WordPress is the most widely used content management system (CMS), powering 43.2% of all websites. Unfortunately, because of its widespread popularity, a variety of hackers take advantage of the platform’s security flaws. This is not to say that WordPress has a weak security framework; users’ ignorance of security risks can also lead to security breaches. Thus, it’s advisable to implement security precautions before hackers target your website.
Security should be your first priority when using any online platform. This article will look at security issues with WordPress and offer advice on how to maintain the safety and security of your WordPress website. Let’s get started!
What is WordPress Security?
You are aware that your website is a collection of key data and facts. Furthermore, there could be a number of problems in both your personal and professional life if it is compromised or hacked. The individual targeting your website can abuse the data and jeopardize the legitimacy and good name of your business. Website security is therefore absolutely necessary.
So what does WordPress website security mean? It involves employing a series of protocols and protections to maintain the website safe and secure for both you and your visitors. Moreover, it includes:
- Stopping online attacks and threats
- Using security tools to find and fix vulnerabilities
What is the Importance of WordPress Security?
Your WordPress website is at risk if you don’t prioritize website security. It’s essential that you take preventative measures as a website owner in order to protect your website from potential threats. Keeping your WordPress website safe should be your first priority, especially in light of the potential risks and consequences of a security breach. Hackers can obtain sensitive data from your website, compromise user information, and harm the reputation of your website. In addition to being costly to resolve, this may have legal consequences.
It’s critical to take website security seriously and have the required procedures in place in order to prevent these problems. This includes setting up web application firewalls (WAFs), securing your plugins, using robust user authentication techniques, and updating your WordPress core, themes, and plugins on a regular basis.
Making website security a top priority will protect your website from any threats and guarantee the security and trust of your users. Therefore, protect your online presence by taking the required actions to secure your WordPress website right now.
How to Secure Your WordPress Website?
- Setup safelist and blocklist for the admin page.
- Keep your site up to date.
- Use a trusted WordPress theme.
- Use secure wp-admin login credentials.
- Enable two-factor authentication.
- Remove unused WordPress themes and plugins.
- Install an SSL certificate for a secure data transfer.
- Create backups regularly.
- Change your WordPress login page URL.
- Monitor user activity.
- Limit the number of failed login attempts.
- Regularly scan your site for malware.
- Automatically log out idle users.
- Disable the PHP error reporting feature.
- Migrate to a more secure web host.
- Disable file editing.
- Use .htaccess to disable PHP file execution and protect the wp-config.php file.
- Change the default WordPress database prefix.
- Disable the XML-RPC feature.
- Hide your WordPress version.
- Block hotlinking from other websites.
- Manage file and folder permissions.
Why WordPress Security is Important for your Online Business
With WordPress’s 64.2% market share, it is reasonable to conclude that 810 million websites worldwide regardless of their size, reputation, or industry need protection.
Maintaining Clients Trust: Your clients and visitors will remain trusting of you if your website is secure. People are more inclined to interact with your website and make purchases when they are certain that their data is secure.
Preventing Downtime: Website downtime may be caused by malware attacks, hacking, or security lapses. This harms not just your company’s operations but also its reputation online and its financial performance.
Avoiding Legal Consequences: Security lapses and data breaches may expose a company to penalties and lawsuits, particularly if customer information is exposed.
Enhancing SEO: Safe websites rank higher in search results on platforms like Google. Your search engine visibility can be increased with a secure website that has an SSL certificate and strong security features.
What are Common WordPress Issues?
Despite being regarded as generally safe, the WordPress platform’s open-source technology can introduce a number of vulnerabilities through file exploits, SQL, CSRF, insecure hosting, and other means, as well as through plugins and themes.
Some common security issues with WordPress are as follows:
Outdated Software: Your website may be exposed to known security flaws if WordPress core, themes, and plugins are not updated on a regular basis.
Weak Passwords: It is simpler for attackers to obtain unauthorized access to your website when you use weak or easy passwords.
Plugin Vulnerabilities: Installing risky plugins increases the possibility that malicious hackers may be able to compromise your website.
Brute Force Attacks: In an effort to obtain access, attackers test a variety of login and password combinations until they discover the one that works.
SQL Injection: An attacker can obtain access to your database and private data by injecting malicious SQL code into the input fields on your website.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): Cybercriminals insert malicious scripts into websites that other users are viewing, potentially resulting in data theft or site defacement.
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF): This is the practice of deceiving authorized users into unintentionally carrying out malicious operations.
File Inclusion Exploits: Malicious files can be included on your server by attackers using poorly sanitized user inputs.
Spam and Malware: If a website is not protected from spam and malware, it may become compromised.
Phishing: To fool users into disclosing login credentials or other sensitive information, attackers may send emails or login pages.
Data Leaks: User information may be exposed due to poorly configured websites or third-party services.
DDoS Attacks: Distributed Denial of Service attacks can disrupt site availability by overwhelming it with traffic.
Best Practices to Secure your Website
After reading about the various ways a website might be compromised, we assume you’re interested in finding out how to make a website more secure. Therefore, take time to read this section since we’ve included some advice on how to safeguard your website.
Utilizing Two Factor Authentication
One of the finest methods for protecting a website from unauthorized logins is two-factor authentication. In the past, accessing a website’s admin area required a password; but, with two-factor authentication, logging in requires completing an additional authentication step.
An email, a message given over the phone, or an additional passcode could constitute this second factor. By adding an additional layer of security, it strengthens the authentication process’ security and makes it more difficult for hackers to access your website.
Limit File Uploads
Limiting the files that users may upload to your website is another approach to keep the website safe. Hackers could be able to use these vulnerabilities to attack your website because files posted to it might include malicious script.
However, occasionally, the website’s design may require that users upload substantial volumes of data. For example, you may want your customers to provide reviews that contain pictures of the things they bought.
To safeguard your website, you should see every picture uploaded as a threat and take the necessary steps to make sure the submitted files are saved in a database somewhere else. To do that, there are three options:
Third-Party Software
High-end virus protection and security are provided by software such as Transloadit and Filestack, which offer an extremely secure upload system. Having said that, it’s important to remember that they can be somewhat costly.
DIY (Do It Yourself)
Next, you may create a script that will retrieve the submitted files from a private, remote location and display them in the browser. Given that some coding is required, you must possess some tech skills.
Avoid It
Perhaps the easiest and best way is to avoid file uploads. If it sounds too difficult, you should at least restrict the kinds of files that users can upload to your website.
Changing Your Default CMS
These days, the majority of attacks are automated, and hackers frequently create bots to search websites with default configurations. This makes it easier for them to use the same virus or malware to target and access a wider variety of websites. Thus, after configuring your CMS, remember to modify a few default settings, like:
- File permissions
- Information visibility
- User controls
- Comment settings
Utilize Backup Plugins
When it comes to website security, a high-quality backup plugin is a need. In the unlikely event that your website is compromised in the future, it is likely that hackers will erase all of the content, leaving only the URL link. Both your business and your traffic may be impacted by this.
To make sure that an attack doesn’t cause you to lose access to the important data on your website, think about using a backup plugin like BackupBuddy. Other highly regarded solutions, such VaultPress and UpdraftPlus, are also available for creating backups of your WordPress websites.
Restrict User Access
Human error is the root cause of 95% of cyberattacks, according to a survey. For this reason, we highly advise that you and your staff become knowledgeable on the fundamentals of cybersecurity. Restricting internet access to individuals who are prone to making mistakes is the most efficient strategy to minimize human error. Don’t allow interns, outside consultants, or guest bloggers access to your website. Make sure that only a few at the top are granted this privilege.
Provide your staff with the minimal amount of access necessary to do their tasks if they need to access your website. After finishing, be sure to remove the access.
Use Website Security Tools
You can hardly prevent cyberattacks on your own. As a result, it’s recommended that you use online tools to keep an eye on the security of your website. For WordPress websites, we highly advise utilizing security plugins like iThemes security, Jetpack, Malware, Bulletproof Security, and All in One WordPress Security and Firewall.
They assist in building a firewall to protect your WordPress website from online threats like viruses. Regardless of the content management system you use, if you don’t use WordPress, use other reliable website security software like Bitdefender and Avast to be safe.
In order to find your vulnerabilities and take proactive measures to stop a cyberattack before it happens, you can also carry out security audits.
Keep Changing Your Password
It’s a good idea to regularly change the password to prevent cyberattacks. Make sure you don’t use the same password on any of your electronic devices or websites. Once they get the password to your website, hackers will attempt to access it on other websites, social media accounts, and bank accounts.
Thus, make sure to change your passwords right away if you have been using them for several accounts. To build complex, hard-to-guess passwords, we also advise utilizing a reliable password manager. Password managers protect your credentials from hackers on the internet by using cutting-edge encryption technologies.
Choosing Safe and Reputable Website Hosting Service
You should pick a hosting company whose web servers have the highest level of security. In this manner, you can guarantee that websites receive the same degree of protection, although this may not always be the case.
Because shared plans are so inexpensive, you might also think about going with one, but you should be aware that this isn’t the safest option. You effectively share web servers with other websites when you subscribe to a shared plan. It won’t take long for the hacker to gain access to your web server if one of them is attacked.
Keep Updating Your Software
Owners of PCs are aware that updating the software requires minimal effort. When it comes to websites, it may be annoying, but it is necessary.
Make sure all of the plugins, CMS, and other software you use is up to date. In essence, software upgrades can increase security by resolving flaws and problems. Therefore, it becomes easier for hackers to compromise the website if you don’t update your software on a regular basis.
Utilize WFA (Web Application Firewall)
A firewall’s primary responsibility is to protect your computer from unauthorized access and cyberattacks. In addition, it provides protection against malware and denial-of-service attacks by filtering out incoming requests. Your online apps are protected by the web application firewall, which keeps an eye on, blocks, and filters malicious traffic that is aimed at them.
Significant risks including SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and DDOS attacks can be monitored with the use of WAF. Consequently, the best website firewall companies are Sucuri, SiteLock, and Cloudflare.
Conclusion
Cyberattacks can take many different forms, such as DDoS attacks or malware injection. Because of the CMS’s widespread use, hackers frequently target WordPress websites in particular. Owners of WordPress websites therefore need to understand how to secure their websites. But protecting a WordPress website requires ongoing effort. Given the constant growth of cyberattacks, you must regularly reevaluate it. Although there is always a danger, you may lessen it by using WordPress security features.
We hope that this article has made clear the importance of WordPress safeguards practices and how to use them.
