If you’ve started your blogging journey or created a new website for your passive home business, you will certainly want to keep it safe. Isn’t it? We all know that the WordPress platform has huge popularity among people’s choices. WordPress is a famous  Content Management System (CMS), used for any website. However, the popularity of the WordPress platform attracts cyber hackers and makes it prone to security vulnerabilities sometimes.

Most of the security issues happen due to user irresponsibility to maintain the website or lack of knowledge in online security systems. That’s why applying adequate security measures to prevent and protect your website from hackers is a crucial task. Keeping that in mind, this article will help the users know the process to secure their websites.

WordPress Known Security Issues

There are some incidents where WordPress website security had faced challenges. Some infamous types of Cyberattacks are Backdoors, Brute force attacks, Denial of Service, Malicious Redirects, etc.

Brute Force Attack:

A brute force attack is a hacking method to exploit a user’s login credentials and get unauthorized access to a user’s account. The hacker runs an automated script that uses trial and error to break passwords, login credentials, and encryption keys. 

Backdoor Attacks:

In this attack, cybercriminals gain unauthorized access to the website infiltrating a network by using malware. Hackers try to find software’s weak point, unprotected ports of entry, like outdated plug-ins, faulty firewalls to take advantage and spread the malware. When malware intrudes into a system, it can access sensitive data.

Denial Of Service:

The riskiest and most vicious of all types of Cyberattacks is Denial of Service ( DoS). It’s a malicious attack to overwhelm the memory of the website operating systems with high traffic in order to disrupt the normal operation. Hackers have destroyed millions of websites by exploiting outdated versions of WordPress software with DoS attacks. 

Malicious Redirects:

With malicious redirect attacks, hackers make backdoors in WordPress installations using FTP, SFTP, wp-admin, and other protocols and send redirection codes into the website.

Prevent Cybercrime and Protect WordPress Site

There are some precautionary measures to take in order to protect WordPress websites from cyberattacks. The most common ways are as follows:

Two-Step Authentication

It’s required to activate two-step authentication to login into the WordPress website. When users try to login into their website, an auto-generated PIN would be sent to their respective mobile number for verification of their identity.

Use Latest Versions of WordPress Authorized Plugins and Themes:

Only use WordPress authorized plugins and themes. It’s an essential step to harden website security. Nulled WordPress plugins and themes are unauthorized versions of the original ones. You won’t be able to know what malicious code they might have. Your website can be hacked by using it.

Therefore, “featured” and “popular” sections in the WordPress repository can be a safe place to use. Otherwise, you can download it from the developer’s website.

Keep Website Updated

WordPress always releases essential software updates to enhance the website’s security and performance. It prevents WordPress sites from cyber attacks. So, updating the WordPress website is a crucial security measure to enhance the website’s protection online.

Use Standard Hosting Service:

WordPress-approved hosting service is essential for website safety and its proper growth. It also impacts in search engine rank of the website. A good website hosting company provides excellent features, service, and customer support.

Use SSL Certificate:

Secure Socket Layer ( SSL ) is a protocol that encrypts data transferred between users and websites. It protects the website from hackers and prevents them from stealing important information. Websites that have an SSL certificate, use HTTPS protocol. It also helps with the SEO of the website to get a higher rank in search engines.

Activate Lockdown Feature On Website:

URL lockdown feature prevents a website’s login page from being accessed by unauthorized IP addresses and brute force attacks. For that, a Web Application Firewall (WAF) service is needed. It identifies the URLs which you want to lockdown and the IP address range permitted to access those URLs. Anybody outside the specified IP range can’t access the website.

 Prevent Hotlinking:

Hotlinking is malpractice where one’s website image URL gets linked to the other websites, without any prior permission. It’s illegal and even costs money to the original website owner. Also, hotlinking uses up your website bandwidth and makes it slow. By FTP client, CDN- website owners can put a code within their websites to prevent this bad practice.

Take Website Backup Regularly:

Even people know well about the importance of taking backup of anything, still, they often forget to take their website back up. No one can assure that his website is fully secured. So, keeping the website information and the content safe and protected, website backup is a must.

Final Thoughts

Cybercrime is a critical and ongoing issue in the computer world. Because of its CMS popularity, WordPress websites become targets of cyber attackers. There are many ways to protect websites as much as we can by implementing proper security measures. So, it’s necessary for website owners to know how to protect their websites from hackers and maintain them safely.