Is my website secure?
Most business owners think their website is secure. They paid a developer to build it, it has a padlock in the address bar, and nothing bad has happened yet. That logic sounds reasonable. It is also wrong in most cases.
The padlock means your connection is encrypted. It says nothing about whether your login page can be bypassed, whether your customer data can be extracted through your contact form, or whether someone has already been in your database for the past six months without you knowing.
Here are seven signs your website is not as secure as you think.
1. You have never had a security test
This is the most common situation. A website is built, launched, and maintained for years without anyone ever checking whether it can be compromised. Developers build websites. Security testers look for ways to break them. The skills overlap very little.
If your site has never been tested by someone actively trying to find vulnerabilities, you have no evidence it is secure. You have only the absence of a known breach, which is not the same thing. Attackers are patient and quiet. Many breaches go undetected for months.
2. Your admin panel is publicly accessible
Type /admin, /wp-admin, /login, or /dashboard after your domain name. If a login form appears — one that anyone on the internet can reach — that is a problem. Exposed admin panels are one of the most common starting points for automated attacks.
A properly configured site restricts admin access to specific IP addresses, requires VPN access, or sits behind multi-factor authentication. If yours does not, it is open to brute force attacks around the clock.
3. Your forms accept anything you type
Go to your contact form or search box and type a single quotation mark. If the page throws an error or behaves unexpectedly, your site may be vulnerable to injection attacks. This vulnerability allows attackers to inject malicious code into pages viewed by your customers, steal session cookies, and capture login credentials.
4. You do not get emails from your own domain
Without SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, anyone can send emails that appear to come from your business. This is how phishing attacks targeting your customers begin. Check your DNS settings or ask your developer whether these records are in place.
5. Your SSL certificate is about to expire
Go to your site and click the padlock. Look at the certificate expiry date. If it expires within 30 days and you are not aware of an automatic renewal process, your site will start showing security warnings to visitors.
6. Your site runs on outdated software
Outdated WordPress installations and unmaintained plugins are responsible for a significant proportion of UK small business website breaches. Attackers run automated scanners that identify sites running known vulnerable software versions and exploit them at scale.
7. You do not know what your site does with user data
If you cannot answer these questions, your site may have data handling problems: Where is customer data stored? Who has access to the database? Is the database exposed to the internet? Are user passwords hashed?
How to find out for certain
The only reliable way to know whether your website is secure is to test it. Yrzo AI runs 44 automated security checks against your live site — including all seven issues above — and delivers a plain-English report in under 20 minutes. The report tells you exactly what is wrong and exactly how to fix it.
A scan costs £399. A data breach costs an average of £3.4 million.
Find out if your website has these vulnerabilities
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