WordPress Security and Website Antivirus

In this article, we take a look at the importance of WordPress security and some of the basics of keeping your WordPress website secure. With the technology industry ever-growing, more and more hackers are praying on vulnerable websites and with that, WordPress security is as important as ever. If you don’t take the time to set up your website security in a way which not only protects your website, but protects the data flow between your website and your visitors, then you are putting a lot of things at risk. Not only that, but you are leaving your website open to unauthorized users who can cause some serious damage. So with that in mind, let’s jump right in.

Website Backups

Before we dig into how you are able to protect your website, let’s first discuss website backups. Nobody likes to imagine suffering from data loss. It’s bad enough to lose valuable data, but it’s worse if you don’t have a backup to retrieve that data.

If you were to fall victim to WordPress hacking, you never know what the hacker’s intention is. Whether it’s to obtain data or to simply cause mischief; you simply won’t know.

With this, it’s a good idea to take a backup of your website’s data at least once a week so that if something does go wrong, you can simply restore the backup and have as little data loss as possible.

How to Keep Your WordPress Website Secure

Below are some of the best ways possible to keep your WordPress website secure, none of which requires too much technological knowledge.

Updating WordPress. This is the number one basic step to take to keep your website secure. While many opt to have WordPress update automatically, if you are on the other side of it then it’s important that you update your WordPress when prompted. WordPress updates often contain security updates based on issues that they have found or have been found and by not keeping your website up to date, you’re willingly putting your website at risk.

Plugins. Not only should you keep your plugins up to date, similar to keeping WordPress up to date, but on top of that there are several security plugins available for free use. The most common WordPress security plugin is Website Antivirus; a necessity to maintaining a secure website. Although there are premium plugins out there, the free version is more than enough.

Using Clef. Clef is one of the newest and securest resources out there. Not only does it work alongside WordPress to ensure a secure account login, but it can be used for many other services too. With Clef, you are removing the need to enter a password thus eliminating the risk of your password being obtained through keylogging.

Setting Up WordPress. When initially setting up the WordPress platform, there are a few things that you can do to further benefit your security setup. A few of these things are:

• Change the default database prefix. By default, it is “wp_”, although this makes it easier for hackers to pinpoint your table name.
• Change the login page. Rather than the standard domain.com/wp-admin/ login page, change it to something that only the required administration will know. On top of that, customize the page to make it somewhat different to the default page. By doing so, you are making it harder for bots to target your logins.
  
• Have someone else setup WordPress for you. Lastly, if you aren’t sure on how to set up WordPress from a secure standpoint, have someone else take a look at it for you. There’s no shame in asking for help!

To Conclude…

Taking everything that we’ve discussed here into account, there’s no reason for you not to take the time to secure your WordPress website. Not only does it take only a short amount of time to do, but by securing your website there are absolutely no downsides in doing so. You are benefiting yourself, and you are benefiting your users.