Honduras Chamber of Commerce and Industry website display in the ‘Sala de Prensa’ (Press Room) section.

The Honduras Chamber of Commerce and Industry website has been hacked.  The latest scourge of hacking has hit the business information website’s ‘Sala de Prensa’, or ‘Press Room’  section at http://www.ccit.hn/prensa/.

In mid-August  the Official Newspaper of Honduras, The Gazette, had their website hacked, and only a week or so later, another Honduras governmental website, the Ministry of the Interior and Population (SEIP) was hacked.

This most recent incident demonstrates how no one is immune when it comes to cyber crime, and people and businesses with websites should take extra precautions to ensure their website is locked down. It is best to check this out for professional help.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when looking at your internet website security:

1. Use a safe username and password. Use a mixture of lowercase and uppercase, and throw in an unusual character, such as a -, or !  Using common words for usernames such as “admin”, “administrator” or “Site Owner” causes problems because you are simply making the job of the hacker’s a lot easier. The GCP network security is what one needs to make sure that their system is secure.

2. Change your password regularly. Get on a schedule to change your password monthly.

3. Limit login attempts. Set the number of times you can attempt to login with the wrong password

4. Monitor your comments.  It is easy for someone to insert HTML code that causes trouble. Make sure you need to “validate” the form input before it’s posted, and strip out all but the most basic HTML tags.

5. Clear your tracks. If you are accustomed to using public computers, make certain you logout AND clear the machine’s cookies and cache. Even if the service provider claims “no tracking of privacy” occurs, a quick clean before you leave can only help.

One of the most important things you can do to save yourself a lot of headaches is to schedule regular backups.  It’s not always easy to remember to back up your data, but it is ever so important.  If a hacker takes over your website today, would you be able to restore it once you’ve eliminated the problem?  Automatically make backups of your database and store them on another computer.