Blog

WordPress, the world’s most popular website-building platform and Content Management System (CMS), is behind 43% of all of the world’s websites, and 62% of CMS-based websites. But, with all this popularity, come cyber attacks and hack threats. 

It faces constant attacks from hackers trying to find loopholes in the system. It is crucial to protect your website from cyber-attacks to prevent unnecessary loss of money, time, and energy. The first step towards a totally secure WordPress website is understanding prospective loopholes in the website’s security.

One Might Ask Here – But, WordPress Is A Secure CMS, Isn’t It?

Here, it is necessary to understand that 97% of cyber attacks occur from users breaching the security of WordPress plugins, thus proving that WordPress is not a vulnerable CMS. The advanced security features, combined with SuperByteHosting’s security measures will ensure that no hacker ever gets into your website and causes disruption. Want to know how? Keep reading!

First, let us understand why it is necessary to keep your WordPress site secured – 

1. Your information and reputation depend upon it

If your personal information falls into the hands of attackers, there is no end to what they could do with it. It can lead to identity theft, server crash, data leaks, ransomware, and whatnot! The occurrence of any of these unfortunate events will lead to a huge loss of time, money, and energy. 

2. Your visitors expect data confidentiality and security

As the client base of a business expands, the number of problems faced in handling data also increases with customers’ expectations of data privacy. Loss of customer trust and loyalty is often a result of the inability to provide the fundamental service of data security. 

You need to build trust in your customers that their data is secure, regardless of what data it is. While the storage of sensitive data like payment information requires your website to be Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant, other information like contact details and survey responses also need to be stored securely in an unbreachable facility. 

3. Google ranks secure websites higher in its search results

Remember this equation: Safe website = Searchable website. Why? Website security directly influences the visibility of your website in the results of a Google search. This is because website security and trustworthiness directly affect SEO, which forms the base of search engine ranking. 

4. WordPress is an open-source website, and it comes with its vulnerabilities.

Obviously! An open-source website means that website and its source code are available to all and not hidden from anyone. A popular open-source website to hackers is like cheese to mice. The open-source status of WordPress comes with its share of disadvantages, among which cyber-attack vulnerabilities are at the top. One must keep their WordPress site secure to protect their online identity.

Now that we know why it is necessary for WordPress sites to stay protected, let’s have a look at the ideal WordPress Security measures one must keep in mind.

Regular Software Updates

As all software companies do, WordPress regularly releases WordPress Security updates. WordPress, being a haven for everyone who likes to customize their website as per their wish, has centuries of pre-made themes and many plugins for users to download and use. 

The issue arises when users take their internet safety lightly and don’t update their software with the latest security patch released by WordPress. Users not keeping up with updates, only lead to vulnerability of the website to security risks. 

However, this is not a problem with SuperByteHosting’s advanced auto-update feature, a feature that, when turned on, enables the WordPress software to be automatically updated during website setup. SuperByteHosting has made it really easy and simple to prevent security threats this way.

Malware

Malware, also called Malicious Software, holds the capability to corrupt a site and cause long-term issues for the website and its visitors. The user usually does not notice the malware entering the website through security loopholes in outdated plugins. Malware can and does steal confidential data from users, thus placing them under a major threat. 

However, all kinds of malware get nullified by SuperByteHosting’s malware scanner that is accessible to all its users to detect malware on their website(s).

Unauthorized Logins

Lovingly called ‘brute force attacks’ by techies, unauthorized logins are successfully carried out when hackers guess the username and password of a website with weak security. Under this method, the hacker uses bots to try out millions and billions of username and password combinations, much like a trial-and-error method. Loaded down by billions of such requests, the website slows down to an unimaginable extent. 

Observant WordPress users would have noticed that most usually, admin portals of a WordPress website are accessible by adding a ‘/wp-admin ’ or ‘/wp-admin.php ’ suffix to the website address. This is due to the fact that the majority of users do not alter the login page address, primarily because they are unaware of how to do so. SuperByteHosting provides recommendations and guidance on website security customization and WordPress Security tips and tricks.

DDoS Attacks

Most websites use shared servers for storing and processing their data since shared servers are more cost-effective than private servers. Such shared servers have limited resources. Heavy traffic on a website means a strain on the server. 

A Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attack is very common on WordPress websites. It basically overloads your servers, thus leading to a complete shutdown of the servers. Bots are used to simulate thousands of IP addresses visiting your website simultaneously. However, worry not! SuperByteHosting’s strong network framework will ensure your website can go through any attack attempt. For additional security, SuperByteHosting users can also set up Cloudflare to mitigate any DDoS attacks from any external resources.

ConclusionWebsite security and maintenance don’t have to be a daunting task. It has to be carried out as diligently and regularly as any other activity on the website to ensure the website has a 24/7 uptime status, and you don’t lose out on any potential clients. Hosting services like SuperByteHosting go out of their way to protect their users from all kinds of cyber attacks on their website, so be sure to check out superbytehosting.com to get the best hosting and web security services for your website.