Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal reports..

Midwest Supplies, which sells home brewing and winemaking gear online, has acknowledged that its website was hacked earlier this summer, with intruders possibly making off with customer names and personal information, including credit card numbers.

It’s frustrating news but it’s a good warning that hackers hit websites of all sizes. Fortunately I have not had to deal with a website where the e-commerce component has been breached – partially I suspect because I work with few retail sites. But I have had to deal with sites that have been hacked. It’s rarely a personal attack – it’s just a hacker seeing what havoc can be created.

If you have a website, you need to think about security, especially if you accept credit cards or other personal or sensitive information. But even if you don’t, I can tell you that a hacked site can be painful – it can be a lost day or days of productivity.

How you protect yourself depends on your website – what platform are you using, what server, do you use a common Content Management System?  Ars Technica wrote a good (albeit techie) article on website security in February.  It’s a nice overview but for many readers I suspect just asking your website team (or developer) what you have in place will help.