical guidelines concerning database practices.
Enter CDNs
There are several technologies that by working together, help to deliver a solid foundation for site security. For example, web application firewalls are one technology that helps keep information secure. SSL certificates are another installment that ensures privacy and security by encrypting all the data that passes between the server and client. However, there is a common tendency to present SSL certifications as the panacea for web security concerns. That is not the case, however. Google has started to flag non-HTTPS sites (HTTPS refers to a protocol for communicating with sites that have SSL certificate installed on them), as “Not Secure“; and that is some statement.
CDNs have emerged as a critical component of website architecture today. A Content Delivery Network (CDN), uses a web of interconnected networks of geographically distributed data centres to cache the content in strategic locations (PoPs) to deliver fast content. In the absence of a CDN, the request from the client will have to travel to the origin server and back. Not only fast response times, CDNs offer several other benefits as well. For example, CDNs help to prevent the heavy traffic overloading the server of origin since the traffic will now be hitting multiple CDNs Points of Presence (PoPs) instead.
How CDNs Help to Keep You In terms of Security
CDNs work by caching content in multiple PoPs distributed across the globe. CDNs deliver numerous benefits that help to keep your website secure and increase the robustness of your web infrastructure. CDNs are recommended practices for the server’s health and security. A CDN offers these by offering multiple benefits.
- Fewer hits on origin server – For the long-term health of your web infrastructure, the health of your website server is paramount. If your web server is getting bombarded with a lot of requests, then it affects the health and performance in the long-term.
- Utilizing superior hardware technology to optimize file access and storage – A CDN utilizes best in class hardware technology for hardware optimization, efficient load balancing, file compression using standard GZip compress storing and providing access to files. It is superior from a performance, as well as the security perspective.
- Protection against DDoS attacks – A DDoS attack floods the server with a massive amount of requests from thousands of botnets, using malware. As a result, the server is unable to respond to legitimate requests. A DDoS attack can severely degrade or interrupt content delivery and are growing in sophistication and complexity. Good CDN providers provide robust protection against the DDoS attacks.
- Scalability – A highly beneficial aspect of a CDN is the scalability that it offers. You can quickly sign up and deploy a service as per your needs, and within hours you will be set up with an enterprise-grade solution that will deliver a superior service.
However, it is also essential to get the right CDN service provider onboard. Just having a CDN in place is not going to be secure. The cached information might itself be subject to hijacking by hacker groups. If it does occur, then highly sensitive customer information such as bank information, passwords, etc. can be stolen in this way. There have been instances where hackers have eavesdropped even HTTPS protocol.
At Medianova, we bring our extensive expertise and technical acumen to deliver optimally, and secure CDN managed services to our clients. Following the best industry practices, our 24*7 security operations team is there to ensure you have full support whenever you need it.
Wrapping up
Security is a primary criterion. You need to avoid carelessness on this aspect as this might lead to
- Rankings Loss
- Bad User Experience
- Negative Brand Perception
Security is not only necessary to fend off theft and loss, but it also ensures the optimal performance of your infrastructure.
And it is not enough to invest in a technology without taking a more in-depth look into the technology stack they provide and how successful they have been at preventing similar attacks.
At Medianova, our managed and private CDN services ensure security and optimization of online performance for our clients. While a CDNs primary purpose has been to reduce latency by shortening the distance between a website’s visitor and its server, today the expectations are very different and the stakes are much higher. Sign up for our free trial offer and feel relaxed with your website security.
