Does your website involve a log-in process? Ask your web designer if your (and your user’s) passwords are encrypted for the database.

Why bother?

Security is very important.  Even though it involves a password to access information in a database (when done correctly), your data is sensitive.  Encrypting things like passwords is a great way to start.

What’s an “encrypted” password?

An encrypted password is a set of letters, numbers and other character that hide the real password.  For example, if your password was golfcourse, an encrypted version would look something like f87df9ah32kgwo3 or any other garbled group of characters.

By encrypting your password, even if someone did manage to get into the database, the text would be nearly useless.

Ok, what should I ask my web designer?

Ask your web designer:

• Does my website involve a database?
• If it does, are there passwords for user accounts in that database?
• Are the passwords encrypted?
• Can you show me what the encryption does?

Got a question? Contact us