Safeguard Your Website with These Essential WordPress Security Measures

Website security is important!

Here’s a scary fact for you: there are 2,200 cyber attacks launched daily.

At Inn8ly, we understand how important it is for businesses to safeguard their website. We use WordPress, a popular CMS, to build the Inn8ly websites. It’s a powerful, highly flexible solution, but it’s also one of the platforms that hackers frequently target. As such, we want to protect our clients from potential security breaches.

In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of WordPress security and what you can do to protect your website. We’ll cover topics such as securing your login credentials, keeping your WordPress installation up-to-date, and using plugins to enhance security.

WordPress is an open-source platform, which means that its source code is available to the public. While this has many benefits, it also means that hackers can easily find vulnerabilities in the code and exploit them. In fact, according to a report by Sucuri, a leading website security company, WordPress sites are the most targeted by hackers, accounting for 90% of all hacked CMS sites in 2018. However, being targeted doesn’t mean that the sites are vulnerable. There are no guarantees; with enough time and resources, any website can be hacked, but by taking the precautions listed here, you can be confident that your risk is low.

Why should you bother?

A security breach on your website can have severe consequences, such as data theft, website defacement, and revenue loss. Recovering a hacked site can be expensive. It can also damage your reputation and erode your customers’ trust. As such, it’s essential to safeguard your website and implement robust security measures to protect it and its visitors.

Using a quality hosting provider can enhance the security of your WordPress website with features like SSL certificates, firewalls, and backups. It’s important that your hosting company keeps the software up-to-date to prevent server security vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Cheap and cheerful hosting doesn’t do this. Good hosting will also back up your website, usually nightly, which isn’t a security precaution but will be a lifesaver if your site is hacked. Find the best host you can afford. Then find more budget.

Domain name servers are hosting adjacent and using a premium domain name server (DNS) can help improve your website’s security and performance. The domain name servers translate domain names into IP addresses so browsers can locate and access website resources. Premium DNS services also offer enhanced security features such as firewall protection, advanced traffic management, and increased speed and reliability.

One of the popular premium DNS services is Cloudflare (Cloudflare is included in an Inn8ly subscription). This service provides firewall protection, a content delivery network (CDN), and image caching to enhance website performance and security. Cloudflare’s firewall protects your website from malicious traffic before it reaches it, helping prevent attacks such as DDoS, SQL injection, and cross-site scripting.

A simple way to prevent brute force attacks is to limit the number of login attempts allowed on your website. This can be achieved using a free plugin such as Limit Login Attempts. The plugin will block any IP address that exceeds the maximum number of login attempts, preventing further attacks. WordFence is the premium solution that we use to protect Inn8ly websites.

The first and most crucial step in safeguarding your WordPress website is to use strong passwords. This is also one of the easiest things that you can do to protect your website. Hackers can easily guess or crack weak passwords using brute force attacks. A strong password should be at least 12 characters long, with a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

There are many security plugins available for WordPress that can help enhance your website’s security. Some of the popular plugins include Wordfence Security (our choice), iThemes Security, and Sucuri Security. These plugins offer features such as malware scanning, firewall protection, and brute force attack prevention.

Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security to your login process by requiring a second form of identification. This can be achieved using plugins such as Google Authenticator or Authy. When enabled, users will need to enter a code generated by the authentication app to log in to your website.

Out-of-date software is a common vector for hackers. When new software is released, hackers analyze the new code to determine what was changed. When a change is made to plug a security hole, they program their bots to look for websites that haven’t updated to the new software and exploit the security hole. What’s the solution? Keep your software up to date.

WordPress regularly releases updates to its platform to address security vulnerabilities and improve its functionality. WordPress plugins will also release software updates to both add features and improvements and fix security holes. It’s essential to keep your WordPress installation’s software up-to-date to ensure you’re running the latest version with all the security patches.

Safeguarding your WordPress website makes good business sense. Follow the tips outlined in this post to protect your company from potential security breaches. It’s a bit inconvenient, but it’s not hard. Nothing described above will challenge you.

Or have the pros at Inn8ly take care of all this for you—websites without worry.