Website security is important especially considering WordPress is the worlds leading content management system. This makes it a popular target for attackers. A hacked WordPress site can cause serious damage to your business revenue and reputation – not to mention the cost involved to get it back to a working state.
If your website is a business, then you need to pay extra attention to your WordPress security. WordPress security is a complicated topic, no doubt. This article should give you a better understanding of how you can manage the risks associated with building a WordPress website— the world’s most popular content management system.
Why is my site getting hacked?
It is a common misconception that WordPress is generally insecure – in fact quite the opposite, the WordPress files go through rigorous testing and comply with standards before being released. The problem is simply based on the vast number of WordPress websites on the internet and the the huge eco-system of plugins that could potentially have “coding vulnerabilities” in them that could be often exploited.
The main 3 reasons sites get hacked is based off the following:
SEO: The hack could target your website to improve the popularity of another website by inserting links into your website and using your reputation to boost the malicious website, more often than not – these links are hidden from being too obvious.
Spam: This can be quite dangerous as having ability to send emails to anyone that appear to be sent from your email address, this could lead to malware, potential payment fraud and email blacklisting.
Malware: Malware is a term that refers to malicious software. Malware can do many different things but mainly it is used to redirect users to different harmful websites, displaying unwanted adverts and spreading viruses.
Keeping your website up to date can help to lessen the chance of being hacked, however going the extra mile of security implementation is without-a-doubt the best investment you can make.
What should i do?
You can check if your site has been compromised by running online scans is quite straight forward, you just enter your website URLs and their crawlers go through your website to look for known malware and malicious code.
Now keep in mind that most WordPress security scanners can just scan your website. They cannot remove the malware or clean a hacked WordPress site.
Cleaning up a WordPress site can be very difficult and time consuming, our advice would be to use a WordPress management service so you have full recourse and the piece of mind knowing that that your business’s website is safe and to stop it from happening again.
Is there a list of vulnerabilities?
There are also a lot of resources out there to help you stay on top of the latest WordPress security updates and vulnerabilities. See some of them below:
- WPScan Vulnerability Database: Catalogs over 10,000 WordPress Core, Plugin and Theme vulnerabilities.
- ThreatPress: Daily updated database of WordPress plugins, themes, and WordPress core vulnerabilities.
- Official WordPress Security Archive
Conclusion
As people grow increasingly reliant on technology, accessibility to a company’s digital presence becomes more and more paramount. Faulty website security threatens that accessibility. If a company website is compromised, it can cause irreparable damage to it’s reputation.