React, the library used to create interactive UI elements, is now an essential tool in web development. Its flexibility and strong environment make it loved by developers all over the globe.
Whether you are a professional React developer or are new to React, knowing what tools to use can make a big difference. To get the best out of your projects, you should always ensure that you have a team of dedicated React developers who understand all the tricks of these tools.
In this guide, we’ll explore the set of tools that any React developer should consider to have in their arsenal.
1. React DevTools
React DevTools is a Chrome extension for debugging React application’s component trees. This tool is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge and helps to make it easier to find performance issues and understand the state and props of components.
Developers can also watch how components re-render, which is very useful for improving the performance of an application.
2. Create React App (CRA)
If you are just starting a new project in React then Create React App is a gift for you. It comes with a basic configuration that gets you started with your application and comes with built-in Babel and Webpack configurations.
CRA does not require the creation of a project from scratch, which enables the developers to only write code.
3. Storybook
Storybook is a great tool to have when you want to create and test components in isolation. It enables developers to have a “storybook” of all components, which makes it easy to share with designers and stakeholders.
This also makes it easier to spot areas of disparity and make sure that each component functions correctly, which is why this kind of visual representation is useful.
4. ESLint and Prettier
Inconsistent code style and low quality are not acceptable in a professional development environment. ESLint is used for code quality and Prettier is used for code formatting. Including these tools in your React project guarantees you improved code quality, free from errors, and hence easier to maintain and scale.
5. Redux and React Query
State management can be tricky in large applications, and that’s where Redux and React Query shine. Redux is a powerful tool for managing global state, while React Query simplifies server-state handling and data fetching.
Depending on your project needs, these tools can drastically reduce the complexity of managing state in your React applications.
6. Visual Studio Code (VS Code)
A powerful code editor like VS Code is essential for React development. With its extensive library of extensions, such as the React-specific snippets and IntelliSense, VS Code boosts productivity. Features like integrated Git support and debugging tools further enhance the development experience.
7. React Router
For applications requiring navigation between pages, React Router is an indispensable tool. It simplifies routing within your React application, offering features like nested routes, dynamic routing, and lazy loading. This ensures seamless navigation experiences for users.
8. React Profiler
Performance bottlenecks can cripple your application, and React Profiler helps identify these issues effectively. Available as part of React DevTools, it allows developers to measure the rendering time of components and optimize where necessary.
9. Bit
Bit is a collaborative tool that allows developers to share and reuse React components across projects. By centralizing components in a dedicated repository, Bit fosters consistency and accelerates development time, particularly in larger teams.
10. React Testing Library
Testing is very crucial for every line of code. For React applications, the React Testing Library is used for conducting reliable tests for components. RTL focuses on user interactions and behaviors while making sure that your application works according to the intentions.
11. Formik
Forms can become a real struggle in React, especially when dealing with validations. Formik simplifies form handling, providing an intuitive API to manage form states, validations, and submissions with ease.
12. CodeSandbox
CodeSandbox is an online tool for React that allows developers to prototype, share, and collaborate on projects instantly. Its ability to integrate with GitHub and support multiple environments makes it a valuable tool for experimentation and quick demos.
Conclusion
The ecosystem of React has all the development-related stuff that developers need. The above tools of the React development toolkit enable developers to simplify and enhance the development process. So, for all React developers, it is extremely important to equip yourself with these tools. This will not only help you in your career but elevate your development skills.
The dynamic employment market of today shows companies implementing artificial intelligence to improve their hiring practices. Hiring qualified people quickly is more important than ever. The best AI recruitment toolsimprove hiring by automating tedious chores – they offer better insights into candidates and help businesses make informed hiring choices. AI can also improve employment by quickly scanning thousands of resumes, predicting how well candidates will do, and interacting with applicants using chatbots.
One of the most significant benefits of AI in hiring is its ability to streamline workflows, significantly cutting down time-to-hire while reducing human bias. Traditional hiring methods can be slow and biased, causing missed chances and wasting time. AI helps solve these problems by providing better evaluations based on data instead of gut feelings. Also, because AI can look through a lot of information, recruiters can find people who are a better fit for job roles, which helps improve hiring quality.
This article will look at the seven best AI recruitment tools popular in 2025. Also, explain the features, costs, and special advantages of the latest application tracking systems as well as discuss AI interview platforms to help you choose the right one for your hiring needs.
Benefits of Using AI Recruitment Tools
While hiring the correct staff can take time and effort, artificial intelligence helps to make this process more doable. Here’s how you might streamline your hiring procedure:
Faster and Smarter Hiring
You no longer have to go through hundreds of papers by hand. The best AI recruitment tools should automate tasks, such as reviewing the resumes and setting up the interviews, which significantly reduces the time to fill up the open positions. These programs can sort through a large pool of resumes and pick the most qualified applicants quickly. Consequently, recruiters are free to focus on higher-priority activities such as establishing meaningful relationships with candidates and making informed hiring decisions.
Bias Reduction in Hiring
Despite having justifiable intentions, employment decisions can be impacted by unconscious bias. By replacing subjective human judgment with objective, predetermined standards, AI recruitment technologies aid in the elimination of bias. Focusing on skills, experience, and qualifications, AI creates a better hiring process and encourages diversity in the workplace, helping companies make more inclusive teams.
Improved Candidate Matching
Finding the right candidate isn’t just about skills—it’s also about cultural fit. AI tools look at different information, like a person’s job background, skills, and personality, to find the best job for them. This makes employees happier, lowers the number of people leaving the company, and helps teams work better together.
Enhanced Candidate Experience
Nobody likes not hearing back after applying for a job. AI chatbots and automatic messages keep candidates updated during the hiring process. These AI recruitment tools help create a smooth and engaging experience for job candidates by quickly sending personalized emails and answering common questions. This also helps build a good image of the employer.
Cost Efficiency
Hiring can be costly, but AI helps reduce those expenses. AI makes it easier for HR teams to handle time-consuming tasks. This means they have less work and don’t need to hire more people. This effectiveness saves money and lets organizations put more into employee training, keeping staff, and growing the business.
Criteria for Choosing AI Recruitment Tools
Choosing the right artificial intelligence recruiting technology will help hiring teams improve by accelerating the process and raising its efficiency. Given so many possibilities, how would you choose which would be best for you? Here are the main things to think about when making your decision.
AI Utility
The best AI recruiting tools do more than look at resumes. They use machine learning to check candidate qualifications and predict how well they fit a job. AI-powered hiring tools simplify theprocess by automating tedious chores, and helps you make better decisions by reducing human bias and improving accuracy, making the best options more likely to be recognized. Find a tool with helpful features like reading resumes, organizing interviews automatically, and making predictions based on data.
Standalone Utility
An effective AI hiring software should function independently and rapidly integrate into your hiring process. If needed, it should also be readily connected to present systems and should not require intricate connections. This means that artificial intelligence can be applied for hiring even in small teams without a complete HR infrastructure.
Customizable Workflows
Recruitment isn’t the same for everyone, and your AI tool should reflect that. The best options let you adjust workflows, set screening guidelines, and create automation rules matching your company’s hiring methods. This freedom ensures the tool helps your hiring process instead of causing problems.
Extensibility & Integrations
AI employment tools should integrate with HR software, including application tracking, payroll, and communication tools like Slack and email. Native integrations or API support speed up system connections, simplifying hiring.
User-Friendly Interface
AI recruiting platforms are functional but less helpful if they’re too hard to use. Simple interfaces allow recruiters to move about the site quickly without much direction. A perfect user experience yields faster use, increased productivity, and better hire results.
After balancing these factors, you can choose an artificial intelligence job solution that boosts your business, saves time, and simplifies hiring.
7 Best AI Recruitment Tools
In 2025, the following are seven of the most effective best AI recruitment tools:
Best for: Making application agents and gathering data easier.
Overview: Jotform is an online tool for creating forms, AI agents, and chatbots. Data collection and management throughout the employment process is made easier with its suite of tools and templates, like the AI recruitment agent.
Key Features
An easy-to-use tool for creating forms and AI agents by dragging and dropping items to customize them.
Agents can work standalone or as a chatbot, voice or phone agent, on WhatsApp, as a separate app, and more.
Works with different platforms like CRM and HR tools.
Automated processes to make data collection and research easier.
Pricing
Starter: Free.
Bronze: $34/month (billed annually)
Silver: $39/month (billed annually)
Gold: $99/month (billed annually)
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Pros:
Easy-to-use layout with many customization choices.
Strong ability to work with other apps.
Better data handling using automated processes.
Cons
New users need some time to learn how to use the advanced automation features.
Why It’s a Top Pick for 2025: Jotform is great for making AI agents and managing data, helping managers simplify the application process and make better data-based decisions.
Best for: Improving job titles to be more inclusive and engaging.
Overview: Textio, an artificial intelligence writing assistant, can help job postings be better by right away suggesting more inclusive and intriguing phrasing.
Key Features
Instant comments on how to improve the tone and inclusivity of your language.
Predictions on how well job postings will perform.
Examining language trends and how they affect candidate involvement.
Pricing: Talk to sales
Pros
It makes everyone find job titles more appealing and friendly.
It gives helpful advice on how to make advertising content better.
A simple and easy-to-use design that gives helpful recommendations.
Cons
The higher price may be too much for smaller companies.
It mostly improves job descriptions and has few other employment features.
Why It’s a Top Pick for 2025: Textio aims to create welcoming and engaging job descriptions that help businesses attract a broad group of candidates and fit well with today’s hiring goals.
Best for: Doing video interviews and exams with the help of AI.
Overview: HireVue forecasts job performance and offers artificial intelligence-based video interview and review tools for evaluating candidate answers.
Key Features
Video interviews are available anytime, with AI providing insights.
Using games to test thinking skills.
Works with major Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).
Pricing
Essential: Talk to sales
Enterprise: Talk to sales
Premium: Talk to sales
Pros
Offers clear information to help with job choices.
Improves candidate involvement with live tests.
Cons
The high cost might be too much for smaller organizations.
Some applicants might like regular interview styles.
Why It’s a Top Pick for 2025: HireVue is a good resource for organizations seeking to improve their evaluation processes and mitigate employment biases. Its AI-driven insights and comprehensive evaluation tools enable clear explanations.
Best for: It is a good choice for connecting with candidates.
Overview: Paradox has an AI chatbot called Olivia. It helps with screening job candidates, organizing interviews, and keeping in touch with applicants, making the hiring process more manageable.
Key Features
Chatbot powered by AI for talking to candidates.
Automatic scheduling and notes for interviews.
Works with popular ATS systems.
Pricing: Talk to sales
Pros
Improves the candidate experience by responding quickly.
It makes organizing easier and cuts down on admin work.
A flexible option that works for different sizes of organizations.
Cons
The chatbot has few choices for customization.
May not fully understand complicated relations with candidates.
Why It’s a Top Pick for 2025: Paradox’s emphasis on automating contact with job candidates improves hiring. It speeds up responses, makes interview scheduling more manageable, and boosts recruiter efficiency.
Best for: Building a positive company image and improving the experience for job applicants.
Overview: Employers can boost their employer brand and streamline the hiring process with the help of Teamtailor. It is an AI-powered recruitment platform. Applicants can be easily tracked, and tools to automate the hiring process are provided.
Key Features
An application tracking system (ATS) powered by AI.
A personalized job website to improve the company’s image as an employer.
Automatic candidate support and messaging.
Pricing: Talk to sales
Pros
Simple interface with tools for promoting your company brand.
Good technology for talking to candidates.
Good at working with current HR tools.
Cons
Pricing information is not given to the public.
It may not match candidates as well with AI as some rivals do.
Why It’s a Top Pick for 2025: Teamtailor is a top pick for companies that focus on their brand as a workplace. Job candidates’ experience makes the hiring process smooth and enjoyable.
Best for: Using AI to review resumes and match candidates to jobs.
Overview: Skillate is an AI solution that optimizes the process of recruitment by processing resumes, job matching, and neutral applicant screening.
Key Features
AI that can read and sort resumes.
Improving job descriptions with machine learning.
AI powered chatbot for candidate engagement.
Pricing: Talk to sales
Pros
Reduces hiring biases with AI-driven screening.
It makes job descriptions better.
It uses a chatbot to interact with candidates automatically.
Cons
Some advanced AI recruiting platforms need training to use.
There is not much clear information about the prices.
Why It’s a Top Pick for 2025: Business requirement for a fair and data-based hiring policy makes the work of Skillate appealing as it has artificial intelligence technology that screens people for bias and thus equally fair.
Overview: Manatal is an AI-powered applicant tracking system (ATS) created for recruitment firms and HR teams. It provides AI suggestions for candidates, customer relationship management features, and automated processes.
Key Features
Suggestions for candidates made by AI.
Cloud-based ATS with drag-and-drop pathways.
Recruitment CRM with talent pipeline control.
Pricing
Professional Plan: $15/month/user
Enterprise Plan: $35/month/user
Enterprise Plus Plan: $55/month/user
Custom Plan: Talk to sales
Pros
Low-cost options for small and medium companies.
AI suggestions help you to match candidates better.
Easy-to-use layout – you can drag and drop items.
Cons
Less advanced analytics tools than top ATS choices.
AI features could require some tweaks to function effectively.
Why It’s a Top Pick for 2025: Manatal has AI tools and smart predictions plus HR automation for businesses to use and improve hiring processes. You can handle job management and monitoring through it.
Conclusion
Businesses now locate, analyze, and hire the finest people faster with automated recruitment tools.These tools ease hiring by analyzing resumes, matching candidates to vacancies, automating interviews, and connecting with candidates via chatbots.
Jotform collects application data and is a great overall tool, Textio inclusively titles jobs, and HireVue improves video interviews with AI. Teamtailor helps to enhance brand presence. Skillate guarantees fair treatment for job seekers and Manatal uses artificial intelligence to improve recruiting strategies and consumer connections.
Automated recruitment systems assist companies in improving candidate experiences, boosting efficiency, and making data-driven recruiting decisions. Businesses can consider these tactics in 2025 to remain competitive and meet staffing requirements.
Data augmentation is making waves in the tech world. Originally a cornerstone of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it’s gained traction over the past few years. Now, it’s proving its worth in web development, helping developers work smarter, not harder.
If you’re looking to understand how data augmentation can revolutionize your web development workflow, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to understand what data augmentation is, why it’s important, and how you can apply it to a wide range of media types to boost productivity and create exceptional web experiences.
What is data augmentation?
So, what is data augmentation? At its simplest, data augmentation is the process of generating additional data by applying transformations or variations to your original dataset. Think of data augmentation as giving your existing data a complete reboot.
This could mean turning or resizing an image, or changing the playback speed of a video.
In web development, this process helps solve common challenges like limited datasets and lack of diversity in training data for machine learning models. It’s essentially like having a digital assistant that expands your resources without needing to start from scratch. In a data augmentation pipeline run in a containerized application, Kubernetes cluster monitoring can help manage memory and storage requirements to avoid overwhelming the cluster and ensure efficient use of resources.
Augmented vs synthetic data
What’s the difference between augmented and synthetic data?
Augmented Data: This involves enhancing existing original datasets by creating altered versions of the original data, increasing diversity, and improving model performance.
Synthetic Data: This is when you create entirely artificial data, often generated through simulations or algorithms. Synthetic data is particularly valuable for testing and refining models while protecting the privacy and security of real-world datasets. Security can certainly be an issue when it comes to data; CentOS 7 extended support may be employed here to assist.
Why is data augmentation important?
Data augmentation is important for many reasons, not least because it can help with tackling data scarcity. Let’s face it, collecting large amounts of high-quality data can be a logistical nightmare.
Effective augmentation solves this problem by making the most of what you already have—tweaking and transforming existing data. This means you can multiply your dataset’s size and diversity without breaking the bank!
It’s also important because it boosts accuracy. Machine learning models trained on augmented datasets through a neural network perform better because they’re exposed to a broader range of scenarios. This helps them generalize, making them more reliable when handling real-world data.
When should you use data augmentation?
Knowing when to use data augmentation can make all the difference in your project’s success. Here are some instances where you should be using data augmentation:
Limited Data Availability: If your project lacks a large or diverse dataset, augmentation can help fill the gaps, ensuring you have enough data to work with.
Training Machine Deep Learning Models: For building AI-powered features like predictive search or dynamic content generation, augmented data improves model accuracy in the training process.
Enhancing User Experiences: Apps involving dynamic media such as photo editors or text-based assistants may benefit from augmentation as it creates richer, more engaging experiences for users. They may also require APIs to help them share data code with one another. But what is an API? It essentially allows the transfer of information between apps.
Testing Web Applications: Augmented data can simulate a variety of real-world scenarios. This helps you identify bugs or performance issues before launch.
What are data augmentation benefits?
Data augmentation offers a range of benefits that can transform your web development process. Here are some of these advantages:
1. Increases dataset size
A key challenge in web development, particularly for AI-powered applications, is ensuring your dataset covers a wide range of scenarios. The data augmentation process allows you to create this diversity without requiring entirely new data. For example, you can transform image datasets with rotations, flips, and color adjustments to simulate different environments and perspectives.
This diversity helps your applications perform better in real-world situations, reducing the likelihood of errors or unexpected behavior.
2. Faster development cycles
Web development can sometimes operate under tight deadlines. When you’ve got to gather or create new data it can slow things down. Augmentation speeds up this process by generating the data you need in a fraction of the time.
For example, instead of organizing a new photoshoot for product images, developers can create variations digitally. This efficiency allows developers to focus on refining features and delivering projects faster.
3. Cost saving
Another benefit of implementing a data augmentation strategy is that it can save costs. Collecting new data often requires significant resources, from hiring professionals to purchasing equipment or paying for external datasets. Augmentation reduces much of this cost by repurposing existing data.
This can lead to significant savings in time, effort, and money. These leftover resources can then be allocated elsewhere.
4. Better machine learning models
If your web development involves AI features like recommendation engines and AI chatbots, then data augmentation can significantly improve model performance.
Augmented datasets expose machine learning models to a broader range of inputs, enhancing their ability to generalize and handle unseen scenarios. Using generative adversarial networks (GAN) to help train them, over time, these models become more reliable and accurate—something critical for user-facing applications.
5. Scalability and flexibility
Adaptable and scalable data solutions are a must. Augmentation allows you to generate data on demand. Whether you’re adding new features, testing updates, or scaling up your app for a larger audience, data augmentation can provide the flexibility you need.
6. Helps overfitting
Training machine learning models for web applications, like recommendation engines or visual search tools, can lead to overfitting. This means the model performs well on training data but struggles with new unseen data. Adversarial networks can create new data that resembles a data set, which can assist with unseen data.
Data augmentation methods introduce variety and randomness to training datasets, which prevents models from relying too heavily on specific patterns. For instance, augmented audio data with variations in pitch or random noise in the background ensures speech recognition tools perform well across different environments.
What are data augmentation examples?
Here are some data augmentation examples across various media types used in web development:
Image augmentation
This is useful in web applications that rely heavily on visuals. E-commerce platforms are a good example of this; much of the website relies on a high-res image to sell the products.
Data augmentation is great for retail as it can produce synthetic data variations of your original image of the product, giving variance in lighting, backgrounds, and angles. You can add noise or blurring to test how the application handles low-quality inputs.
All of this provides customers with a more immersive shopping experience.
Audio augmentation
Audio augmentation helps improve applications like voice recognition tools and call center solutions. You can delete background noise, add noise injection, and change pitch, speed, and vocal characteristics.
This could be used by businesses that favor virtual assistants instead of human help, where customers call with a query and can then be guided by the assistant. It can be taught to better understand users in diverse environments, such as while driving or during a crowded commute.
Text augmentation
This is vital for applications that involve natural language processing (NLP). Think of chatbots and search engines—both use NLP. Data augmentation makes text models robust to any typos, paraphrasing, and poor sentence structures.
It helps with the way people express the same ideas differently and improves on response efficiency each time.
Video augmentation
Lastly, there’s video augmentation. As you might have guessed, this supports applications such as video editing tools or streaming platforms.
It can be used for altering playback speed to simulate slow motion or fast-forward effects and cropping or zooming to test how videos display on different devices. This may be used by video editors who create content for websites.
Using data augmentation to speed up web development
As we’ve seen above, from images and text to video and audio, there’s a variety of ways that data augmentation can help to speed up the web development process. It creates diverse variations of existing data by reducing the need for extensive data collection.
This technique enhances deep learning models and even personalizes user experiences to improve customer satisfaction. Not only this, but it accelerates testing and prototyping. For example, transforming images by flipping or resizing them can be done quickly and efficiently with minimal fuss. This enables developers to build robust applications faster.
Going forward
As we’ve covered in this article, data augmentation is a powerful tool for web development professionals. By transforming existing datasets into more diverse resources, you can in fact speed up development and create user-friendly websites in less time but with more accuracy.
Whether you’re optimizing images, training to improve the performance of machine learning models, or enhancing content on a page, explore how this technique can fit into your projects and watch your development process transform for the better.
Today, in a connected world, several devices must communicate with each other uninterruptedly. The multi-device landscape including smart phones, wearables and home devices interact to offer an immersive user experience. Often, when these devices are from different manufacturers, there arises a conflict in terms of interoperability. Therefore, the need for interoperability testing becomes essential to ensure that these devices work together flawlessly.
Significance of interoperability testing
The test verifies if different devices, applications and systems interact in such a way that it helps hassle-free exchange of data and implements tasks as expected to provide the best experience for end users. Therefore, the fundamental objective of interoperability testing is to recognize and address compatibility issues between different devices designed by different manufacturers, when they work together in a connected ecosystem.
Why is interoperability testing considered important?
Interoperability testing is key in a muti-device environment, due to a number of reasons. We shall investigate each of these reasons. Understanding the need for interoperability testing is significant in multi-device ecosystem helps manufacturers to implement it without fail.
Minimizes Compatibility Problems
As mentioned earlier, when several devices work together, compatibility issues can happen. Interoperability testing helps recognize and address these issues in the first place. As a result, devices from different manufacturers work together without any compatibility issues.
Exceptional User Experience
Interoperability testing is implemented to understand the efficiency of devices working together without any compatibility problems. Therefore, in a multi-device environment when all devices work together to offer the best performance, they can offer an interactive experience for end users.
Better Control of Resources and Time
Since interoperability testing focuses on identifying and addressing compatibility issues in advance, it helps manufacturers save time as well as resources. Further, it minimizes expensive rework, testing and debugging.
Radio Frequency (RF) Testing in Interoperability Testing
Apart from testing the efficacy of interoperability between the devices, it is also important to test the communication protocols these devices use. At this stage, Radio Frequency testing is considered significant. RF testing involves testing the radio frequency signals the devices use to interact with each other. In other words, it involves signal quality, signal strength and interference testing.
RF testing verifies if devices can interact effectively in any environment. Say, for example, a wearable device has to communicate with a smart home device during heavily crowded situations. Radio Frequency testing guarantees that the quality and signal strength are enough to provide flawless communication.
In fact, Radio Frequency testing helps manufacturers verify that their devices can interact without any issues under different environments. Also, it tests devices in different locations, for example in a field or inside a lab.
A Few Challenges in Interoperability Testing
Interoperability testing is essential, but it has a lot many challenges. Getting to know the bottlenecks and limitations would help devise a better plan or adopt the best practices to implement interoperability testing.
Many Devices from Different Manufacturers
Since there are several devices, operating systems and communication protocols, it can make the testing even more challenging.
Complex and Time-consuming
When multiple devices are involved, verifying the interactions between several devices can become complex and also consumes time.
Minimal Resources
Often, manufacturers have limited resources, for example in terms of time, persons, budget and so on. As a result, it can make interoperability testing difficult.
Some Best Practices for Interoperability Testing
Even though interoperability testing poses challenges, manufacturers can stick to the following best practices.
Create a complete test plan
The first and foremost step is to devise a plan that includes all the possible interactions between the devices. It involves steps such as identifying test scenarios, defining test cases, determining test environment, prioritizing test cases, creating test scripts, executing test cases, analyzing test results and refining the test plan based on the test results.
Reliance on Automated Testing Tools
To a great extent, using automated testing tools helps streamline the testing process and minimize the risk of manual error. Automated testing brings several advantages such as improved accuracy, increased test coverage, reduced costs, faster feedback and increased efficiency. Some of the common automated testing tools include Selenium, TestComplete, Appium, Cucumber and JMeter.
Collaboration Among Manufacturers
Collaborating with other manufacturers ensures that the devices interact and work together to provide a great end user experience. Further it improves interoperability, minimizes costs and gives a competitive advantage. For this, there should be clear cut objectives, define responsibilities, create shared test plan, establish communication channels and promote a collaborative culture.
Endnote
Interoperability testing is essential for a multi-device environment. When devices work together, ensure their efficiency by carefully incorporating Radio Frequency testing, providing support for innovation and collaboration. In the end, it guarantees the best performance and user experience while reducing costs. Furthermore, manufacturers can identify and fix any compatibility issues early on when a large number of devices work together.
Running a website can be time-consuming and arduous on its own when you have to manage all the various aspects such as the front-end design, the back-end maintenance, the hosting, etc.
One of the challenges that you have to face as a website owner or administrator is detecting and mitigating cyber threats. These threats seek to damage your website and bring it down, or worse, utilize its data for malicious purposes.
In this post, we will discuss five strategies to safeguard your website against common threats. But first, we will talk about the threats themselves to understand what exactly you have to watch out for.
Common Types of Cyber Threats to Watch Out For
Here is a brief list of the different types of cyber threats that you need to keep an eye out for:
Phishing scams: One of the threats your website can face is phishing. Phishing is a widespread problem, and it involves a malicious party posing to be from a reputable company to swindle people out of their private data or money. As a website, you are responsible for ensuring that no one can impersonate you by using an email address associated with your domain. We will guide you on how to do that in the below sections.
DDoS attacks: In a DDoS attack, a website is inundated with an influx of internet traffic that renders it incapable of working correctly. The website cannot process incoming requests and becomes temporarily disrupted. The purpose of these attacks is to disable the website and make it incapable of handling the requests of actual users.
Brute force attacks: In a brute force attack, a malicious party attempts to enter various login combinations into the sign-in portal of the website. A sheer number of combinations are entered quickly, and the goal is for one of them to go through so that the malicious party can access the restricted part of the website.
We can cover many other threats here as well, but let’s get into the main part of this post, i.e., how can you secure your website against them?
5 Strategies to Secure Your Website Against Common Threats
Ensure the correct configuration of DMARC records on your domain
Let’s talk about how you can protect your website against the first threat we discussed, i.e., phishing.
To protect a malicious party from using your domain’s email address, you must ensure the DMARC records are correctly configured.
What exactly are DMARC records? DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. It is a protocol used alongside SPF and DKIM records to ensure that emails sent by a domain are authorized and untampered with.
SPF stands for sender policy framework. It contains a list of the email servers that can send email messages on behalf of a domain. When an email is received by an email server, the latter checks the SPF records in the sender domain. Only if the sending email server is present in the SPF list is the message accepted as authoritative.
DKIM stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail. The DKIM record contains a public key used by a recipient email server to ensure the message hasn’t been tampered with. When an email message is sent, a special digital signature is created using the private key based on the message’s contents. Once received, the signature is deciphered using the public key in the domain’s DKIM records. If changes are made to the message’s contents, the signature will no longer match when deciphered.
DMARC records define what happens to the incoming emails if they fail the SPF/DKIM checks. The emails can be quarantined, blocked, or allowed to pass through. These records also define the email reporting parameters, i.e., which email address the reports are sent to when the reports have to be generated, etc.
You can check to see if the DMARC records for your domain are correctly set up by running a DNS lookup. A DNS lookup reveals all the DNS records configured for a domain. The DMARC records, including SPF and DKIM, can be found as TXT records.
If these records are not in your domain, you can create them by accessing the DNS zone. This can be done by signing into your domain’s control panel (cPanel, in many cases).
Make sure to use a hosting service that provides DDoS mitigation
Methods such as traffic filtering and rate limiting are used to prevent DDoS attacks.
Traffic filtering is a method in which incoming traffic is checked meticulously and then allowed/blocked depending on where it’s coming from and how much it is. For example, a massive influx of traffic from a suspicious source (i.e., a source typically involved in malicious activity) can be filtered so that a DDoS attack cannot be initiated.
Rate limiting, on the other hand, is a method using which the number of incoming requests from a source is set not to exceed a certain limit during a specific time frame. This is also an efficient way to mitigate DDoS attacks as it disallows a large number of requests to be made from a single online source.
How can you, as a website owner, enjoy these features? You have to make sure you buy and use a hosting that provides them. These features are implemented at the hosting level. Here are some of the popular hosting providers that offer DDoS protection:
Cloudflare
GoDaddy
Namecheap
Set up multifactor authentication to avoid having user data stolen
Another threat that we mentioned above is brute force attacks. Brute force attacks involve a malicious attempt to log in to a user account by using a large number of password combinations. This type of attack can be neutralized if multifactor authentication is set up.
Multifactor authentication requires users to enter a code received via email or SMS to verify the login attempt.
With multifactor authentication, the malicious party must contend with the verification step even if the brute force attack worked. They won’t be able to do it since they won’t have access to the SMS or email messages of the person they’re posing as.
Utilize ORM frameworks to avoid SQL injection risks
To prevent the risk of SQL injections, you can use ORM frameworks. ORM stands for object-relational mapping. With ORM frameworks, website developers don’t have to rely on raw SQL queries to manage their website databases.
ORM frameworks essentially let developers manage the website databases using an intermediary interface. These frameworks significantly reduce SQL injection risks using parameterized queries, preventing malicious inputs from altering the database query logic.
For example, without an ORM framework in place, a hacker could use this string:
‘ OR ‘1’=’1′; —
…to gain information from the database.
How exactly? Let’s explain.
SQL requires an input in the following format:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ‘admin’ AND password = ‘password123’;
The string mentioned above, i.e., ‘ OR ‘1’=’1′; — is a classic SQL injection attack. When used in a login form, it changes the query:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ” OR ‘1’=’1′ AND password = ”
…to a statement that always comes out as true. As a result, the authentication is bypassed and access is granted.
However, ORM frameworks would have a more specific input acceptance criterion. For example, Python’s SQLAlchemy ORM requires the user input to be in the following format:
This structured query approach makes it harder for hackers to exploit input vulnerabilities.
Keep all of your website software updated to avoid security issues
Your website relies on different types of software to keep running. For example, you could run your website on a CMS like WordPress, Wix, or Shopify. You may also have integrations or plugins in your website for added functionalities.
It is important to keep all the software associated with your website updated. Updating your website’s CMS is especially important as the new updates often contain security patches. The details and vulnerabilities of the previous version are made public. That information can be maliciously used to attack websites still running on the old version. This is why updating your website’s software (especially the CMS) is very important.
Conclusion
If you follow the five strategies mentioned above, you can safeguard your website against common online threats. Many websites don’t take these precautions, and that causes them to face various consequences, such as losing valuable user data. Even their online presence stays in peril as a hacking attempt can bring down the website.
But if you take the steps mentioned above, you can avoid these types of outcomes and ensure that your website stays up and running as it should.
