Protecting your website from hackers, why should you care?

We already mentioned ways to secure your WordPress website in the past, but what if your website or blog gets hacked nonetheless? All the hard work, your reputation and your customers’ trust can be gone within minutes. Why risking everything you’ve worked so hard to earn when website security became easy and available to anybody? In this post we’ll try to take a look at the two most common types of hacking and the consequences of it.

SEO poisoning

This has become a very common attack nowadays. Hackers can penetrate your web server, modify your web files and content in order to include hidden keywords and links. The annoying part is that SEO poisoning can easily go unnoticed, and the consequences are very serious.

What happens when your site is infected that way? You link out to spammy website and Google doesn’t like it. Webmasters that let their website stay infected with this type of links end up being banned by Google, which means their website ranking will be seriously affected and consequently their web traffic.

Malware

If you think that SEO poisoning is bad, wait to see what malware can do to your site. It is very important to protect your website against website malware, as it can get your whole website destroyed. Even if you have backups, you might waste precious time to restore your website as it was. If you had no backups, then your website is gone. Even worst, malware can affect your website’s visitors and get you banned from Google too.

Here are some of the malwares that can infect your website:

• Trojan horses: Those little softwares will give access to your system to hackers. They can destroy your data, log the data you are entering or use your server as a proxy server.
• Spyware: A tricky software that sits there and silently collects your data, giving the hacker access to your information.
• Worms: Worms are viruses that spread to your visitors, to avoid like the plague.

How to monitor your website

The easiest way to monitor your website for viruses is to use a website security service such as WebsiteDefender. This is an online security monitoring service developed for all the users, regardless their technical background or experience. WebsiteDefender scans your website regularly and detects vulnerabilities, such as backdoor scripts, under the hood hacking activities and malware. It also checks Javascripts and iFrames on your site. Furthermore, WebsiteDefender has developed special security checks for WordPress that include scanning the installed plugins and themes for vulnerabilities, ensuring that the WordPress installation is secure and many other security checks.