Websites are hacked every day. In fact, it’s estimated that over 30,000 websites are hacked each month. While there’s no surefire way to prevent your website from being hacked, there are steps you can take to minimize the risk.
Here are some ways to prevent your website from being hacked:
#1 Use Stronger Passwords 16 Characters or More
Your website is a huge part of your business, and you want to make sure it’s secure. Use strong passwords and make sure they’re unique across all accounts. Don’t share them with anyone! If someone tries to guess your password or break into your account by brute force attack, then change it immediately so they can’t get in. Also, be careful about what information you share online; if someone gets hold of your email address or other personal information like an IP address or social security number, then they might be able to hack into your accounts too. Make sure you use two-factor authentication whenever possible – this means that when someone tries to log in from a new device or IP address, they’ll also need something that only you would know as a code sent to your phone via text message or an app on your smartphones like Google Authenticator or Authy so it’s harder for someone else to get access to your accounts even if they do manage to get through one layer of security by figuring out your password!
A few tips for newbies:
#2 Constant Updates Are Crucial For Website Security
Website updates can include various things including themes, plugins, databases, media files and core updates. It is absolutely crucial to keep your website up to date to install new security patches or fix the holes in your website. This can help you prevent your website from hackers or at least make it difficult for them to gain unauthorized access. Check your website functionality closely after each update for any errors as with anything else out there can be programming errors that can leave your website vulnerable to hackers. If you notice some unusual errors appearing on the website front user end or backend admin panel, uninstall the plugin or update and re-install to check if the error has been corrected. If not roll back to the previous stable version of the plugin.
A few tips for newbies:
#3 SSL Encryption For an Extra Layer of Protection
Web security is important, but many companies don’t understand how to properly protect their websites or what they need to protect them.
SSL (or Secure Sockets Layer) is used to encrypt data traveling between a web server and a browser so that it can’t be read by anyone else along the way. It’s important to have SSL because it protects things like credit card numbers and other personal information from being stolen by hackers or other attackers who might be trying to get access to your website’s data.
Installing an SSL certificate on your website will ensure that all of your visitors’ information remains private and secure when interacting with your site; this will help build trust with customers who visit often because they know that their personal information won’t be leaked or accessed by anyone else besides the company itself.
Having an SSL certificate installed on your website is not difficult or expensive; there are many vendors who offer affordable prices depending on how long you want the certificate (usually between one to five years). It’s important that you choose a vendor who offers strong encryption so that no one can see what people are doing on your site – including the vendor themselves! – otherwise, you won’t be protecting anyone’s privacy or security at all!
A few tips for newbies:
#4 Reliable Hosting For Peak Performance
Using a reliable hosting provider is the utmost for your website security. Simply because the reputable hosting provider will offer the following:
Uptime guarantee – meaning your website will not suffer slowness when lots of visitors are visiting at the same time
Protects your website – Brute force attacks are not uncommon however excessive attempts to your website can lead to potential security concerns. Your hosting provider will monitor these activities and secure your website as necessary.
Technical Support – Technical support should be of the key criteria for selecting a hosting provider and a reputable hosting provider will have support available 24×7.
Regular backup – Backups are lifesavers when it comes to preventing data loss not only for newbies but also for big businesses. Therefore, a good hosting provider provides and keeps automated backups of your website data as part of their hosting plan.
A few tips for newbies:
#5 Backup Strategy To Prevent The unforeseeable Events
A good backup strategy is important because it ensures that your site doesn’t get destroyed by something like a hard drive failure or a malicious attack. If you don’t have a good backup strategy, then all of your hard work will be lost forever if something like this happens!
A backup is basically just making an archive copy of all the files on your site so that if something happens to them, then you can just replace them with the copies from the archive and not lose any data or content. There are lots of different ways to back up your website but they all essentially do the same thing: make copies of all your files so that if something bad happens then you won’t lose any data or content.
Some examples of great backup strategies include:
– Use an offsite service like Amazon S3 which automatically stores copies of your files in multiple locations across the world so that if there’s an earthquake or other natural disaster where you live then your data will still be safe because it’s been spread across so many different places
– Use an onsite service like CrashPlan which automatically stores copies of your files on other computers nearby so that if there’s a fire or other catastrophe where you live then your data will still be safe because it’s been spread across so many different places
– Make sure to schedule regular backups so that they happen automatically without any input from you so that it’s guaranteed to always work correctly and consistently without any manual effort on your part
A few tips for newbies:
#6 Security Plugins For First Line of Defence
WordPress Security Plugins are programs that help keep your site safe from hackers and other threats by monitoring activity on your site for any abnormal behavior or attacks from outside sources.
These plugins can do everything from alerting you when there’s an issue with your site to actually fixing the problem themselves—and all without you having any technical knowledge or experience! All you have to do is install one of these plugins onto your site and let it do its job while you get back to doing yours.
A great example is Google reCAPTCHA…
Google reCAPTCHA is an automated algorithm used to distinguish between human users and bots when performing actions on websites. It does this by asking users to complete a simple challenge based on what they see in an image, such as identifying which words are in the English language or determining whether or not there is a dog in the picture. These challenges are easy for humans but difficult for bots to complete, making them a useful tool when trying to prevent malicious activity from happening on your site or platform.
A few tips for newbies:
#7 Malware Scan For Ongoing Monitoring of Website
Security is important, and no one wants to get hacked.
When you have a website or app, it’s critical that it’s secure so that no one can get access to your data or use your site to attack other people. But if you don’t do security testing on your site before it goes live, there’s no way of knowing whether or not it has any vulnerabilities in it that would make it easy for someone to break into your system. That’s why scanning your site for malware is so important – if there are any holes in your security then they’ll be found before anyone can take advantage of them!
A few tips for newbies:
#8 Restricted Access To Keep Hackers Away
You should use security policies to restrict access to web pages based on user roles.
For example, if someone has an account that allows them access to all the information in your organization but doesn’t allow them to make changes (like an administrator), then you would only give them access to certain areas of your website.
On the other hand, if someone has an account that allows them access to some information about your organization but doesn’t allow them any changes (like a customer or employee), then you would only give them access to certain areas of your website.
A few tips for newbies:
#9 Hire Professional To Identify & Fix Issues
Attackers will always look for an easy target. They don’t care how “secure” your site is, if they can access it.
Just because your site is set up securely, doesn’t mean it’s safe.
Security breaches are becoming more prevalent in all industries as cybercrime rises. Attackers don’t care about the complex code and software that you developed rather they just want to go in and out swiftly before you know it.
That’s why you need to approach security from a different point of view…
The security experts will first and foremost be looking for any soft spots in your WordPress installation that may have not been caught by your developer or security consultant. Will your site be hacked? Most likely! However, using the right tools, knowledge, skills, and people, data loss impact can be minimized if not eliminated fully.
A few tips for newbies:
Alternatively, you can hire freelancers for budget options (don’t forget to check their reviews).
#10 3rd Party Plugins
As the use of WordPress and 3rd party plugins has grown, so have the ways in which hackers can exploit vulnerabilities within a website. In fact, it’s estimated that about 48% of successful attacks are carried out through hacked or misconfigured plugins.
With so many vulnerabilities, it’s important to keep track of all of your plugins and the version numbers. The easiest way to keep things in check is to use the Plugin Checker plugin by iThemes. This plugin allows you to scan for known vulnerable versions of all plugins without having to log into each one individually.
Once installed, you can run a scan directly from the Plugin Checker menu in your WordPress Dashboard.
Once a plugin has been identified as vulnerable, you’ll want to update it. To do this, you’ll need to download the latest version and upload it to your server.
To replace an existing plugin, log into your WordPress Dashboard and navigate to the Plugins page where you’ll find both the Installed and Uploaded tabs. Under the Uploaded tab, select the plugin you’d like to update and click Upload Plugin.
Before you proceed with the upload, you’ll want to make sure there aren’t any conflicts with other plugins on your dashboard. You can do this by going to the Plugins page under your Dashboard and selecting Options for any plugins that appear to be duplicated. Updating a plugin may also require a theme or core update.
A few tips for newbies:
#11 Remove unused plugins
WordPress plugins are great. They add additional features to your site that you might not be able to do with the core WordPress software itself. As a developer, I’ve used plugins to add additional features to my websites, including analytics and comment spam prevention.
However, there’s no reason to keep plugins around if you’ve decided you’re not going to use them anymore. This will ensure that you stop wasting space in your database and remove unused code from your site that could potentially be insecure.
A few tips for newbies:
#12 Remove inactive users
The risk of inactive accounts in WordPress is that they can slowly build up over time and eventually become a security risk. It is never good in WordPress to have thousands of inactive accounts within your database. WordPress is quick to point out that there are very few cases where this happens, but it is still worth it to take the steps necessary to protect your WordPress installation from being compromised. This can be done by disabling accounts that have never logged into the machine.
A few tips for newbies:
#13 Log the website activity
It lets you know if there were any issues with your site, like someone reporting a bug in your site or security misconfigurations. This way, you can make sure that you fix the issue as soon as possible. It may seem insignificant now, but if there was a significant security issue or if an important feature of your site stopped working because of an issue, you’d want to fix it as soon as possible before anyone else finds out about it. This can frustration for your genuine visitors and it can open loopholes for hackers to gain unauthorized access.
A few tips for newbies:
#14 Monitor For Suspicious Behavior
While you are pretty sure we can trust all of our customers, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye on them. This is why you should pay a lot of attention to how user behavior changes over time.
You can do it by scanning your database for ‘suspicious’ user behavior like mass bulk uploads, changes in content, and other suspicious changes. You can then follow up with the customer by sending them a message via their account, or if you notice a large change, reach out to them via email.
Further, you can also monitor email log files for any text or HTML element that looks like a possible password that might have been leaked in a data breach. If you find any, notify your customers immediately.
A few tips for newbies:
#15 What you should do in case of a website hack?
FAQ
What is a strong password to use?
A strong password usually consists of letters, numbers, uppercase, lowercase and symbols
What is 8 characters in a password example?
An 8 character password example can be as following: vM4?yU9%
What are 4 tips for creating a strong password?
How long is a strong password?
A password that has 16 characters or more is considered better option to protect your account from unauthorised access. It does not mean that your website or account will be hack proof. It just means that it will take much longer for a hacker to gain access if they were successful.
What is 16 characters in a password example?
A 16 characters in a password example would be as following: oU4!fB9{rB6.fT6*
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