Securing Your Website: HTTPS, Backups, and Updates

A website that goes down, displays "Not secure," or gets hacked isn't a fate reserved for large corporations. Quite the opposite: small businesses are easy targets, because their sites are often left unmonitored. Yet nearly all incidents come from three avoidable oversights: no HTTPS, no reliable backup, no regular updates. This guide covers these three pillars with a step-by-step method, concrete examples, and a ready-to-use checklist.

A website's security isn't a one-off project you check off once and for all: it's a routine. The good news is that once the right habits are in place, most of it runs automatically in the background. This article focuses on what truly protects your business day to day, without drowning you in technical detail. If you're starting a new project, build these habits in from the outset by following our checklist for building a high-performance website.

HTTPS: the non-negotiable foundation

HTTPS encrypts the exchanges between your visitors' browsers and your server. Without it, everything typed in (contact forms, login credentials, banking details) travels in plain text and can be intercepted on a public Wi-Fi network or by a malicious intermediary. In practice, a site running on plain HTTP now triggers a "Not secure" warning in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, which drives visitors away and hurts your search rankings.

Setting it up relies on an SSL/TLS certificate. With nearly every hosting provider, the free Let's Encrypt certificate is available in one click and renews automatically every 90 days. There's no longer any financial reason to stay on HTTP. For sites that handle payments or sensitive data, a paid organization-validated (OV) certificate can add an extra layer of trust, but for a standard brochure site or blog, Let's Encrypt is more than enough.

The steps to enable and verify HTTPS

1. 1Enable the SSL certificate from your hosting control panel (often a "Let's Encrypt" or "Free SSL" checkbox).
2. 2Force the redirect from HTTP to HTTPS so all old URLs automatically switch over with a 301.
3. 3Fix "mixed content": images, scripts, or fonts still called over http:// that break the padlock.
4. 4Enable the HSTS header to enforce HTTPS in browsers on subsequent visits.
5. 5Update your internal links, sitemaps, and Google Search Console configuration with the https:// version.
6. 6Check the result: the padlock must appear on every page, including the contact or checkout flow.

If you're moving an already-indexed site from an old HTTP version to HTTPS, pay particular attention to redirects: a poorly handled migration can sink your visibility. We cover this in detail in our guide on how to migrate your site without losing your search rankings.

Backups: your safety net

A backup is what turns a disaster (a hack, a slip of the hand, a botched update, a hosting outage) into a mere thirty-minute inconvenience. Take a common case: a tradesperson updating a plugin on their brochure site themselves, triggering a blank white page, with no idea how to roll back. With a recent, tested backup, they restore yesterday's version in a few clicks. Without it, that's several hours of work and sometimes an emergency call to a service provider.

Yet many sites rely on a single copy… stored on the same server as the site. If the server goes down or is compromised, everything disappears at once: the site AND its backup. It's the most common and most dangerous mistake.

Best practice comes down to the 3-2-1 rule: at least 3 copies of your data, on 2 different media, with 1 offsite (cloud or external drive). A backup is only truly reliable if it's stored offsite and tested. This logic applies to all your business files, not just your website: see how to automate the backup of your important files to apply the same principle across the whole company.

What should you back up?

• The site files: theme, code, images, downloadable documents.
• The database: content, accounts, orders, submitted forms.
• Server configurations and environment variables.
• Access credentials, kept in a password manager rather than a file on your desktop.

Updates: patching the holes before they're exploited

The vast majority of site hacks don't target anyone in particular. Bots scan the web continuously looking for outdated versions of CMS platforms, plugins, or themes with known, published vulnerabilities. An up-to-date site is a far harder target. The real risk isn't being personally singled out, it's being vulnerable among the millions of sites scanned every day.

Three layers need to be maintained: the CMS core (WordPress, for example), the plugins and themes, and the server environment (PHP version, operating system). An end-of-life PHP version no longer receives security patches and also slows your site down. Many small businesses don't realize their hosting is still running an abandoned PHP version: simply moving to a supported version fixes vulnerabilities and often improves performance.

A stress-free update routine

1. 1Always back up before any update.
2. 2Apply critical security updates without delay.
3. 3Test major updates on a staging environment before production.
4. 4Check the site afterward: key pages, forms, checkout flow.
5. 5Remove unused plugins and themes: less installed code means less attack surface.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Updating everything at once, with no prior backup or testing: the failure hits at the worst possible time.
• Piling up plugins "just in case": every plugin adds code and therefore risk.
• Ignoring updates because "the site works": an unpatched vulnerability stays exploitable even on a site that runs fine.
• Endlessly postponing the PHP version upgrade for fear of breaking something, instead of testing it in staging.

Securing access: the often-forgotten link

HTTPS, backups, and updates protect the infrastructure, but the entry point attackers use most is still the login page. A weak password, or one reused across several services, is enough to open your site's admin area to a bot testing thousands of combinations. That's why access security deserves as much attention as the rest.

• Strong, unique passwords, with two-factor authentication on admin access.
• Login attempt limits to block brute-force attacks.
• A web application firewall (WAF) in front of the site to filter out malicious traffic.
• The principle of least privilege: each user only has the rights they need, and provider access is revoked at the end of an engagement.
• A changed admin URL rather than the classic /wp-admin left at its default.

To build genuinely solid credentials, rely on our method to create a strong, secure password and generate them with a dedicated tool rather than always reusing the same ones.

A site's security isn't measured on the day everything is fine, but on the day something breaks. It's the preparation that makes the difference.

Going further: monitoring and good habits

Once the foundations are in place, a few extra habits noticeably strengthen your protection without disproportionate effort. Set up monitoring that alerts you if the site goes down or if a file is modified unexpectedly. Schedule regular security scans to detect code injections. And think about media hygiene: oversized images slow the site down, bloat backups, and complicate restores.

Your summary checklist

If you take away only one thing: these pillars can largely be managed automatically. Here's the checklist to bring your site up to standard:

• HTTPS active across the whole site, HTTP → HTTPS redirect, and the padlock verified on every page.
• Automatic offsite backups following the 3-2-1 rule, with a quarterly test restore.
• CMS, plugins, themes, and PHP version kept up to date, with a backup before every change.
• Secured access: strong, unique passwords, two-factor authentication, limited rights.
• Unused plugins removed, media lightened, and active site monitoring.

Frequently asked questions

In summary

Securing your website rests on three pillars within reach of any small business: a properly enabled HTTPS, backups stored offsite and tested according to the 3-2-1 rule, and regular updates of the CMS, plugins, and server environment. Add protected access and a bit of monitoring, and you eliminate the vast majority of incidents. The key isn't doing everything once, but maintaining these habits over time, ideally automatically. At TC Automation, we support small businesses in building, securing, and maintaining their websites, with automated backups, supervised updates, and continuous monitoring. If you'd rather keep your peace of mind while your site stays in good health, let's talk about your project: we'll turn this checklist into lasting peace of mind.