WordPress is the most popular content management system for new websites. Hackers always try to hack the WordPress sites. In this article we shall show 05 essential tips on cyber security of WordPress sites.
Online hacks and security breaches have so much become a norm that it is now an issue of when a business or organization will be hacked and not if they will be hacked. Generally, the target for hackers are usually networks that they can get customer details, financial data, or company secrets. So, if you have a website with this information on it, you have to secure it very well. Whether you’re just a simple blog or a revenue-generating website, it is your responsibility to protect your WordPress blog from hackers.
WordPress on its own is committed to ensuring cyber security. The company regularly updates its security technology and also has a schedule that they follow for regular releases which also includes updated vulnerability patches. Without any doubt, the core software of WordPress is secure on its own, and it is also regularly audited by plenty of developers worldwide. So, it is safe to say that WordPress is a very secure platform. But much more than WordPress as a whole, you have to take responsibility for the cyber security of your website irrespective of whether it is on WordPress or not, and this practice is an ongoing one. You will have to build barriers to repel the attackers, track changes on your website. It also involves denying malicious access, prevent failures, and hide sensitive information. To ensure the protection of your WordPress site, here are 5 essential tips that you must follow:
One feature that is common to all WordPress websites is the login page, and this is one part of the website that is vulnerable to attack. This is due to the fact that the programming of the bot is such that the installation of WordPress is easy to recognize and a path can be quickly created to reach the login page. So, if you use weak usernames and passwords, hackers can easily force their way in. A WordPress plugin such as WPS Hide Login is recommended in order to increase the layer or level of difficulty that the hacker will experience when trying to hack the website.
Another thing that you can do is to set a boundary for the total number of incorrect or unsuccessful login attempts. This is useful to help you block hacks that have gone past obfuscating the URL of your login. There is another WordPress plugin that you can also use for doing this too. An example is limit login attempts.
In order to ensure that your website is secured, then you must try to develop a good cybersecurity habit of using strong passwords. This is not just good for your website, it is a good practice for internet security as a whole. So, using password management tools alongside strong passwords, and other factors will make sure that your website is almost impenetrable.
In order to protect your website, you must ensure that the web application firewall (WAF) is a feature of your hosting provider. There are different sets of rules that each firewall has and is defined by the admin team of the server. A firewall helps in detecting and blocking requests on the basis of these set rules. The implication of this is that the security team of your hosting provider is responsible for continuously building a long list of rules which will help to stop the attack from happening.
However, this is not a 100% guarantee that your website is protected. But it means that for most of the cases, it will give enough time for you to carry out additional measures and also update your software if it is discovered that you have a vulnerability. In the case where your hosting provider does not have the web application firewall, you should try to find out if it is possible for you to enable WAF in the network delivering your content (if you have one). If you are unable to do this as well, then you can just install a different WordPress plugin for a firewall on your site. However, this plugin uses third party service when analyzing the traffic that is coming to your site, so, they are considered as very heavy-resource.
There are some things that we learn the hard way in life. I, personally, learned the importance of backing up my files years ago when my device crashed and I needed to urgently access my files. From that point, I made sure that I have backups for all my files, just in case.
The same actually works for website security. You should not learn to back up your site the hard way. So, ensure you back up your site. If you need a strategy for backing up your website, You can use the 3-2-1 rule for that, especially if your site has essential data in it. The 3-2-1 rule means that the site owners have 3 different backups in 2 distinct formats, while also ensuring that one if those backups are kept in another physical location.
This strategy is important because of the time when a disaster might strike. Keeping your backups in the same location and the same formats are totally useless. Using the 3-2-1 strategy will ensure that you are well equipped to handle this situation when or if it does arise. You must always put it to yourself to always create a new backup every time you make a significant upgrade or changes to your website.
Making use of CDN (content delivery network) can help the users of your website to have better experiences by making sure that you are able to deliver content faster. But if your CDN is a DNS type (which is before your website server), this can also further enhance the security of your website.
Firstly, an active firewall can be enabled. There is also the web application firewall, which was described earlier as constantly updating itself to protect your website against malicious behaviors such as tracking ports, massive connections, etc. This also prevents attacks by brute force using the provider’s spread out server network. This helps to minimize the attacks and also apply the rule of blocking in order to detect these types of assaults, which is usually DDoS or DoS.
This also hides your server’s original IP and prevents direct assault by hackers against your website.
Choosing a hosting company that you can trust is an important step in ensuring that you have a secure website. So, before you decide on a hosting company, you must be diligent enough to research the hosting company first. While it is easier and tempting to go for the cheapest of all, this is not usually the best approach. Go for the safest and the best, not the cheapest.
When you choose a hosting provider, they must be able to provide you with a secure platform, as well as take responsibility for maintaining the security of the infrastructure. You should also ensure that the software that your host is using is not outdated and their access is secured. Your host must also ensure that they have the most basic security measures at least. An example of this is a web application firewall on a server or WordPress updates on application.
They must also have tech support with an in-depth understanding of WordPress. A good provider of web hosting should have its own opt-in or built-in solutions for different measures mentioned above. You can easily check off on all of these if you choose the right web hosting provider.
One of your responsibility as a website owner is to ensure that your website is secure, or at least you are taking proactive steps to ensure that you can withstand any attempt to breach your website security.
There are reasons why hackers try to attack a website, but whatever it is, you should be prepared for the eventuality of such an event. It is becoming more rampant and no one is left out. Both small businesses and large organizations are at risk of hacking. The truth is there is no website that has 100% security. There are always security risks, which is why it is important to try to improve your security measures regularly. But with the tips that are given in this article, you can be sure that you are on the right track to preventing cyber attacks or at least, being able to withstand an attack.
We believe that you have learnt a lot on cyber security of WordPress sites. Your WordPress sites will be protected if you follow these 05 essential tips of cyber security. You can find many other articles here in our Blog Section on various issues. You can also write for us. You can suggest us for new articles. Our contributors will try to write on those topics related to web technologies.
Standard Coded WordPress Themes and Plugins can enhance the security of your WordPress sites. You should always trust on WP Approved Themes only.
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