Do you need to protect your WordPress website from hackers? Keep reading this article, and you will find some crucial things you need to do.
It is uncommon to find a business that does not have a website in this day and age. In fact, a business website is one of the critical determinants of business success.
The website opens doors for businesses to hit a global reach. It establishes a robust online presence, creates business credibility, and expands the market.
With so many benefits from having a business website, it is no surprise that most business owners now have an online presence. And this is the reason there are many websites today.
Although it is not easy to know the actual number of websites since it keeps fluctuating every second, there are over one billion websites today. According to a Netcraft web survey, there were over 1,169,621,187 websites as of March 2022.
The exponential surge in the number of websites has invited a host of cybersecurity threats, attacks, and data breaches. No day goes by without hearing of a website attack.
According to the 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, web application attacks account for 26% of successful data breaches. An Accenture report also points to an increase in data breaches.
What Are the Most Common Security Threats? What Are the Most Common Security Threats?
Hackers will use all forms of sophisticated and clever attacks to reach your website.
There is a myriad of data security vulnerabilities that hackers can use to reach your website. Some of the common cyber attacks that hacks use include the following:
- SQL injections
- Phishing attacks
- Cross-site scripting
- Broken authentications
- Misconfiguration in the security settings
- Man-in-the-middle attacks
- Data leakages
These security threats come with devastating repercussions.
The cost of a successful data breach is something you are not ready to hear. But, in most cases, a successful breach will leave you with a damaged reputation and loss of sensitive data. And most businesses will shut doors after a successful cyber breach.
How to Protect Your WordPress Website from Hackers? How to Protect Your WordPress Website from Hackers?
I am sure you are not ready to see your website shut down or lose sensitive data because of a successful data breach. However, you can implement several measures to secure your website from cybersecurity attacks. Some of these measures are discussed below.
Since WordPress is a popular CMS, you need to implement all these right now.
1) Use an SSL Certificate 1) Use an SSL Certificate
SSL encryption is one of the most vital website security measures you must implement.
It helps to safeguard your website against threats such as man-in-the-middle attacks. The SSL certificate will blend with HTTP to initiate the HTTPS protocol, a secure web transfer protocol.
Data and communication transmitted between your website servers and your users’ browsers will remain encrypted, safe, and secure from eavesdroppers and prying eyes. However, your communication remains open for public view without the SSL certificate.
You must buy an SSL certificate to protect your company website against data breaches. Many SSL certificates on the market address different website needs. Being a company website, you possibly have several subdomains.
You do not have to buy an SSL certificate for every subdomain. A low-priced or cheap wildcard SSL certificate will be enough to secure your primary domain and all the subdomains falling under it.
Usually, when you purchase a web hosting plan for your WordPress installation, the hosting company will provide a free SSL certificate. On the other hand, if you plan to use a CDN service like Cloudflare, you will get free SSL from them.
2) Use Two-Factor Authentication 2) Use Two-Factor Authentication
User names and passwords are never enough to secure your website from data breaches. Eventually, attackers will find a way to break through them using brute force or dictionary attacks.
You must boost your login process by employing multiple-factor authentication.
The two-factor authentication is where additional authentication factors such as one-time passwords, secret codes, or biometric authentication factors are applied when logging into your accounts.
Attackers usually find it hard to access the second authentication factor, which keeps your website more secure.
By default, WordPress doesn’t come with this feature. Instead, you have to use a third-party plugin to enable two-factor authentication.
3) Use a Secure Hosting Provider 3) Use a Secure Hosting Provider
The hosting providers you choose for your website determine the security of your website. Web hosts include several security features on their packages, which can be used to protect your account.
Before choosing a web host, you must ensure that they offer a secure file transfer protocol, a rootkit scanner, and a reliable file backup system. This is because there are so many web hosting providers available. If you are on a tight budget, you should use shared hosting with high-rated reviews.
On the other hand, if you need more performance and security and can spend a little more than a shared hosting subscription, you must be using managed WordPress hosting. Some popular ones are Bluehost, GreenGeeks, Kinsta, Cloudways, etc.
For our website, we are using Cloudways.
4) Keep Your Software Updated 4) Keep Your Software Updated
The reason software and operating system vendors release frequent versions of their products is to improve the security of those products.
For instance, a vendor might release software to address existing patches or security vulnerabilities in the software. But unfortunately, hackers will always take advantage of existing vulnerabilities in the CMS or software.
As the best practice, always ensure you upgrade the software once it is released and tested. Then, when the plugin/theme developer or the WordPress core development theme themself releases an update, you will get the notification inside the dashboard.
You can also enable auto-update to keep everything up to date.
On the other hand, ManageWP is another excellent option to update the WordPress website efficiently.
5) Train Your Staff 5) Train Your Staff
The security of your website pertains to all stakeholders within your organization.
Hackers will leverage the ignorance of your employees, lure them with phishing links and attachments, and eventually spread malware in your system.
A cybersecurity training and awareness program will help expose your employees to the various attacks that might target the website and their sensitive data.
Employees should be taught how to identify phishing attempts and the best action to take in case of an attempted breach. For example, if you are running a multi-author blog, you should tell them what to do and what not.
6) Backup Your Data 6) Backup Your Data
Hackers have always succeeded in coming up with advanced attack tricks. In one way or another, hackers might succeed in reaching your website, spreading malware, and distorting or stealing your sensitive data.
So, what if this is the case? Will you go out of business because of a data breach?
You must create a reliable data backup and restore plan that assures you of continuity if things go south.
Multiple data backup files would even be better. You should ensure the backup files are stored in secondary locations such as in the clouds or hard discs. Lastly, ensure you backup your data more frequently. Setting up automatic backups would be a great idea.
VaultPress and BackupBuddy are excellent WordPress backup plugins.
Conclusion Conclusion
Websites owners are faced with the nightmare of protecting their websites from the increasing website security threats.
As a website owner, you can use the tips above to protect your website from attackers. However, I always recommend employing multiple measures to enhance your security walls.
Lastly, although these tips will cushion your website from attackers, they do not guarantee any absolute immunity from attackers. Therefore, you must always create a backup that will act as a contingency plan.
This is how you can protect your WordPress website from hackers. If you need to learn more relevant topics, you should check out our blog archive.
Also, if you found this article helpful, please share it with your friends and fellow bloggers on social media. It will probably help someone secure their WordPress installation.