While social media gets a lot of glittering attention in the modern marketing world, all of your digital marketing strategy still hinges around maintaining a slick, brand-promoting and sales-boosting website that works to anchor your online presence. The incursion of hackers into this digital safe-space can be disastrous for your brand, especially if not picked up or acted on swiftly. Here’s a few simple strategies you can use to ensure your website stays safely as you intend it, courtesy of the team here at Zebra 360 Online.
Know where you are vulnerable
No website is 100% hacker proof. Sadly, there will always be a vulnerability that can be exploited if someone tries hard enough. It’s more important to focus on closing obvious backdoors and loopholes, and remain aware of any other potential issues which may arise.
As an example, WordPress has revolutionised the website landscape, allowing easy creation of slick and professional websites. It comes with a small downside, however- because the code is Open Source, anyone can access it, and those with nothing but mischief to entertain themselves thus know where to strike. This doesn’t mean you should avoid the platform and its many benefits, however- simply that you need to ensure you use the tool sensibly.Don’t simply post your website and forget about it- active management and monitoring is your first line defence against problems.
Updates are your friend
It may be irritating to get reminders to update your site- but it’s critical you do. These updates are generated to close any potential security vulnerabilities that have been spotted. Running an up-to-date version of the source code is the simplest thing you can do to keep your WordPress site hacker-proof.
Stay strong [on passwords, that is]
Strong passwords, and an overall strong approach to user permissions, are your first line defence against hackers. Most WordPress hacking occurs through weak passwords. If you don’t want to remember a host of difficult, long passwords, use a password manager to remember them for you rather then skimp on safety. While you’re at it- and especially if you have a multi-person content team or use freelance help- be sure to tightly control who has access to the backend of your website at all, and who has the authority to make changes. Enabling two-factor authentication, that needs approval using a code sent to a different phone or email, can also assist with this.,
Choose a good host and package
Your servers and hosting partner will play a huge role in keeping you safe, too. Shared hosting is often cheap- and reputable services take security seriously- but if you need the utmost in website security then a managed server or private server space will boost your backup schedule and overall security that bit further.
Ensure you can roll out backups
In the event of a hacker attack, it’s critical you can roll back to an earlier, uncompromised state as efficiently as possible and with the least disturbance to your customers. Proper backups, made on an advised timeline of daily, weekly and monthly, are essential to your security. Cloud services are generally recommended, but you can use any solution that works with your needs and budget- just make sure those backups are there!
Change your admin username and folder
Specifically on WordPress, it’s common to leave the default ‘admin’ username and folder as they are. This makes any hacker’s life much easier, of course! Most up-to-date installations will force you to do this anyway, but if not ensure you do it manually.
Ban when necessary
Shutting down brute-force attacks can be as simple as using a lock-down feature to prevent login attempts after a certain number. Make sure you are notified of the activity too. Fortunately, there’s a ton of good plugins to assist you with this out there.
This is only some of the steps you can take to ensure you have a fully secure website or WordPress site, but it’s a solid start to making your website hacker proof. Contact the team at Zebra 360 Online if you’d like to explore some other proven strategies to keep you safe on the World Wide Web.
