Make a point of understanding what third-party software, if any, is running on your website. Where a perfectly suitable tool already exists, a web developer will rarely reinvent the wheel. Shopping carts, blogs and discussion forums are examples of common requests that a web developer might choose to implement using existing open source or commercial software.

But popular software is also targeted by hackers, so needs to be monitored more closely and kept up-to-date with security patches.

Ensure it is somebody’s responsibility to know what software is installed on your website and when it needs to be upgraded.