Website hacking is often times a stealthy affair. There are many websites in the world today that are compromised but the owners do not know about it. it is estimated that 18.5 million, or 1% of all websites are hacked at any given moment. This is so because of the increased usage of stealthy technology to take over websites by hackers. If your website is hacked and you have no idea, you can suffer for a long time without knowing what the problem is. Website attackers tend to try to extend the period of an attack as long as possible so that they can continue to benefit from your work without your knowledge. In order to know whether your website is hacked or not, you need to check a few things. Let us look at some issues that you need to look at to know about the safety of your website.
How to check your site for possible hacking activity
When it comes to checking your site for vulnerabilities, there are a number of things that you must put in your checklist. Some of the things that you should ensure you have covered include:
- Scanning the website with an antivirus program
- Manually checking the files on the website
The first step is quite easy as you can download a good scanning program from the web. Scanning through your site can help you identify the viruses, links, XSS scripts and other issues that might be prevalent in the site. Various security tools provided by companies like Google and WordPress are a good place to start. Manually checking the files on your website is also a good idea. You should, however, leave this work to a professional if you have no experience in code. According to HostInspection, checking the website files manually should be done regularly
How to clean your site
After going through a thorough checking process, the next step is to do the cleaning. Cleaning is necessary to remove active threats or those that have the potential to be security threats. When preparing to do the cleaning, you should ensure that all your files are backed up. The cleaning process can sometimes result in the loss of data especially if some files are corrupted. Website cleaning involves removing all suspicious codes, links, and files. If you can manually identify these security flaws, you can remove them manually and replace them with a clean copy.
Cleaning should also involve the use of tools that are specifically designed to make deletions and modifications. After you have successfully cleaned your website, you should take a further step of changing all your secure login information. All the previous passwords used to access the site, cPanel, WordPress platform and other areas of the site should be changed. Doing this is important as it helps prevent further attacks from the same sources. You should also ensure that there are no scheduled jobs from the server after the cleanup process. Cron jobs often end up reinfecting a newly cleaned website.
Keeping the website safe from future threats
The security of your website also involves protection from future attacks. There are quite a number of things you can do to this end. The first thing to do is to keep a closer eye on your website. You should schedule a regular monitoring process where you analyze the various aspects of the site for their safety. We can use programs like Google Analytics to see the kind of traffic you are receiving from the web. You should also keep a record of the kind of traffic sources and SPAM that might come with certain traffic. Any changes in regard to the type of traffic you receive, the sources of the traffic and the user interaction should help you identify when there is an attack.
Another issue you must consider is using a proactive security approach. Today, over 90% of companies are prioritizing proactive security. Most website owners tend to react only when an attack has happened. This is not the way to go in the modern day. You should always be ahead of the hackers in terms of providing security. Using strong passwords, keeping unnecessary parties from accessing the administrative platforms and keeping all junk out of your site are some simple proactive steps to take. Using the right kind of security tools and avoiding unsafe themes can also help boost security. In overall, being at the forefront of managing the security aspect will help you keep your site safe at all times.