WASHINGTON (AP) - Businesses facing a growing threat of cyberattacks against their websites will now have more tools to protect themselves and harden their Internet sites against hackers.

A new Homeland Security Department program will help small companies and non-profit groups avoid programming problems that allow hackers to get into their websites.

The government's latest cybersecurity effort comes on the heels of a series of high-profile hacking attacks against corporate and federal websites, including one that shut down the CIA's site for several hours last week.

The new program was developed with the Mitre Corp. and is an effort to shore up known weaknesses in programming that give hackers a backdoor into websites. The effort began well before the recent website attacks.

To view the information, visit http://capec.mitre.org.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)