As a webmaster, there is a responsibility to provider a great user experience. One of the parts of a great user experience is knowing that your information is secure. Besides for building user trust, if you pose a threat to search engine users like Google, you may find your site on the blacklist even if you had nothing to do with it. Google’s main goal is to protect its users and if you are threatening them, that is a problem.
How do you know if your site is infected with malware, undergoing an attack or some other challenge? By doing security checks. It is important to keep up with regular security checks so that you can be sure that your site is operating as it should be and is not harmful to your users. Let’s go on to look at 5 WordPress security checks you can do to ensure your site is functioning properly.
1. Is Your Site Backed Up?
Before you do any sort of changes, you need to make sure that your site is fully backed up. You do not just want files and folders, but you also want to ensure that you have the core of WordPress as well. In case anything happens to your site, you will be secured and able to have your site up and running again quickly. If you do not have your site backed up, you will have to redo all of your work again.
There are many reputable plugins that you can look into to ensure that your site is backed up. Besides for backing up your site whenever you change anything, you should make daily or at least weekly backups of your site. You can have automatic backups scheduled so that you don’t have to worry about this which makes webmaster life much easier.
2. Is Your Hosting Secure?
If you’ve done a great job at making sure that your website is secure, congratulations, but if your hosting isn’t secure, this can be a problem. An insecure hosting company can wreck all of the hard work that you have done to keep your site secure. If hackers are able to get into the server that means your site is at risk. Check to make sure your hosting provider has security in place that will protect your site and the information of your visitors in case of an attack.
3. Are Your Passwords Updated?
If you set up your WordPress on the fly, you may have input something for your password that would be easy for you to remember. While having an easy to remember password might be convenient for you, it is also convenient for hackers that want to get into your site.
To keep your site secure, you want to make sure that you update your passwords regularly as well as ensure that you use a strong password. If you aren’t sure how to create a strong password, you can always go online and use a password generator. They will automatically create a secure password for you.
4. Is Admin Access Revoked From Inactive Users?
If you’ve ever given someone else admin access, but they are no longer active on your site, make sure that you close the account down. The less people that have access to your site, the better and this will be one less account that hackers will be able to try to get through.
5. Is There Malware On Your Site?
If you have malware on your site, you do need to be worried about getting blacklisted from Google. Phishing and information collection through malware is something to be taken seriously. You need to perform a WordPress security scan that will go over your site and make sure that everything is secure for you and your users.
Keeping your site scanned regularly is important so that your information is not compromised and you can continue to serve your visitors.
Bonus – Are You Protected From Spam?
While you may not see spam as a security issue, it most definitely is. If spam is getting through onto your website through comments, it can harm your site’s rankings and if one of your users clicks on a link within that spam, they might think that you endorse the site and have their information phished. That can cause big problems for everyone involved.
There are simple plugins that you can install like Askimet. Askimet is $5 a month and makes sure that your site is secure and safe from spam. Most of the spam, you won’t even have to see because they will simply delete it for you so you won’t have to deal with it. Spam can take up a lot of valuable time, but having a plugin that deals with it will save you time and energy.
Conclusion
Everyone is talking about site security and you shouldn’t ignore it either. There is more litigation happening each year that has to do with information the responsibilities of websites to protect its users. If you aren’t keeping up with the latest on these topics but you are serving a wide array of customers online, you need to take note.
Keep your software up to date, ensure that your users update their passwords and always learn about how you can protect yourself from threats. When you do these things, you have the best opportunity to protect yourself and those that are trusting you with their information.
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