Many believe that being hacked is an unlikely event, but every website owner should be concerned about WordPress security. Google blacklists over 10,000 websites for malware each day, and approximately 50,000 for phishing every week. Even if your WordPress website doesn’t contain sensitive information, hackers can greatly damage the site’s reputation and SEO rating.
If you care about the security of your website, you should follow the WordPress security best practices. We will go over all of the best WordPress security recommendations in this guide to help you safeguard your website from being hacked.
1. To Avoid Being Hacked, Choose Only Reputed Hosting Services
Only use dependable, high-quality, and secure hosting. Isn’t this piece of advice self-evident? Everyone believes their hosting is perfect until something goes wrong for the first time. This is because not all hosting firms and hosting services are made equal in the real world.
Some hosts are simply unreliable and do not perform well under pressure. The bad news is that most people don’t realize their hosting isn’t secure enough until they get hacked. Being hacked isn’t the only issue though, repeated downtime and poor performance can also be the outcome of deficient security procedures of the host.
The truth is that you won’t be able to “repair your host.” The simplest and most effective approach is to migrate to a more secure host. In general, the higher you play, the better your new host will be. Still, you can consider some low-cost options as well. The best way to choose a host for your website would be to look up a comparison site for these hosting services and then decide based on the pros and cons of each host.
2. Keep Your WordPress Updated
WordPress is an open-source program that is updated and maintained regularly. WordPress installs minor automatic updates by default. You must manually activate the update for major releases. When a WordPress website goes too long without having the theme, core, and plugins updated, it can introduce vulnerabilities that can lead to your website being hacked.
WordPress also comes with a library of thousands of WordPress themes that you can use to customize your site. Third-party developers operate these plugins and themes, and they issue updates regularly. These WordPress upgrades are essential for the resilience of your WordPress site. Check to see if your WordPress foundation, plugins, and theme are all up to date.
3. Transition Your Site to HTTPS
Let’s talk about SSL/TLS certificates for a moment. These security certificates allow you to upgrade your site to HTTPS, which is a more protected version of HTTP. You might have never heard of these terms before; however, knowing about these vital security concepts is vital.
HTTP is the data transport protocol between your site and any browser that attempts to access it. When users click on your home page, this protocol sends your information, media, and site code to the visitor’s location.
While this is undoubtedly necessary, it does raise some security concerns. Bad guys may attempt to intercept data in transit and utilize it for nefarious reasons. This is a problem that HTTPS solves! It accomplishes the same thing as HTTP, but it also encrypts your site’s data as it travels from point A to point B, making it difficult to access.
Initially, HTTPS was primarily utilized for sites that handled sensitive client data, such as credit card numbers. However, it’s becoming more prevalent for all sites, and large names like WordPress and Google have been advocating for it to be widely adopted.
You’ll need an SSL/TLS certificate to convert your site to HTTPS. This tells browsers that your site is genuine and that the data it contains is properly secured. You may also be able to obtain one for free from specific websites.
4. Install an Anti-hacker WordPress Security Plugin
Regularly checking your website security for malware is time-consuming, and unless you keep your understanding of coding techniques up to date, you may not even realize you’re staring at malware until you’ve already been hacked.
Other people, thankfully, have recognized that not everyone is a developer and have created WordPress security plugins to assist. A security plugin looks after your site’s security, checks for malware, and keeps an eye on it 24 hours a day, seven days a week to see what’s going on.
Sucuri.net is a fantastic security plugin for WordPress. Security behavior auditing, file integrity monitoring, remote malware detection, blacklist tracking, effective security strengthening, post-hack security measures, security alerts, and even website firewall are some of the services they provide (for a premium).
5. Have Strong Passwords and User-Permissions
Most WordPress websites that are hacked are compromised due to stolen passwords. Use better passwords that are unique to your website to make this more difficult. Not only for the WordPress admin, but also for FTP accounts, databases, WordPress hosting accounts, and personalized email addresses that use your website’s domain name.
Many novices avoid strong passwords since they are harder to remember. The good news is that you don’t have to remember passwords any longer. To keep a record of your passwords, you can utilize a password manager.
Another strategy to decrease the danger and secure your WordPress website is to only provide your WordPress admin account to people who need it. Make sure you understand user profiles and competencies in WordPress before adding new user accounts and contributors to your WordPress site if you have a big team or guest authors, limiting privileges to those who need them will go a long way towards preventing your site being hacked.
6. Enable a Web Application Firewall
You are probably aware of the concept of a firewall, which is a program that helps to protect your computer from various types of malicious attacks. You almost certainly have a firewall installed on your PC. A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a type of firewall that is specifically designed to protect websites. Servers, particular websites, or large groups of websites can all be protected with it.
A web application firewall (WAF) on your WordPress site will act as a firewall between your site and the rest of the internet. A firewall watches for suspicious behavior, detect assaults, viruses, and other unwelcome occurrences, and blocks anything it deems dangerous.
Final Word
One of the most important aspects of a website is its security. Hackers can attack your website easily if you do not keep your WordPress security up to date. Maintaining the security of your website is simple and can be done for a minimal cost.
We hope you found this post useful and learned about the top WordPress security best practices that you can use to secure your WordPress website.
