WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management System (CMS) platforms available today. Naturally, it has become the most targeted platform by hackers as well. Hackers do so for a myriad of reasons:
- Stealing of information and data
- Injecting malware to infect visitors that come to your site
- Defacing your website
- Blackhat SEO spamming
- Tapping on your hosting resources
There are some basic steps you should take to secure your website.
1. Change Your Login URL
Everyone knows the standard wordpress login url to be /wp-admin or /wp-login.php. Create another obstacle for the intruder by setting a unique login url instead.
2. Prevent Brute Force Attacks
Most hackers don’t find backdoors or vulnerabilities on your wordpress but instead, run scripts to enter predictable usernames and passwords until they gain access. Stop this by setting maximum number of failed attempts and lockout anyone with too many failed attempts.
3. Update Your WordPress Version / Plugins
Look out for WordPress announcements. You don’t really have to update every single time but when wordpress announces a major vulnerability and advises you to upgrade, it is best that you do. Remember! Always backup your current website and look for a web development firm to support you in the event that the update causes certain features or plug-ins to stop working.
4. IP Restriction
Hackers come from all over the world so it is impossible to stop them totally, but it is possible to stop a bulk of them by setting IP address restrictions to allow only computers with a certain country IP address range to access your wordpress admin dashboard.
5. Implementing SSL certificates
Corporate websites should implement Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates helps encrypt and ensure secure data transfer between user browsers and server, making it difficult for hackers to intercept readable data packets or spoofing your info.
6. Backup Your Site Regularly
As much as you can try to secure your websites, you can never be faster than the latest vulnerability. This is why it is important to back-up your website regularly. Our own SBWD practice is to help clients do a weekly backup of their website and database dump and retain a 52-week archive for them. The last thing you want is to totally re-do a website from scratch.
It might take some time to setup all of the above steps on your own but it will be worth it.
SBWD offers a web security and maintenance package that allows clients to take a hands-off approach for their website.
SBWD offers a web security and maintenance package that allows clients to take a hands-off approach for their website. We handle all the website updates, security and backup of the website automatically.