How To Protect Your WordPress Website From Hackers

Introduction.

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems for website creation, powering over 40% of all websites on the internet.

However, this popularity also makes WordPress websites an attractive target for hackers.

Hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities to exploit and gain access to sensitive information, such as user data, financial information, or personal data.

Securing your WordPress website is crucial to prevent hacking attempts and protect your online presence.

In this guide, we will explore some effective measures that you can take to protect your WordPress website from hackers.

By implementing these measures, you can enhance the security of your website and reduce the risk of being hacked.

What is a WordPress Hack?

A WordPress hack refers to the unauthorized access, modification, or exploitation of a WordPress website by a hacker.

A hack can result in a range of negative consequences, including defacing the website, stealing sensitive information, injecting malicious code, and spreading malware or viruses to website visitors.

Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in WordPress themes, plugins, or core files to gain unauthorized access to a website.

They can also use brute-force attacks to guess login credentials, inject malicious code into the website’s database, or exploit insecure web server configurations. A WordPress hack can be detrimental to a website’s reputation and functionality.

Therefore, it is crucial to take preventive measures to secure your WordPress website and mitigate the risk of a hack.

Why Should I Protect My WordPress Website From Hackers?

WordPress is a widely used content management system for creating websites, with over 40% of all websites on the internet using it.

While WordPress is an excellent platform, it is also a prime target for hackers.

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities to exploit and gain unauthorized access to websites. In this article, we’ll discuss why you should protect your WordPress website from hackers.

1. Protect sensitive information.

Your WordPress website may store sensitive information, such as user data, financial information, and personal data.

If your website is hacked, this information can be stolen and used for malicious purposes. Protecting your website from hackers is crucial to safeguard this sensitive information and prevent data breaches.

2. Avoid negative impact on website functionality.

A hacked website can have a significant negative impact on website functionality. Hackers can inject malicious code into the website’s codebase, causing it to malfunction, crash, or redirect visitors to other sites.

This can result in a loss of revenue, a decline in search engine rankings, and a negative impact on your brand reputation.

3. Ensure website availability.

A successful hack can render your website unavailable to visitors, resulting in lost traffic and revenue.

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack can overload your website’s server, causing it to crash and preventing visitors from accessing it.

Protecting your website from hackers ensures its availability to visitors and minimizes the risk of a DoS attack.

4. Preserve your website’s reputation.

A hacked website can damage your website’s reputation and undermine visitor trust. A hacked website may display inappropriate content or messages, which can turn visitors away and damage your brand reputation.

Protecting your website from hackers ensures that your website remains safe and secure, preserving your reputation and visitor trust.

5. Compliance with regulations.

If your website collects personal data, you may be subject to regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

These regulations require that websites take adequate measures to protect the data they collect. Protecting your website from hackers ensures compliance with these regulations and avoids potential fines and legal action.

6. Reduce the risk of financial losses.

A hacked website can result in financial losses, such as the cost of recovering from the hack, lost revenue due to website downtime, or the cost of legal action if the hack results in a data breach.

Protecting your website from hackers reduces the risk of financial losses and ensures that your website remains secure and operational.

7. Protect your website’s SEO.

A hacked website can negatively impact your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Hackers can inject malicious code into your website’s codebase, resulting in a decline in search engine rankings. This can lead to a loss of traffic and revenue.

Protecting your website from hackers ensures that your website remains SEO-friendly, and your SEO efforts are not wasted.

8. Stay ahead of emerging threats.

Hackers are constantly developing new techniques and strategies to hack websites. To protect your WordPress website from hackers, it’s essential to stay ahead of emerging threats and take proactive measures to secure your website.

This can include implementing security best practices, using the latest security plugins, and staying informed of emerging threats in the WordPress community.

9. Sensitive information may be collected.

Many websites collect, store, use or process confidential information such as payment cards, account credentials, personally identifiable information or health records.

Payment card data and personal information are hot commodities in dark markets; they are easy to sell and fetch high prices.

Any website that utilises sensitive information should undergo a penetration test to identify vulnerabilities and breach those security gaps as much as possible.

10. Intellectual property may not be saved.

Many organisations use websites to store intellectual property, and websites can contain secret company documents, vendor portals, customer portals, sales leads, or top-secret military and government plans.

Hackers could take advantage of a possible breach in your web infrastructure to expose a competitive edge, damage reputation, and compromise customer and vendor data, ultimately leading to a loss in business and potentially fines and lawsuits.

11. Your business depends on it.

Imagine having to build an online business, and it all went down the drain due to a single hack. The negative impacts of breached website security are immense, no matter the size of a business.

Think of a website as massive as Facebook, Twitter or maybe your local banking app built on a vast payment infrastructure being hacked in one Night; counting the losses can be devastating.

What are the Signs That My Website Is Being Hacked?

All sites on the web are under constant attack – whether it’s a social network, payment infrastructure or a WordPress site.

Hackers employ automated software to crawl the web to probe for specific weaknesses in the website.

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) globally. Almost 40 per cent of all websites in the world run on WordPress.

Over 27 million websites are built with WordPress. That’s a huge number, an influence similar to Google’s hold over search engines and Facebook on Social networks.

However, unlike Google, WordPress is open source and has helped almost anyone create a website with relative ease.

This doesn’t mean only small brands and individual blogs use the platform. Here are some of the signs that your website is being hacked.

1. Drop in traffic.

When a website is already being hacked, the first thing you notice is a significant drop in traffic. One way to check this is to look at your analytics reports and see how your website’s traffic is.

If you notice a significant drop in traffic, even when Google Analytics is set up correctly, then this could be a sign that your WordPress site is hacked.

A sudden drop in traffic can be caused by different factors, including that malware on your website may redirect non-logged-in visitors to spam websites.

Or Google’s safe browsing tool shows warnings to users regarding your website.

2. Inability to log in.

The next sign that needs to be spotted when your website is hacked is the inability to log in to your WordPress dashboard.

If you cannot log in to your WordPress website, it may be a sign that your website is already hacked by someone who has gained access to the backend and shut you out.

However, your site will remain unsafe until you figure out how the hackers got into your website.

3. Suspicious User Accounts in WordPress.

The next thing to watch out for is the vast number of user accounts spammed on your WordPress website.

When starting this blog, I had this problem; at an exact point in time, I began witnessing unwanted registrations on my websites from people trying to spam my blog.

If your site is open to user registration and you are not using any spam registration protection, then spam user accounts are just common spam you can delete.

4. Slow websites despite having a responsive theme.

Another sign that your website has been hacked is being slowed down. This results from hackers sending many requests to your server because they are trying to break into your website.

Any such activity will make your website slow, unresponsive, and unavailable.
You can check your server logs to see which IPs are making too many requests and block them, but that may not fix the problem if there are too many or if the hackers change IP addresses.

5. Users Are Randomly Redirected to Unknown Websites.

A malicious redirect is a code inserted into a website to redirect the site visitor to another website.

This implies that your website’s traffic is being stolen and sent elsewhere.
Attackers typically insert malicious redirects into a website to generate advertising impressions.

The truth is that most site owners are unaware that their site is redirecting visitors. They often learn of redirection when there is a sudden drop in website traffic.

Once this is noticed, you should backup your website safely before fixing it, especially if you are unfamiliar with your content management system (CMS).

6. Popups or Pop-Under Ads on Your Website.

­A popup ad is ­an ad that “pops up” in its window when you visit a website.

This is usually caused when you sign up for a spammy ad network that promises colossal pay.

Pop-up and pop-under ads annoy many users because they clutter up the desktop and take time to close.

This can become harmful when they are unsolicited, which can, however, affect the user experience of your websites and cause you to lose more traffic.

If you did not sign up for these ads on your websites, something might be wrong somewhere; your website may have been hacked and had these codes installed behind your back.

7. Hijacked search results.

A malware or adware infection somewhere on your system is usually blamed for a hijacked search engine.

Having your ranking pages stolen by another website can badly affect your search engine optimisation efforts.

To find and remove the problem, check your system as a whole and the Web browser involved. Then, make sure to browse across using other browsers.

8. Google Chrome and other browsers Show a Warning When Visiting Your Website.

Another sign to know that your website has been hacked is when your customers see a message from Google Chrome with a warning message saying that your website may be hacked, it probably is.

This message is shown when Google Safe Browsing has blocked your website.

Popular browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari & Opera use Google’s blocklist to display warning messages to visitors.

Look at some warning messages that Google shows when your website is hacked.

The warning messages vary depending on what Google finds on your websites, but they more or less look like this.

It would help if you made the necessary efforts to fix this by doing the needful, such as Installing a valid SSL On your website, and if this does not solve the problem, you may have to contact your hosting providers or scan your websites on your own.

How do I Protect My WordPress Website From Hack?

WordPress is a popular content management system that powers millions of websites around the world.

However, its popularity also makes it a prime target for hackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access to websites.

Protecting your WordPress website from hackers is essential to safeguard sensitive information, preserve website functionality, and maintain your brand reputation.

In this article, we’ll discuss some effective measures you can take to protect your WordPress website from hackers.

1. Keep WordPress and plugins updated.

Keeping WordPress and plugins updated is essential to prevent hackers from exploiting known vulnerabilities.

WordPress releases regular updates to address security issues, and plugin developers often release updates to fix bugs and security flaws.

Keeping WordPress and plugins updated ensures that your website is protected from known vulnerabilities and reduces the risk of a hack.

2. Use strong passwords.

Using strong passwords is a simple yet effective measure to protect your WordPress website from hackers.

Weak passwords can be easily guessed or cracked by hackers, allowing them to gain unauthorized access to your website.

Use complex passwords that include a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. Avoid using common passwords or personal information that can be easily guessed or obtained.

3. Install security plugins.

Installing security plugins is an effective way to enhance the security of your WordPress website. Security plugins can provide features such as malware scanning, brute-force protection, and firewall protection. Some popular security plugins include Wordfence, Sucuri Security, and iThemes Security.

Choose a security plugin that fits your needs and install it on your website to protect it from hackers.

4. Limit login attempts.

Limiting login attempts is a simple measure that can prevent hackers from using brute-force attacks to guess login credentials.

Brute-force attacks involve repeatedly trying different combinations of usernames and passwords until the correct combination is found.

By limiting login attempts, you can block users or IP addresses that exceed a specified number of failed login attempts, preventing brute-force attacks.

5. Use two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a security measure that adds an extra layer of protection to your WordPress website.
With 2FA, users must provide two forms of identification, such as a password and a one-time code sent to their phone, to log in to the website.

This prevents hackers from gaining unauthorized access to your website even if they have your login credentials.

6. Secure your website’s server.

Securing your website’s server is crucial to protect it from hackers. This includes using a secure hosting provider, ensuring that your server software is up to date, and using secure protocols such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS).

Secure your website’s server to prevent hackers from exploiting server vulnerabilities and gaining unauthorized access to your website.

7. Disable file editing.

By default, WordPress allows users with administrator-level access to edit plugin and theme files directly from the WordPress dashboard.

However, this can be a security risk, as a hacker who gains access to your website can use this feature to inject malicious code into your website.

To prevent this, you can disable file editing by adding a line of code to your website’s wp-config.php file. This will prevent users from editing plugin and theme files from the WordPress dashboard.

8. Back up your website regularly.

Backing up your website regularly is essential to ensure that you can recover your website in the event of a hack.

A backup of your website can be used to restore your website to a previous version before the hack occurred.

You can use backup plugins such as UpdraftPlus or VaultPress to automatically back up your website to a remote server or cloud storage.

Back up your website regularly to ensure that you can recover your website in the event of a hack.

9. Remove unnecessary plugins and themes.

Unnecessary plugins and themes can be a security risk, as they can contain vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit.

Remove any plugins and themes that you are not using, and only install plugins and themes from trusted sources. Regularly review your website’s plugins and themes and remove any that are not necessary.

10. Monitor your website for suspicious activity.

Monitoring your website for suspicious activity is essential to detect any hacking attempts and prevent them from succeeding.

You can use security plugins to monitor your website for malware, brute-force attacks, and other types of suspicious activity. Set up alerts to notify you if any suspicious activity is detected on your website.

Conclusion.

Protecting your WordPress website from hackers is essential to safeguard sensitive information, ensure website availability, preserve your website’s reputation, comply with regulations, reduce the risk of financial losses, protect your website’s SEO, and stay ahead of emerging threats.

By taking proactive measures to secure your website, you can minimize the risk of a hack and ensure that your website remains safe, secure, and operational.

Finally, protecting your WordPress website from hackers requires a combination of proactive measures, including keeping WordPress and plugins updated, using strong passwords, installing security plugins, limiting login attempts, using two-factor authentication, securing your website’s server, disabling file editing, backing up your website regularly, removing unnecessary plugins and themes, and monitoring your website for suspicious activity.

By taking these measures, you can enhance the security of your website, prevent hacking attempts, and ensure that your website remains safe, secure, and operational.