Difference between commercial and academic website regarding security

[nirmallama]

Hello, I am doing small research regarding website security.


I am newbie in this security field.


I do not know if there is really a difference between Commercial and Academic website regarding security. If there are any difference then I would be more obliged to know about it.


This is my first post in this forum and hope I will get some advice for my problem.




Thanks in advance!!!!

 

[mneylon]

I'd assume the key difference is in relation to payments.
Payment / card holder data etc., would be exchanged on a commercial site.
A lot of academic sites wouldn't have those kind of concerns at all. They might link back into some kind of student or staff extranet, but that's probably a separate system

 

[WeWatch]

If I may...

From a hacker's point of view, every website is a target. From a website owner's perspective, you need to be aware of all the potential points of entry because a hacker only needs one way in.

If you're referring to commercial sites as a site that sells goods or services, then yes, as blacknight pointed out, a commercial site has to be concerned with a current SSL certificate and other security measures to protect the credit card data that is being processed on their site.

If you're referring to a commercial site as any business oriented site, even then the site owner has to be concerned with security because it's their company reputation online and they don't want that tarnished.

If you're looking for more specifics, basically any website needs to be concerned with security. Hackers look for opportunities, not specific websites - typically.

I'm not sure if that helps you at all. If not, post back and I'll see if I can add more details.

 

[link8r]

Academic sites can often be a key target, especially for holding people to ransom.

 

[Greg]

From hacker point of view there's no difference between academic and commercial websites. They attack both. The only difference for hackers is in type of content management system used. For the academic website Joomla/Wordpress/DLE/Drupal are used and they are vulnerable enough whereas commercial websites are implemented using different reliable frameworks and, what's more important, developers spend time to pentest them carefully.