How to Protect WordPress from Hacking?
It is an essential task to keep all the security checks on a WordPress site as it is one of the most popular content management systems available on the internet. The hacking of your WordPress site may lose your regular visitors or force them to find the alternative for your services or products. There are multiple methods through which you can make your site robust secure against the bad guys. In this post, we are sharing some of the best tips to protect your site. Check it out below.
Enable a Web Application Firewall on your Site
WAF stands for Web Application Firewall that acts as a pass-through for the traffic of your website. It filters out the poor requests such as DoS, hack attempts, exploits, etc. while it allows genuine or positive requests to go through. It also prevents future hack by detecting the known hacking methods as it stops the process of attack just after its inception.
This firewall also makes sure to mitigate DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks that can crash your site by sending heavy requests. In the presence of the firewall, your website will work finely, even if it receives a high volume of fake traffic.
Don’t Forget to Secure and Update WordPress Plugins
A common issue on a website owner does not give much attention is updating the plugins regularly. You should know that developers in WordPress are continuously updating the CMS security, and a broad community is assisting in the task by publishing the updated plugins regularly. Always make sure to keep the plugins updates, which will make your site more secure.
With this, installing too many plugins without knowing about them can leave your website open to hackers. You can understand by the example by imagining that each plugin acts as an extra door to your WordPress site while you have secured the two doors of your website, but the extra gate can invite the bad guys to intrude into your site.
Protect your Computer and Local Network
Sometimes, an attacker does not hack directly into your WordPress site but try to find the alternative to enter your territory easily. You should run a virus check regularly to throw out malicious content like Trojan that can track your passwords, username, and other important details that can be enough to gain access to your site.
A hacker can insert Trojan into your device through other websites, and he can also do the same through the websites you regularly visit such as your friends traveling blog, NGO site, etc. Therefore, you need to install an antivirus that can remove the threats wherever you go on the web.
Implement the Principle of Least Privilege
You should implement the principle of least privilege to secure your site. Never provide the credentials of your WordPress site to the developers or users who can’t be fully trusted by you. If it is essential to give access to a particular person, make sure that he doesn’t pass the things. You should always allow the lowest set of privileges to the users, and once their task is finished, remove their access as soon as possible.
Clean your Server Regularly
We always stumble upon the basic and common issues and forget them easily but beware of the small things can give access to a hacker. You should not forget to delete the unused and old versions of your WordPress site from your server. Even unused plugins, themes, and files can be used to enter your website and crash your online business.
Keep Strong Passwords
Most of the hackers gain access to multiple WordPress sites by finding its credentials through a method called a brute force attack. We can minimize the risk of suffering for the brute force attack by using robust and secure passwords.
Many applications and services require a username and password such as wp-admin logins, FTP, databases, etc. You should create complex and difficult passwords for every username, which can be a combination of letters, words, and symbols.
Never use the same password to every account as the hacking of a single account can be dangerous for all your accounts. Choose different and unique passwords to make your site more secure against the bad guys. You can also password manager to store passwords safely.
The Bottom Line
Implementing the above tips will surely help you to mitigate the risk of being attacked. While working on your WordPress site, these are the basic things that you have to apply to secure your territory. Otherwise, you can also pass on the job to the companies that secure the website for you in exchange for some fees.
