Many WordPress users don’t think about the security of their websites: some are concerned that an update might throw its working out of balance, or that their site’s security just isn’t that big an issue.
Unfortunately this cannot be further from the truth, and as the latest malware epidemic of the year has shown us, ensuring that your online real estate remains safe, should be a top concern, especially if your business has its own website.
The attacks are nonstop
Every week Google blacklists about 20 000 websites for spreading malware, and around 50 000 for phishing practices. This means that there is an awful lot of malware, viruses and other nasty practices taking place on a daily basis, and hardening your WordPress website’s security is a good way of ensuring you never run into a problem.
How to go about it.
Luckily the WordPress core website functionality is about as secure as they come, receiving constant work and updates from hundreds of developers. This means that there is a lot of in-depth knowledge out there about how your particular site can be secured against daily threats.
We’ve made a list of some general security control you can put in place to get a good foundation of site safety going.
Limit Access
Like a vault, the less people who have access to your site, the better it’s security is. Keep the list of users with administrative access to your site at a minimum. Also, make sure your site does not have any plugins or themes installed that you, or a trusted person didn’t install.
Backups
Create backups of your site as often as possible. It’s also critical that you verify the integrity of your backups, as it doesn’t help you if you can’t restore from them if the need arises.
Always update your site