How to Protect Online Scheduling Programs from Hackers

Online scheduling tools have emerged popularly in recent years due to the convenience that comes along with scheduling appointments, consultations, and meetings, among others, through Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, and Appointlet products. However, similar to any web application that takes on massive volumes of customer’s information, these platforms can become attractive focal points for hackers desiring to steal information or disrupt the site. The good news is that it is possible to take measures to ensure that your online scheduling program is somewhat safer.

Use Strong, Unique Passwords

The most fundamental but essential one is secure password implementation, where everyone with a privilege to the scheduling account should have a robust password, which is not used by all other online applications. Passwords should have different cases, numbers, and characters, and they should be not less than 12 characters. It is also good to turn on the two-factor authentication as an extra layer of security each time it is possible. Adopting these methods carefully may prevent hackers from accessing your information.

Restrict Internal Access

A consideration that people with full access rights should make is to avoid giving out administrative rights to the scheduling program. Since the platform allows setting up specific access links and configurable editing permissions, as well as containing logs of the actions in a project, it will be possible to blueprint access and specific change capabilities to only those people who would require them for further work on meeting the intended goals. The fewer internal access points, the better it is.

Keep Software Updated

Astonishingly, many scheduling platforms fail to address security issues in updates or, at best, fix them haphazardly while incorporating new protective measures. Doing this means you won’t have to worry about being notified of updates. Failing to respond to updates result in gaps being created over time in your system’s security.

Use a Secure Hosting Provider

When deploying a corporate open-source scheduling solution in the organization’s servers, additional measures must be taken to increase infrastructure security. Leasing this through a well-known SaaS provider that has experience in safely hosting scheduling applications means that there is always a proactive watch against threats you don’t need to counter individually. When hiring a third-party hosting provider, ensure you do your homework on exposure to security risks.

Backup Critical Data

Though security preservation is the best option, backups work as a hedge against losses due to breaches. Regular daily or weekly backups from your scheduler to external storage ensure that important booking information, settings, and various enhancements are needed in case the worst occurs. This provides you with an avenue to bring back functionality as soon as possible.

Limit Data Collection

Give much thought to which customer data your scheduling platform must have to work best and avoid assembling information beyond that. The more obscure data, acquisition, storage, and transmission, the less desirable your structures may be to malicious actors and the less mayhem that can be made.

Use SSL Encryption

Any website or scheduling app should use SSL from wherever the data is sent and received to make sure all data flowing over the internet is encrypted. This will stop others from peeking into booking details, customer information, etc., when it’s transferring between devices and servers over the public internet. Through SSL, you also assure visitors that the website they are visiting is genuine.

Restrict Integrations

Even though one may be enticed to integrate your scheduling platform with numerous third-party apps and services, every integration point causes vulnerabilities unless proper security is tested. Closely restrict connection to only trustworthy tools and limit communication to transactions of only required information through read-only access only.

Test for Vulnerabilities

Conduct penetration testing and vulnerability assessments with outside organizations. Ethical hackers can identify potential threats and vulnerabilities that live attackers can exploit so that you can act on the same before being violated. Therefore, constant alert must be maintained even after conducting an initial software hardening.

Enable Activity Logs

While using audited trails, the activities of the administrators in terms of edit and configuration change, accounts accessed and system events are easily identified so that threats are not overlooked. Insist on reviewing logs constantly in quest of troubles such as unanticipated setting changes or location shifts. 

Conclusion

Protecting customer information should be the top priority of any company that offers customers online self-scheduling. Luckily, app developers follow strict protocols to secure scheduling systems from hackers. Constant scrutiny with new tests and backups means that vulnerabilities are quickly identified to fix. At the same time, they also give you opportunity to recover data should the need arise. So, while there are dangers of meeting scheduling tools, they are easily avoidable when companies want to be comfortable with the convenience they bring.