How to prevent your WordPress website from being hacked?

When it comes to running a WordPress site, you’ll know yourself how much power that offers you. Few other content management suites are quite so effective as WordPress, and it’s one of the most popular solutions for building your website. However, thanks to the widespread nature of WordPress usage, it’s only natural that people might wish to target you in a malicious manner.

If you feel like you might be under threat, then you need to take more care of your website. To do that, we recommend that you try and include the following tips and tricks as part of your WordPress security. It’s important that you take the time to put the following steps in place, as this will ensure that your website remains safe from potential threats and risks.

While your website might seem secure just now, regular updates to WordPress might test that security in future. The following tips, then, will act as WordPress best practice in a bid to help you get the most out of your website.

If you wish to make sure that your data and your information stays secure, then it’s important that you take the time to make some decisions about this. One of the biggest problems that you could face is a loss of data or invasion of privacy on your website. Doing everything that you can to prevent that is very important.

So, let’s take a look at the easiest way for you to do that: where should you start?

1.  Install security plugins, when possible

The first problem that you need to deal with, then, is handling the security side of things onsite. We recommend that you look to install some popular security platforms, including Site Lock. This is a very good security system, and it should give you all the help that you need to help keep your website nice and secure.

Site Lock does a lot to help provide up-to-date detection for potential malware, and will also provide you with an easy to use daily monitoring system. Done right, this could really help your website to stay up and active through security threats.

If you think that you need your business for the long-term well-being of your business, then going for Site Lock is one of the best places to start. Alternatively, you could look to use free WordPress plug-ins such as Bulletproof Security, which still offers good general security and day-to-day hacking prevention.

2. Keep your website platform and software up-to-date

One of the most common reasons for a website to be hacked or damaged otherwise comes from the website being out-of-date. If you no longer use your website, then it’s recommended that you shut it down. If you intend on keeping using it, then go through the updates process for everything.

This means first and foremost updating your WordPress installation. To do that, simply head into the dashboard and, if you are out-of-date, you should see a message informing you of this on the main dashboard screen. After you do this, then you should go to the apps and the plug-ins that you use, updating them. If you happen to use a WordPress theme, too, be sure to get that updated.

Just like your Smartphone needs to be regularly updated, your website needs you to keep everything up-to-date, as this helps to prevent the latest hacking tricks and tools from working on your website.

3. Train and educate every employee

The next best thing that you should do is make sure that anyone who uses your WordPress website as an employee is coached in WordPress best practice. It can be dangerous to leave your website without proper protection so make sure that more than just your IT team know how to best use WordPress. Having your staff educated in protecting your website to outside intrusion is vital nowadays since the introduction of GDPR. Research from mobilesignalbooster shows just how important it is to keep your customer’s data secure – and the penalties that can result if data loss occurs.

Staff should be made aware of what is and is not a legitimate problem, and what could be a scam in waiting. The more that you can do to help your staff use WordPress, the more likely they are to get things done without wasting precious time or resources

If you leave this to chance, then you are risking your staff making mistakes that could otherwise hurt your business. From phishing scams to deleting key data by accident you should look to empower all of your staff to avoid this from happening.

4. Use parameterized queries

One of the biggest problems that you might face, though, comes from simply not preparing the SQL side of your website adequately. SQL injections are a common form of assault on a WordPress website, and this could cause you a lot of trouble if you fail to prepare for it accordingly. If you would like to avoid this issue, then we recommend that you make sure all of your contact and submission forms are safe to use.

Start off by learning how to use parameterized queries; this will help to make sure that your coding is sturdy enough to help avoid a hacker from including anything in there that should not be present. If you don’t do this, then your contact forms could be unwittingly sending crucial data to hackers about your clients. It’s an easy problem to miss, but you should definitely make it a priority if you use any form of contact form to help generate leads.

5. Guard against XSS attacks

Another common problem that you might have is dealing with what is known as a cross-site scripting attack, or XSS. This is a massive problem, and it’s also one of the most common reasons why your website might become threatened by a hacker. This will mean that you need to start using the above-parameterized queries, but you also make sure that you are very clear and specific in all of your functions or fields – don’t leave any room for anything to get slipped in there.

You should also use what is known as Content Security Policy, which is one of the most proven forms of defense against this frustrating issue. This allows you to show the domains that a web browser would be able to consider valid, so anything that is slipped in there by a hacker without your knowledge will be ignored.

6. Watch your email transmission ports

Next, you need to make sure that you actively guard and protect all of your e-mail transmission ports. If you don’t do this, then you could have some problems later on down the line. These could easily be adjusted and it means that your e-mails would suddenly become a lot more compromised than they would need to be. If you would like to avoid this, take note of your e-mail transmission ports and check them on a regular basis.

It’s a simple but very important step and one that you should definitely look to put in place as soon as you possibly can. if you do this right, then you are much more likely to help avoid the transmission ports from being tampered with. Protecting this crucial part of your website should be a high priority, as it could cause problems with the security of any data that you hold, send or receive via e-mail.

7. Invest in website vulnerability scanners

It’s always important to make sure that you use the right tools to help protect your website. One tool which often flies under the radar, though, is that of a vulnerability scanner. If you would like to vastly improve the quality of your website, then you should look to invest in a vulnerability scanner that can run on a regular basis. This basically spots any problems that you need to be aware of, and then inform you as soon as is possible.

Such scanners would find any weaknesses on the website and should then help you to address the problem at hand. Many vulnerabilities can go under the radar, so you might not even be aware that they are a problem. Should you wish to capture all of the problems that your website might have – major or minor – the invest in website vulnerability scanners.

In conclusion

As you can see, then there are lots of things to consider about how to best protect and secure your WordPress website. A failure to keep everything updated will become a big problem for you. More importantly, it will make it much easier for hackers to target your website, as the rapid scale of WordPress updates means that old versions are instantly at risk of being attacked.

Instead of making yourself a potential target, you should look to make the right choice and update accordingly. Doing this is very much likely to help you avoid any long-term issues with your website, and it will also ensure that you can avoid problems with privacy or data risks.

The more that you can do to secure your website, the better. Don’t take the security of your website for granted just because it is on WordPress, though. With the above tips, though, you should be able to avoid most hacking threats and security assaults.