Website hacks can be detrimental to you and your website visitors and customers.
Cybercriminals compromise thousands of websites everyday. Hacked websites can be visible and invisible to users and can be harmful to anyone viewing the page. For example the hacker may have infected the website with harmful code which in turn can record keystrokes on visitors’ computers, stealing login credentials for online banking or financial transactions. On a lighter note hackers can bring your website offline which can cost you money to get back online. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The key is to be proactive in keeping your website software up to date as much as possible and to have a reactive plan in case you need to recover your website after a malicious attack. Internet service providers try to stay ahead of the cybercriminals and hackers by sending out software updates as they see vulnerabilities, therefore you’ll need to keep your website software up to date on a regular basis. For example, any WordPress website could have approximately 5-15 different software applications to help with functionality, SEO, security, backup, code helpers, etc. If not kept up to date these software could be the next opportunity for a hacker to compromise your website.
When your website is hacked here’s a few things that can happen:
1) Your website can be unrecoverable after an attack – start over
2) Your website can redirect your customers to a malware site and infect customers computers
3) Google will blacklist your website until it’s malware free
So as you see, it’s important to keep your website software up to date.
Here’s 3 things you can do:
1) Be Proactive by having a service plan to scan the site for malware and then fix it.
2) Be Reactive by having a plan that will update your software and backup your website on a regular basis (weekly/monthly).
3) Be Irresponsible and don’t do anything and leave your site and visitors up to chance.
We like to be proactive and reactive.
We have experience with these proactive and reactive plans depending on which website hosting provider you use and the type of website you have.
-If your website is hosted by GoDaddy then you can purchase GoDaddy’s SiteLock (proactive) plan.
-If your website is hosted by most any hosting company it can be scanned by Sucuri.net which is a proactive service provider.
-If you have a WordPress website with SLGD then we’ll sign you up for the SLGD WordPress Support (reactive) Plan. Monthly or weekly WordPress software and plugin updates and website file backups for recovery.
It’s in your best interest to protect your investment, you, your website, your customers.
Want to protect your investment? Give us a call so we can see which plan is for you.
Samuel Little 804-601-0545
Resources:
Sucuri website security blog news
GoDaddy’s Top 10 Online Threats
Google: Webmaster Help for Hacked Websites
*Fees, costs, prices are subject to change without notice. After all the internet is changing everyday. You never know what’s going to happen next.
