Keeping Your WordPress Sites Safe

WordPres Site Security

Unfortunately, a ton of websites get hacked or defaced everyday around the Globe. I’ve seen statistics that state up to 90% of all hacked websites are related to (CMS) – Joomla or WordPress, at least those not related to compromised cPanel logins. And apparently Joomla gets hacked twice as much as WordPress. I personally would have suspected WordPress because of its massive popularity.

I believe all websites are vulnerable to attacks, but Joomla and WordPress more so simply because these are the top two content management systems on the market. There are shell / cracking scripts specifically written for both. These cracking scripts are installed using the default database table prefixes which are jos_ and wp_, and in the case of Joomla, FTP functions which are enabled but never used.

Some recommendations to help protect your websites:

Use secure passwords like 4#gty+TeQ^Rf37! (take the guesswork out of play). The more complex the password, the harder it is to brute force hack your site.

Change your default admin login. Don’t use ADMIN for your default username. Don’t use something easily ascertained. Make it difficult for the cybercriminals out there.

Delete all the stuff you don’t use, including themes, templates and plugins. This includes plugins like Hello Dolly and ASKIMET if they are not used.

With WordPress, disallow bots from scanning crucial directories by adding Disallow: /wp-* in your robots.txt file. And CHMOD your wp-config.php file to 640.

Keep your CMS websites updated to the latest version, as well as all plugins and recheck your security settings after each version update.

I would also highly recommend purchasing the PRO version of WordFence.

Why? It blocks a ton of malicious attacks in real time, plus allows for country blocking AND runs at the endpoint.

From WordFence: “Wordfence runs at the endpoint, your server, providing better protection than cloud alternatives. Cloud firewalls can be bypassed and have historically suffered from data leaks. Wordfence firewall leverages user identity information in over 85% of our firewall rules, something cloud firewalls don’t have access to. And our firewall doesn’t need to break end-to-end encryption like cloud solutions.”

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Steve
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