WordPress Security

In today’s digital world, web security is essential. The rise of technology has posed a lot of challenges in website security and securing information is a big task. Hackers are desperately looking for security vulnerabilities and leave no chance of hacking your website and data. 

A security vulnerability can be very dangerous because a website is your brand and is the first point of contact with your customers. You don’t want to compromise on your business relationships. If your site is not secure then, your customer information can be hacked and this is dangerous for your business as well.  

The most common information that hackers are looking for are names, email ID’s, credit card details, passwords and bank details. Imagine waking up and discovering that your site has been hacked and everything has deleted. WordPress offers you plugins that helps protect your core files from being attacked.

It prevents access against any brute force attacks as well.  But nobody tells you whether a plugin is secure and reliable. Here are few facts that will shed some light on why WordPress site security is important for everyone:

In an article last year, WP White Security reported the following statistics about hacked websites…

41% were hacked through a security vulnerability on their hosting platform
29% were hacked via a security issue in the WordPress Theme they were using
22% were hacked via a security issue in the WordPress Plugins they were using
8% were hacked because they had a weak password

50,000 WordPress websites were compromised in July 2014 because of a fault in the MailPoet Newsletters, it should also be noted that the MailPoet Newsletters team had this matter fixed within hours of its occurrence. In October 2014, a team of hackers stole 800,000 banking credentials from WordPress sites. 

Through a vulnerability in the plugin, Slider Revolution, 100,000 WordPress websites were hacked. It’s not just high traffic websites that are targeted. Low traffic sites get hacked too.

Caring for your WordPress security is very important. There are so many developers who are now creating new functionalities and plugins for WordPress with a lot of vulnerabilities and problems that could put the security of your website at risk of being hacked.

Taking care of following things can save you from a lot of troubles:

Secure web hosting server

Keep WordPress updated

Keep all plugins updated

Don’t use admin as a username

Use strong passwords

Appropriate user permissions

Hide wp-config.php and .htaccess

Use WordPress security keys for authentication

Disable file editing

Limit login attempts

Use best WordPress security plugins like wordfence and Sucuri

Scan wordpress and all plugins with good anti virus before making them live

If possible restrict  wp-login just to your dedicated IP address

At least once a week backup wordpress site with database

Don’t keep backups of wordpress site on same hosting.

Around 76% of WordPress users don’t have an up to date backup of their WordPress website.

If this is interesting to you or has raised concerns, feel free to get in touch and see how we can help you.  A chat won’t cost you anything and it could save a lot of stress.