WordPress security is a widely debated topic since last few years. With an upsurge in the digital marketing industry, it has become necessary for online users to secure WordPress site and their accounts from hackers.
Every week there is blacklisting of various websites for phishing and malware by Google.
WordPress is an open source script which makes it more vulnerable to threats and other related security issues. WordPress is widely used by users around the world.
In this article, we will be sharing some of the best tips to help you protect your WordPress account. These quick and easy tips will help you in securing your account from unwanted hackers and malware.
Tips to Secure WordPress Site:
As a website owner, you can take the following tips into consideration to ensure that your website is safe from unwanted threats and attacks of all sorts. Let’s get started and discuss how you can secure WordPress site.
Opt for Regular Updates:
Keeping your WordPress updated can have a huge impact in securing your website from unwanted malware and threats. You can check whether your WordPress account is updated or not by checking the Update Banner whenever you log in to your account.
Updates offer bug fixes which help the user to save the account from different threats. Being regular with the account updation always gives an added benefit to the website owner/ user in protecting the website and its content. Also, you should pay attention to the updates related to plugins and themes.
The themes and plugins act as a backdoor to your website. If these plugins are not secured properly your personal information can be at risk.
Always download the plugins from a trusted source. This reduces the chances of hacking. It is advisable that you download these themes and plugins from WordPress.org.
Often Change Your Account’s Password:
To protect any account from threats and attacks it is advisable to change the password at regular intervals. Random numbers with letters and special characters should be used for password generation.
Nowadays, you can also refer to different password generators for password generation purposes. Straight names, contact numbers, and date of birth will make it easy for hackers to access your account. So, make sure you avoid these.
Change of Admin Username:
When you install WordPress, don’t choose a username as “admin” for your administrator account.
This helps in securing your account from hackers as the default username is prone to threats. By just getting your password the hackers get the access to your website.
Encrypt Data Using SSL:
One of the best ways to secure your data is to implement a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate.
Secure Socket Layer ensures secured data transfer from users to servers or browsers and vice versa. Also, it makes difficult for hackers to spoof your website information or content.
The Secure Socket Layer certificate can be easily purchased from hosting firms or dedicated organizations.
Additionally, the Secure Socket Layer certificates affect the ranking of the website on Google. This, in turn, ensures more traffic on your site.
Regular Site Backup:
Backing up your site’s data regularly is a must.
No matter how protected your website is there is always room for threats when it comes to digitalization. T
To ensure that your work and other related information is safe, keep a back up of the data offline. This acts as the antidote in case of any mishap or hacking.
Restoration of your WordPress website is easy. There are dedicated plugins too for this purpose too. You can view these plugins from the directories.
Email Login is the Best Practice:
Using your email as login is a more secure way to log into your account. This is because the default usernames are easy to guess by the hackers.
There is a dedicated plugin for this purpose too and needs no configuration.
Ban Users and Website Lockdown Set Up:
The lockdown attribute restricts any unauthorized entry to your account. This solves a huge issue of force login attempts.
If there are hacking attempts by the repetitive entering of wrong passwords, the website gets locked & the original account holder gets notified of the unauthorized activity.
It helps in banning any unauthorized users for account logins.
Actively Monitoring Files on WordPress Website:
You should monitor the files on your website actively. For this, plugins like Wordfence, Acunetix WP security can be used by the website owners.
These plugins notify the owners or admins of the website about any changes made in files instantly.
These plugins are used by users for scanning and monitoring of website files. So, do not forget to consider such helpful plugins to safeguard your website’s security.
WP-Admin Directory Protection:
WordPress website has an important directory named as the wp-admin directory.
Therefore, it is necessary to protect this directory. Protecting this website directory with a password makes sure that the website is guarded against such cyber thefts.
Login Limit Implementation:
Reducing the number of attempts for login is an easy yet effective way of preventing your website from hackers and unauthorized login attacks.
Login Limit Implementation involves a locking mechanism when we talk about the WordPress login page of your website.
Timely Deletion of Plugins:
Delete themes and plugins which are not in use. This should be done actively by the website owner.
Getting rid of unwanted themes and plugins will reduce chances of website hacking, in turn, safeguarding your information. Make sure that you delete the unwanted plugins and do not opt for the deactivation option given.
Downloading Content from Well Known Sources:
With an increase in the cybercrime and related threats, make it a thumb rule that whatever you download, you download from a trusted source.
This ensures there are no viruses or malware that can harm your website. Try getting different plugins and themes from WordPress.org.
Regularly Change the File Permissions:
Configuring all the directories with 777 permissions should be avoided in all cases. Instead, try opting for 750 and 755. You can also set files to 644 or 640.
Two Factor Authentication for login:
Always implement a two-factor authentication login for logging purposes. This helps in preventing threats and attacks by the hackers in turn keeping your website content safe & secure.
This authentication adds an extra sheet of security between hackers and your WordPress website.
The authentication process involves requesting proper ID proofs and codes by the person who is trying to access the website/account login.
Enable WAF:
Enabling a Web Application Firewall (WAF) is one of the easiest ways to protect your website from malicious traffic.
Web Application Firewall tool helps in blocking of unwanted users thereby restricting their access. There are different applications available for restricting such unwanted access.
Cleanup applications are also available for such purposes. This, in turn, makes sure that your site is clean and free from viruses.
Change of WordPress Database Prefix:
WordPress uses wp as the default prefix for different tables in the database of WordPress.
When you do not change the WordPress database prefix it becomes easier for hackers to hack your website.
So to solve this issue, try changing the default WordPress prefix.
Change of WordPress Database Prefix improves the security of your website. The process of changing the WordPress database prefix is easy and simple.
Disable Directory Browsing and Indexing:
Directory browsing is a tool used by hackers to get information about any vulnerability related to files. Hackers take advantage of the vulnerabilities attached to these files to gain access to your account.
Directory browsing is also used for copying images and other website’s information. To solve this persistent issue, it is advisable to keep directory browsing and indexing turned off.
Logout Any Idle User Connected:
If there is any idle user, simply put a setting to log out any user who is logged in for more than a specified duration of time.
This can be done easily by changing WordPress settings and clicking on the save button.
Make sure you click on the save button to ensure that the changes have been updated for your WordPress website. You can set the time limit for an inactive user. This incredible functionality works well to secure WordPress site from hackers.
Disable WordPress File Editing:
Disable WordPress file editing. WordPress features an inbuilt editor for codes which allows edition of plugins and different themes.
If these codes are edited by unwanted persons or hackers, your information can go into wrong hands.
To avoid this, the best practice is to turn off WordPress file editing. For security purposes, experts say that these settings should be religiously tracked and turned off timely.
Usage of WordPress Security Key for Any Authentication:
Authentication salts and keys aids in adding an extra layer of protection. These security keys protect your passwords and cookies.
In turn, making sure that the hacker is restricted to entering the website of the business owner.
These security keys and salts for authentication are a set of variables which helps in encryption of information/content. You can do this in an easy way without much effort and hassle.
Keep a Check on Host Account:
One of the biggest challenges faced nowadays is the challenge of hosts in the account of website owners. These hosts in account configuration help the hackers in attacking the owner’s website.
The best way to prevent your website from this is to create two different accounts. One, for the live production purposes and others for every other work related to your business or website content.
Personal Editor Account:
Try creating an account for yourself. In this personal editor account, you would be able to write a variety of blogs and articles.
The author name is shown on the lower left-hand side at the end of the article or blog, you have posted in your account.
Make sure that your “author name” is different from the login or user name. This restricts the hackers to guess the passwords and username.
If the hacker tries to login with your author name, he would be directly restricted for any unauthorized entry to your website. Also, the original user would be notified about the unwanted activity. This feature restricts unwanted attempts to login into your website.
Conclusion:
With the above-written tips and tricks, we have briefly explained to you about how you can secure WordPress site from going into wrong hands. Hacking of WordPress website can cause huge damage to the information/content and business as a whole.
The malware can be distributed to users related to your website. It is very serious and there is a probability that you end up paying ransom to hackers for getting back the access to your WordPress site.
There are huge numbers of cyber incidents highlighted which alerts the other users and highlight the need to secure WordPress site.
In one of the reports, Google reported that over 50 million site users were warned about website malware and information theft. This brought a surge in working and creating apps to make sure the data posted is safe and secure.
Hence, if your website is related to any kind of business you need to be extra cautious in comparison to the nonbusiness websites. So, follow these tips to safeguard your website without many efforts.
The steps or ways which we have described above will surely add an edge of security to any WordPress website, in turn protecting the owner’s investment as well as efforts. A lot of efforts are put in the creation of a website, we understand the criticality, so letting all users know that a little caution can work wonders for their website’s security.
Kindly let us know if these tips and tricks were useful for you as a website owner. Also, do share if you have any new information or update to make any website more secure and safe.