Running a successful website is all about creating a convenient and smooth user experience for each and every visitor. They want to access the site quickly, navigate it easily, and feel relatively safe in perusing it and not at risk of suffering a cyberattack while they visit. If your site suffers from a buggy malware infection, your ability to provide this kind of experience for your visitors is compromised. You'll be left attempting to win them back after a less than optimal experience.

One of the major problems with having a site infected by malware is how detrimental it can be to your site's overall health. When your site can't function properly, it can no longer serve its primary purpose of connecting you with your audience online.

Any malware infection has the opportunity to be a significant nuisance, but the ones that cause your website to operate slowly or not at all can be especially heinous to your business posture. The key is to have a security platform in place to be proactive in addressing these issues.

Let's take a closer look at how a "buggy" malware infection can impact your site and how to stop one in its tracks.

First, let's identify what a malware infection is. A malware infection represents an injection of malicious instructions into the website's code. These instructions can do a number of things - none of them good.

The worst part about a malware infection? There's a high likelihood you may not even realize your site is infected after it happens. Once you're hit, you're at the mercy of whatever tools you've implemented to help you deal with attacks like this in the future.

Now that you understand what malware is, it's also critical to understand exactly how it can hurt your site. A perfectly executed malware attack has the chance to be devastating to your business in more ways than one.

Malware attacks inject code with malicious logic meant to hurt your site's performance in one way or another. The injection corrupts your site's generated HTML, appending malicious DOM components that can alter how your site works in many ways.

Some common buggy malware infection effects include:

• It may perform unconditional redirection. This is where visitors to your site who intend to spend time there are automatically redirected to another site they don't want or intend to visit.
• A malware attack may inject SPAM into the body of your website's HTML code.
• It can steal user credentials or payment information.

Each of these effects are different in how it could harm your site, but they are no less dangerous. The redirection will frustrate your users, keeping them from accessing your site. It could cause them to give up and go to your competitors' page instead. SPAM woven into your site's HTML can leave your visitors receiving unwanted messages or offers that only serve to annoy them.

Stealing user credentials or payment information may be the worst sin malware commits; it leads to your visitors being defrauded. It can also lead to a loss of trust in your site and overall brand. Simply put, you don't want to be the website that, after being compromised, gives out your audience's valuable financial information.

There are seemingly endless ways for malware to ruin your site. But there's one other potential impact on your site's health that can also lead to a loss of customers or visitors.

Sometimes, injected malware includes bugs and incorrect instructions that lead to your website crashing. Visitors will receive a message such as an "HTTP error 500" or something like it whenever they attempt to access the site.

If you're a website that relies on an online store or any other type of eCommerce, it's hard to understate how damaging this can be.

Even websites without an online store never want to be offline if they can help it. When users see your site is down, they may not come back again. It may take them a long time before they think your site is operational again.

Malware that makes your site "buggy" can lead to you dropping sales and losing your customers. You've worked hard to establish a communications flow between your site and your online audience. Any interruption to that flow can be a setback to all the important work you did building that relationship.

There are many examples of buggy malware injections leading to HTTP error 500. This differs from a "regular" infection because other malware attacks can occur while your site maintains its online presence. A "buggy" infection can take your site down immediately. Literally, within seconds of the infection, you start losing customers - and, in turn, you start losing business - from your website.

So, what can you do to combat the challenges of a buggy malware infection? The answer is simple: pick the right partner to help you tackle the problem head-on.

A buggy malware attack can completely debilitate your site. However, if you have the right weapons in your arsenal to counteract the effects of an attack, you're more likely to keep your site operating and not suffer any consequences.

The key is to protect your site before an attack occurs. That way, you can avoid disrupting your sales. When sales are interrupted, it impacts your reputation negatively.

Every second your online store down represents sales you could be making. Identifying the right website security provider - with a comprehensive platform that meets your security needs - is how you enable your site to stay up continuously, no matter what malware is trying to bring it down.

Quttera's managed malware protection platform, ThreatSign, provides you with all the required tools you'll need to protect your website from malware infection and keep your eCommerce business online. It can help you scan, detect, and protect yourself from threats.

Interested in hearing more about how ThreatSign can stop your site from going down? Contact us today.