TECHHAMMER INC.

"Broken" technology in your web presence may be causing disaster to your bottom line without you knowing about it. Broken web links, poorly written code (website pages), slack security procedures, unpatched or unkempt server software, publicly viewable forms or protected code, and other easily unnoticeable problems do have consequences (some severe in certain circumstances).

Feel free to use our quick questionnaire to assess your knowledge of the state of your website which we provide FREE of charge.

• Techhammer can go through your web presence with a thorough checklist that is updated constantly as technology changes to weed out problems, repair dodgy code, identify vulnerabilities and in essence consolidate what you have already paid for and make it start working properly for you.
• Broken links

  Lets face it, broken links are bad. They make a site look mediocre and frustrate visitors. If you've maintained a website for any length of time, you'll know that links very quickly become broken. We all move, delete or change pages, and when we do, it not only results in our own internal links breaking, but other people's liks to our website becoming broken. Similarly, when other people alter their pages, our own external links become broken. Worst of all a broken link on your site is a dead end for your visitors and will also be bad news for your search engine optimization (SEO) as spiders cannot reach all of your content. Search engine spiders returning dead or broken links from your site will also affect your site page rank and credibility level.

• SQL Injection

  One of the most common security attacks of online databases in the past 5 years was SQL injection. SQL injection refers to the act of someone inserting a MySQL statement to be run on your database without your knowledge. Injection usually occurs when you ask a user for input, like their phone number, and instead of a number they give you a MySQL statement that you will unknowingly run on your database. MySQL statements range from comparing 2 records to deleting whole databases so this can be a disaster to you if not checked.

  This problem has been known for a while and PHP has a specially-made function to prevent these attacks. The real problem is that if you run your website on older versions of PHP and/or your webmaster has not coded your forms properly, you may still fall victim to such an attack.

• Bad Spelling or Grammar

  Imagine this scenario: Your visitor is reading your website and notices that you're not a good speller or you often leave words out or your grammar is just bad. He then notifies you that your own website has spelling or grammar mistakes. This can be downright embarrassing and while you yourself probably did not make those errors, your website does come across as your face especially if it was you who gave your websites' URL to your visitors.

• Security Risks

  The risks are most severe from the Webmaster's perspective. The moment you install a Web server at your site, you've opened a window into your local network that the entire Internet can peer through. Most visitors are content to window shop, but a few will try to to peek at things you don't intend for public consumption. Others, not content with looking without touching, will attempt to force the window open and crawl in. The results can range from the merely embarrassing, for instance the discovery one morning that your site's home page has been replaced by an obscene parody, to the damaging, for example the theft of your entire database of customer information.

  It's a maxim in system security circles that buggy software opens up security holes. It's a maxim in software development circles that large, complex programs contain bugs. Unfortunately, Web servers are large, complex programs that can (and in some cases have been proven to) contain security holes. Furthermore, the open architecture of Web servers allows arbitrary CGI scripts to be executed on the server's side of the connection in response to remote requests. Any CGI script installed at your site may contain bugs, and every such bug is a potential security hole.

  From the point of view of the network administrator, a Web server represents yet another potential hole in your local network's security. The general goal of network security is to keep strangers out. Yet the point of a Web site is to provide the world with controlled access to your network. Drawing the line can be difficult. A poorly configured Web server can punch a hole in the most carefully designed firewall system. A poorly configured firewall can make a Web site impossible to use. Things get particularly complicated in an intranet environment, where the Web server must typically be configured to recognize and authenticate various groups of users, each with distinct access privileges.

  To the end-user, Web surfing feels both safe and anonymous. It's not. Active content, such as ActiveX controls and Java applets, introduces the possibility that Web browsing will introduce viruses or other malicious software into the user's system. Active content also has implications for the network administrator, insofar as Web browsers provide a pathway for malicious software to bypass the firewall system and enter the local area network. Even without active content, the very act of browsing leaves an electronic record of the user's surfing history, from which unscrupulous individuals can reconstruct a very accurate profile of the user's tastes and habits.

  Finally, both end-users and Web administrators need to worry about the confidentiality of the data transmitted across the Web. The TCP/IP protocol was not designed with security in mind; hence it is vulnerable to network eavesdropping. When confidential documents are transmitted from the Web server to the browser, or when the end-user sends private information back to the server inside a fill-out form, someone may be listening in.