If you haven’t already experienced a lockout or hacker intrusion, you are one of the lucky ones. The effects of hacking are not minor, they can bring down your entire operation, cause you to lose all of your work. Don’t put securing up your website at the bottom of your to do list or it might be too late. Let’s look at some things you can do to make sure your site is secure.
#1 Start by Creating Solid Passwords
One of the easiest ways to get through a site’s security is with their password. Many people put off creating solid passwords because they claim they take too much time, but think about the time it will take to try to rebuild all your hard work.
* Every password on every site should be different
* Every password should be at least 15 characters
* A password is strongest if it is not a real word
* Use a mix of capital letters, lowercase letters, special characters and numbers.
Your password is your first line of defense against hackers, so make sure it’s strong. Never write your passwords down, they should always be kept in your head or you can use password manager software.
#2 Make Sure Your Site is Up to Date
WordPress has a lot of updates, too many people don’t bother getting all of these updates, and many of them fix security breaches and bugs, as well as providing the latest features. Sure, it’s hard to stay ahead of the hackers, but taking every step possible makes good sense.
#3 Change Your WordPress User Name
When you set up your WordPress account, you will get a default login username of admin. You need a good username with a strong password.
#4 Protect Yourself from Brute Force Attacks
You may not be aware, but almost every website receives more than a couple hundred unauthorized login attempts every single day and that includes your website. To guard against a brute force attack make sure you have put into place all of the suggestions. You can also install “limit login attempts,’ a plugin for WordPress users that will lock out the hacker after a certain number of failed logins.
#5 Monitor for Malware
You must be constantly monitoring your site for malware. WordFence is a good solution for your WordPress site and it’s even free. Sucuri is another solution, but it’s a paid program, and it has additional features.
We hear a lot about creating strong passwords. So while we are talking about passwords relating to your WordPress blog, the reality is that this applies to any site that you would be logging in to. Sadly, even with all the talk about passwords, many are still creating passwords that the hackers have no trouble breaking. So, let’s look at just how a hacker determines your password, because this could help you understand just what you need to do to create a strong password.
Sometimes, it’s as easy as a user creating a password like 12345 or 54321 and thinking they are secure that gets them in trouble, but some people actually do try to create a good password and still find they have been hacked. That’s because hackers have gotten very smart at cracking passwords.
* Variations - The programs these hackers use allow them to try many variations. So simply placing a number or character at the end of your password will not make it any securer.
* Tricks - Hackers know most of the same tricks you do for coming up with a password. They know that a person replaces certain letters with numbers or symbols. They know that a person replaces phrases, words or quotes. If you read about a trick to make your password stronger, remember the hackers likely also read about it and so will implement it in their hacking schemes.
* Predictable - You may think your password is random, but it likely isn’t. People are much more predictable than you might think, and the hackers will take advantage of that. If you think choosing a phrase from the Bible, is safe think again. If you think a phrase from a literature piece is safe, you’d be wrong. Hackers use dictionaries to find words that can be used as passwords, but they also use tools like YouTube, or Wikipedia, to name just a couple, to discover the most common quotes and phrases, to learn what slang is currently popular, and even to find words that have been made up online.
* Password Breaches - Whenever hackers explore a volume of password data, they are able to get a better understanding of just how people arrive at their passwords that goes far beyond common words and phrases.
* Brute Force – There is no question that often hackers will rely on what are called brute force technique, which will run through millions of password combinations in short periods of time. Hackers can use these tools offline so using login limiters is of no benefit in these situations.
Now that you have a better understanding of how hackers figure out your password, you’ll be able to create a stronger password.
The WordPress Protection Plugin offers you complete security for a WordPress site so that you can ensure that data remains secure and plagiarists are not able to copy and steal your data and images off your WordPress pages.
Use the WordPress Protection Plugin (Lite), to block Keyboard Shortcuts (like CTRL+V, CTRL+A, CTRL+C, and CTRL+X), and disable the text-selection, and it will also block the use of right click on your website. You can also purchase the full professional version of WordPress Protection Plugin.
The plugin features:
* It disables keyboard shortcuts such as cut, copy and paste
* It disables text-selection
* It is fully optimized
* It doesn’t compromise you in for the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing, who will still pickup your content.
* It disables image drag and drop
The professional WordPress Protection Plugin offers many many features that the lite does not, so you may want to explore that further.
That’s one way to stop your blog from becoming a victim of plagiarism, which is theft! Another thing you can do is create a writing style that is very personal and very recognizable and keep your blog posts long. This will deter thieves as they prefer more generic looking content.
Your blog is actually protected by copyright laws the minute you publish it but it doesn’t hurt to also mention it on each post. This should be adequate to discourage potential thieves stealing your content. If you would like to take it a step further, you can register your blog with the U.S. Copyright Office, and create a Creative Commons license, but you don’t really have to take this action, it’s just an option for further discouragement.
You can also use plagiarism sites like Copyscape to make sure your content isn’t elsewhere on the web. It will search for content that is identical or similar and then provide you with a link to that content. Handy tools these programs are.
You should watermark all of your images in a location that is difficult for the thief to cut off or cover over. This will help to protect your images from theft. There are a number of programs that can help you with this task.
If you find that your content has been plagiarized you need to immediately contact that website and provide them the information. Ask them to remove the content or provide credit to you by linking back to your blog.
With more than 70 million users, WordPress is the the most popular CMS around the world,. But it too has its own security issues, which can be protected using .htaccess.
As a WordPress user we need to make sure that the plugin installs are safe from hackers. There are many plugins that can help us do that including plugins like Login LockDown, which records the IP address and blocks it after a specific number of login attempts. Another is WP Security Scan, which checks the install for any vulnerabilities and then suggests how you can fix it.
In addition, we can make the.htaccss file secure with proper configuration and updating it regularly to make sure you have the tightest security by giving you that extra degree of protection.
Typically your WordPress .htaccess file will look something like this:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
Any additions you make to the .htaccess file should be at the end after # END WordPress.
That way you won’t wreck any WordPress based .htaccess functions. Before make any changes to the .htaccess file back it up and store in a safe place.
You can also protect wp-config.php, which is the file found in the root directory, where information about your website and database details are stored. You don’t want the wrong people to get their hands on this. You can protect it by adding the following in the .htaccess file, which will stop access to wp-config.php file.
<Files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>
You can also limit who is able to access the admin fold by restricting it to your IP address. To do this you will have to create a new .htaccess file. You can do this in any text editor and then you will need to upload to your wp-admin folder.
This snippet will stop access to your admin folder to everyone except the IP address that you have specified. If you have a dynamic IP you will need to regularly change this file otherwise you will find that you are denied access.
Copy code
order deny,allow
allow from 202.090.21.1 (replace with your IP address)
deny from all
This is a good start to using the .htaccess file to protect your WordPress site. There are others, but this is a good place to start.
If you have a WordPress site, it is very important that you take at least the basic steps to ensure you are secure from hackers. This isn’t really ‘news,’ after all this has been known for a long time, yet still many people do not stop and consider website security when they are creating their sites. They don’t do any reading on the topic because it’s too technical and just plain boring, and far too often people think it won’t happen to them. Therefore, they also don’t do anything to protect their blog or site. The good news is that in under 30 minutes you can improve your security and not spend a dime.
#1 Change the ‘Admin’ Username
The default login for WordPress is ‘admin.’ Trouble is most users just keep it that way, making it incredibly easy for hackers to figure out your user name. Now they are already half logged into your site. Change the ‘admin’ login into something new!
#2 Create a Strong Password
Your WordPress is only as strong as your weakest link, and your password is often that weak link. Hackers use software that scrolls through hundreds of thousands of words looking for a match, which is why you should not be using a real word for your password. You should also not use a logical sequence of letters or numbers. So don’t use your pet’s name, your birthday, your phone number, etc. You can use a password generator to help you if you trouble coming up with a strong password.
#3 Delete & Update
WordPress is known for being weak on security. The reality is WordPress is only insecure when the users do not keep it current. Any part of your website that isn’t running the latest version is always at a risk of being hacked. Hackers are constantly looking for vulnerabilities and if you aren’t staying current you are at risk. So make sure you are running the most current version of WordPress, installed plugins and installed themes.
#4 Limit the Login Attempts
Install a plugin that will limit the number of times a person can try to login before the site shuts them down. The Limit Login Attempts plugin is one good choice. When you limit the number of times one can try to access your site, you reduce the likelihood of being hacked.
That’s it – there’s plenty more so don’t stop after you’ve done these four things, but this is a great place to start.
The next thing you need to do is take care of security issues on your site. WordPress has a plugin called Better WP Security that lets you change certain WordPress features to make it more difficult for the hackers to gain access. Be sure to take advantage of this tool to give you the best chance at a secure WordPress site.
Better WP Security will let you:
* Change the default ‘Admin’ username to something different
* Lock entrance to the admin at specific time periods
* Change your admin user ID from 1 to something different
* Ban users based on the IP addresses
* Automatically email your database backups to yourself
* Change the URL you use to login from wp-login to something different
* Change your WordPress directory files from wp-content to something different
* Change your database prefix from wp_ to something different
* Check the number of hits on 404 pages and lock the user out if they are excessive
* Track any file changes
* Limit the number of times you can login attempts with the wrong password
And there’s more.
One of the easiest ways to get through a site’s security is with their password. Many don’t take the time to create solid passwords because they claim they take too much time, but compared to the time it will take you to attempt to rebuild your site, it seems like such a small price.
When you are creating a password:
Every password should be at least 15 characters
Every site should be different
Is strongest if it is not an actual word
Is strongest if it is a mix of special characters, lowercase letters, capital letters and numbers.
Regular Backups
The last thing you need to do is make sure you are taking regular backups of your site files and database(s). That way should the unthinkable happen, you will at least have a backup safely stored away, which will certainly reduce your stress.
One of the most popular plugins for doing this is called ‘WordPress Backup to Dropbox.’ This will create a backup and then upload that backup to Dropbox for safe keeping. You can also email that backup to yourself. That’s because the Dropbox plugin keeps only one backup, so sending to yourself allows you to keep many versions.
Get busy, add your plugin(s), change your passwords, make your backups and make your site as secure as possible.
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