You may believe that website security is just for techies and engineers to worry about. But if you don’t concern yourself with the security of your website, you may find out of nowhere that you’ve been hacked or otherwise compromised. And you may have no idea of how it happened.
Hackers with powerful botnets regularly scan the web for sites with known weak spots to exploit. Therefore they will try to perform SQL injections, cross-site scripting, or brute force attacks. Or they may use even more devious ways of compromising your website security. Their goal may be to code a back door into your website. This could let them use your server resources to email spam or mine Bitcoin. Or, they may have something more complex in mind like a phishing attack.
How to Prepare for a Hack
Regardless of their objectives, hackers will come at you with a lot of threats that you won’t fully understand. If you don’t have the technical knowledge to bolster your business against these threats, you should at least have a plan of action that you’re familiar with in the event of an attack.
Using WordPress can make the task of monitoring your site’s security a lot easier. WordFence is a security plugin that you can use on almost any WordPress site to regularly scan the site for malware and to provide an application firewall against various hack attempts.
You should also speak to your web host about what measures you can take to improve your website security. They may help you with an SSL certificate to serve the site over HTTPS. A cert can prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. Or they may be able to use server level tools like Modsecurity or Varnish.
Peace of Mind in an Emergency
Finally, if you are serious about keeping your website secure you might want to look at third-party services that actively monitor your site for vulnerabilities and respond in the event of an emergency. Two examples of such services are SiteLock and Sucuri.
Of course, the best way to ensure the security of your website is to talk to a web developer and get some professional advice. At Primitiv Media we pride ourselves on keeping our clients’ website malware-free and secure from all forms of attack. If you’d like a free consultation, contact us today.
