You love your blog because it’s an outlet for your frustrations or a way to get the word out about things you care about. It could be your main or a side source of income. While WordPress and other open source platforms are popular, they can be a security risk.
A secure website gives you and the people that visit your site peace of mind. The last thing you want is to see adult images or redirected links placed on your site by hackers. Once your site’s been hacked, it can impact your traffic and reputation for months.
Check out these tips to keep your WordPress or other open source website safe and secure.
1. Update Platform and Plug-ins
WordPress security issues often come from exploitations in the platform itself or the many plug-ins available for it. All they need to do is find one crack and soon your website is hijacked. Many people don’t think about regularly updating everything.
The WordPress platform has regular updates that are important to use, but so do the plug-ins and themes. They may not come out with a big banner on your dashboard, but your left navigation does keep track of all the updates.
Why is it important? Many times, these updates plug the security holes found in the programming.
2. A Secure Website Needs Security Monitoring
Do you have a newsletter signup on your blog? People give you their names, email addresses and potentially more.
Some WordPress sites have e-commerce, so people give you credit card numbers. One data breach and your reputation is in a shambles.
Monitored security solutions can provide 24-7 monitoring of your site and decrease the chances your important data could be stolen. If you want to learn more about monitored security services or SOC-as-a-Service, then view here.
3. Keep A Website Backup
When a hacker hits your site and messes everything up, the best thing is to roll it back to before the hacker hit. This eliminates his malicious code and gives you the opportunity to change passwords, etc. before the hacker can come back.
There are many plug-ins that provide backup services. There are some that are free and others that cost money. Review the various plug-ins and choose the one that best fits your needs.
When a hacker hits, you want your site back to normal as soon as possible and a backup restoration does just that.
4. Hackers Love Unlimited Login Attempts
One of the favorite ways for hackers to get into your site is spamming your login until they can break into the site. The easiest way to thwart this is to limit the number of times anyone can login.
You know your login and password and it shouldn’t take more than one or two attempts to get into your site.
Limit the number of attempts to three and then hackers get locked out. If you want even more login security, have a captcha to verify the person logging in is human.
5. Limit Access to Other Users
Many times, a disgruntled employee or developer has gone back and messed up a website just for spite. They might lock you out. They write a nasty blog post you can’t remove, etc. They can totally ruin all your SEO efforts.
If you have multiple users on your site, limit what they have access to in the user management tab in the left navigation.
You can remove users that are no longer active. You can provide permissions and set access levels for existing users. A spiteful author can’t do much to your site if you remove them as a user.
WordPress Sites Can Be Secure
WordPress and other open source platforms offer more security risks than others, but if you follow these steps you can have a secure website. For more information about WordPress blogging, explore our blogging tips.