Technology

WordPress Security Tips and Hack Defense

From WordPress core, theme and plugin security, to username and password best practices and database backups.

Other topics to consider include:

  • layered security measures, such as using the .htaccess file to enable or disable features
  • limit file permissions
  • Blacklist and whitelist IP
  • disable file editing
  • using HTTPS

WordPress security

If you run a large commerce site and it gets hacked, you can lose valuable customers and, of course, money. Web servers are likely to suspend hacked accounts and take your site offline. You don’t want to waste time fixing a site after hacks or paying for hosting when your site is down.

Why is WordPress so successful?

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world and now powers 20% of all websites. Its success is due to its intuitive interface and the fact that it is open source and free. Its features provide endless options to extend functionality by adding plugins and the ability to customize your site with themes and widgets. With thousands of free and paid themes and plugins available on the web, the option of creating a site that is functional and unique to you is virtually limitless.

Why is WordPress exposed to attacks?

These same features are the most common ways we expose our sites to attack. Because WordPress is open source, anyone can easily explore the core code or search any of the most popular themes and plugins for hacks. These are elements of WordPress that are beyond your control.

Your WordPress host and hacks

Unless you pay a lot of money to have your own web hosting server, you also can’t control the hosting environment your website runs on.

Brute force attack

A brute force attack is also something that is out of your control. While you can’t always stop them, you can put measures in place to limit the damage and make it harder for someone to successfully hack into your site. Even tech giants like Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon have seen their security breached. No site, WordPress or otherwise, is completely secure. What you need to do is recognize where the weakness exists and create additional layers of defense to protect your content in case your site is hacked. Use as many common solutions as possible to help manage your site’s decline due to human error.

A brute force attack can last for months and involve thousands of servers around the world. All hosting providers offering WordPress are potential targets. Hackers use compromised servers and PCs to hack into website administrator panels by exploiting hosts with “admin” as account name and weak passwords that are resolved by brute force attack methods.

4 vulnerability points

1.host security leaks

2.outside the WordPress core data

3. secure plugins and themes

4.brute force attacks

Managing your site well with WordPress is the most valuable security tool available to you.

  • velocity
  • options
  • services
  • safety
  • backup solutions
  • control
  • Server type
  • price point

Choosing WordPress to power your site means that WordPress is the foundation of everything on your site. The fact that it is open source and free has many benefits. But with each update, the exploits from the previous version are made available to the public, making older versions more susceptible to being hacked. Employing backup security through obscurity tactics, you can remove or hide the version number of your WordPress installation so that it is not displayed. You can even choose a simpler solution with plugins to hide the version number. This can discourage a bot from connecting to your site, but it doesn’t fix holes in older versions of WordPress. Only updating your WordPress installation as newer versions become available will remove the published vulnerabilities.

Updating WordPress is simple (since version 3.7 was released with automatic updates)

In previous versions of WordPress, a new version banner was displayed in your dashboard whenever an update was available. Now WordPress installations will automatically update to new minor versions without you having to lift a finger. The minor versions are usually for security updates. However, you will still need to update to new major versions.

To update WordPress

  1. The first is the first! Make a backup of your WordPress.
  2. Board
  3. Upgrades

The biggest threat to your site

The quickest way to compromise your site includes adding poorly coded, malicious, or outdated themes or plugins from untrusted developers or sites. Due to the open source nature of WordPress, many themes or plugins are distributed under the GPL or GPN (General Public License) licenses. So it’s easy for themes and plugins to be forked and redistributed onto free WordPress theme and plugin sites with the addition of hidden or malicious code. This code can be as simple as exposing a virus or as serious as exposing your visitors to identity theft.

Before downloading a free theme or plugin:

  1. Research the author and just download it from the authors site or WordPress repository
  2. Seek advice at WordPress.org/support
  3. If you are going to use free trustworthy plugins or themes, check the version number compatibility list and verify that the plugin or theme is still supported and up to date. Many themes or plugins are slow to receive updates or are simply abandoned.
  4. If you don’t use it, please lose it. If you are not using a theme or plugin, please remove it.
  5. Use compatible paid plugins and themes (not free).

Experience shows that almost all WordPress attacks could be defended and defended simply by using secure, up-to-date and reliable plugins and themes.