WordPress Users Must Protect Their Security

There are more attacks on the internet now than there were before. So, we must secure our website. Web hosting services provide security services like SSL certificates, DDoS protection, and a strong firewall.

WordPress is famous for its different themes. With WordPress, we can quickly create different websites. Web hosting services for WordPress are also becoming more common. There are a lot of new people who want WordPress web hosting. Security complaints about WordPress sites are also on the rise.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to protect a WordPress website differently. This will help you as a WordPress website owner. First, let’s talk about why website protection is essential.

Why Does Website Security Matter?

If someone hacks into your WordPress website, it can hurt your business’s income and image in a big way. Hackers can steal user information and passwords, install harmful software, and even send malware to your users.

In the worst-case scenario, you might have to pay hackers ransomware to get back into your website.

Google said in March 2016 that more than 50 million website visitors had been told that a website they were viewing might have malware or steal information.

Also, Google blocks about 20,000 websites each week for having malware and about 50,000 websites each week for scams.

If your WordPress website is for a business, you should pay extra attention to how secure it is.

In the same way that it’s up to the business owner to protect the store building, it’s up to you, as an online business owner, to protect your business website.

How Do I Protect my WordPress Website as a User?

Web hosting services offer different security services for our websites, but as users, we can also take some steps to protect our WordPress websites. Here, we’ll discuss some different ways to keep your WordPress site safe.

Keep WordPress Up-to-Date

WordPress is a piece of open-source software that is regularly updated and managed. By default, WordPress installs small updates immediately. For big releases, you have to start the update yourself.

You can also add thousands of apps and themes to your website with WordPress. Third-party developers, who also release new versions on a daily basis, keep these plugins and themes up to date.

These WordPress changes are very important for keeping your website safe and stable. You need to make sure that the core, plugins, and style of your WordPress website are all up-to-date.

User Permissions and Strong Passwords

Most efforts to hack into WordPress use stolen passwords. You can make it harder for them to do this by using strong, unique passwords for your website, not just for the WordPress admin area but also for FTP accounts, databases, WordPress server accounts, and your domain-based email addresses.

Strong passwords are hard to remember, so many new users prefer to avoid using them. You no longer have to remember passwords, which is a good thing. A password planner can help.

Giving people access to your WordPress admin account unless you have to is another way to lower the risk. Before you add new users and authors to your WordPress website, make sure you know what their roles and abilities are. This is especially important if you have a large team or guest writers.

WordPress web hosting

The most important part of keeping your WordPress website safe is the server service you use. Here’s how the best web hosting service keeps your websites and data safe in the background. They are always looking for strange behavior on their network. All the best web hosting server companies have tools to prevent DDOS attacks on a large scale.

They update their server software, PHP versions, and hardware so hackers can’t take advantage of known security flaws in older versions.

They have disaster recovery and accident plans that are ready to be put into action. This lets them protect your data in case of a big accident.

On a shared web hosting plan, you and many other people share the server’s resources. This increases the chance of cross-site poisoning, in which a hacker uses a nearby website to attack yours.

When you use a managed WordPress hosting service, your website is more secure. Managed WordPress hosting companies offer automatic backups, automatic WordPress changes, and more advanced security settings to protect your website.

As our top choice for managed WordPress hosting, we suggest WordPress Engine.

Scanning WordPress for Malware and Vulnerabilities

If you install a WordPress security tool, it will check for malware and signs of security breaches on a regular basis.

But if your website’s traffic or search scores drop all of a sudden, you should run a scan by hand. You can use a security tool for WordPress or one of these security and malware scanners.

Running these online scans is easy. You need to enter the URLs of your websites, and their bots will look through them for known malware and bad code.

Now, keep in mind that most WordPress security tools can only scan your website. They can’t get rid of the malware or clean up a WordPress website that has been hacked.

Fixing a WordPress Site That Was Hacked

Before their website gets hacked, many WordPress users need help understanding how important backups and security are.

It can be hard and take a long time to clean up a WordPress website. Let a professional handle it.

Hackers put backdoors on websites that have been hacked, and if these backdoors are not fixed properly, your website will probably be hacked again.

If you let a professional security company like Sucuri fix your website, it will be safe again to use. It will also keep you safe from any threats that happen in the future.

Log WordPress Idle Users Out Automatically

Users who are logged in can sometimes leave their screens, which is a security risk. Someone can change their password, make changes to their account, or take over their experience.

Because of this, many banking and financial websites automatically log off users who don’t do anything for a while. Your WordPress website can also have the same kinds of features.

You will need to get the Inactive Logout plugin and turn it on. After the plugin is activated, go to Settings » Inactive Logout to set up its settings.

Just set the amount of time and add a message to log out. Don’t forget to click the button that says “Save Changes” to keep your choices.

Two-factor authentication should be added.

In order to log in with a two-factor authentication technique, users must use a two-step verification method. The first step is entering your username and password, and the second step is using a different device or app to prove who you are.

You can turn it on for your accounts on most of the best websites, like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The same features can also be added to your WordPress blog.

First, you need to get the Two Factor Authentication app and turn it on. You need to click on the “Two Factor Authentication” link in the WordPress admin sidebar after registration.

Next, you need to get an authenticator app for your phone and open it. You can use apps like Google Authenticator, Authy, and LastPass Authenticator to do this.

We suggest LastPass Authenticator or Authy because they both let you back up your accounts to the cloud. This will be very helpful if you lose your phone, restart it, or buy a new one. You can easily get back into all of your accounts.

For the lesson, we will use the LastPass Authenticator. However, the steps for all authentication apps are the same. Open your authenticator app, and then click the “Add” button.

You will be asked if you want to scan a website or its bar code directly. Choose the option to scan a bar code, and then point the camera on your phone at the QR code on the plugin’s settings page.

That’s it; your login app will now save it. After you enter your password, the next time you log in to your website, you will be asked for the two-factor authentication code.

Limit your login attempts.

WordPress lets users try to log in as many times as they want by default. This means that brute-force attacks can happen on your WordPress website. Hackers try to figure out passwords by logging in with different combinations of letters and numbers.

This is easy to fix by putting a limit on how many times a person can try to log in and fail. If you use the web application blocker, which we talked about earlier, this is taken care of automatically. But if you still need to set up a firewall, follow the steps below.

First, you need to get the Login LockDown plugin and turn it on. See our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress app for more information. After activating the app, go to the settings » Login LockDown page to set it up.

Conclusion

Every day, more and more people use WordPress web hosting. Managed WordPress hosting is a service that many people want. As a new WordPress website owner, we can take some steps to make sure our website is secure. For example, we can use two-step authentication, keep our website up-to-date, use permissions and strong passwords, scan for malware, choose a reputable web hosting service, limit the number of times someone can try to log in, and more.