The web has been seeing another spike in hacking attempts on websites lately. It’s important for you to do your part to help keep your site safe. Hacks can be a real pain to remove, and unaddressed malicious content on your site may even result in your site being removed from search engine results.
You can think about protecting your site as being a lot like protecting your house. If a criminal is smart enough, and motivated enough, they are going to break into your house, no matter what you do. However, taking a few basic precautions can help protect your house against most would-be wrong-doers.
Most important & best practices:
- Choose a strong password. Passwords should contain at least one lower-case and one upper-case letter, one number, and one symbol (!, #, *, etc.)
- Never use the same password for more than one site/account. If one of your passwords is compromised, attackers may try to access your other accounts using the same credentials.
- Keep your passwords safe. Never write passwords down where someone can find them, and don’t keep passwords in an accessible document on your computer. Avoid transmitting passwords by email, whenever possible.
- If you have to share your password with someone who doesn’t normally access your site or hosting account, consider setting up a sub-account for that person, and deleting it when they are done. If you must share you password, change it immediately after that person has finished work. Consider having your web developer/designer manage and administrate your accounts for you.
- Keep your site up-to-date through website updates. Always make sure that your website is running the most current version of your CMS software, plugins, theme, server control panel, and anything else your site utilizes. Updates to these core functions often close loopholes and security vulnerabilities that have been found since the last version. When these updates are released, hackers often try to exploit these loopholes, hoping to find a site that hasn’t been updated yet.
This is just a short list of the most important best-practices for the management of your site and information. If you have any questions or concerns about your site security, please don’t hesitate to contact me.