Your website is under attack

Malicious attacks to deface, cripple and hijack websites are increasing in frequency and efficacy; they have the potential to affect your business regardless of your business size, industry or geographic location.

 

Many businesses incorrectly assume they are an unlikely target; malicious attacks are often automated, looking to cause meaningless damage to any vulnerable website, regardless of the businesses profile. 

 

All Content Management Systems (CMS)¹ suffer from vulnerabilities; often the CMS vendor will release security patches and updates that may reduce the methods for a malicious attack to exploit the website. 

 

Ensuring your website CMS is kept up-to-date with the latest security release is essential, additional measures are necessary to protect your website investment.  


 

Why you need to backup and secure your website now! 

 

Consider the following:
 

 

All of the above are frequent occurrences and unfortunately there are many other scenarios which can cause your website to break or go down. 

 

Without a backup, you’re relying on good luck and will need to engage developers to help recover your site, without a copy of the website code and design; this could result in a full redevelopment project.  This will be time consuming and costly.

 

Backups are essential for recovery once a malicious attack is successful, it is equally important to put in place preventative measures that may help stop an attack from succeeding. 

 

Whether it’s a visible attack to deface your website, or an attempt to hijack your site and implant a virus (which may compromise your customer details), hacked websites are bad news and will damage your reputation.

 

Once a site is hacked, search engines such as Google will blacklist the site, once blacklisted, most browsers and anti-virus programs will block access to the site. This leads to a large drop in site visitors, sales, and brand damage. The effects of this damage on your website search ranking and online performance can take many months to repair.


Security plugins: Many CMS systems have free and low cost plugins that can offer some form of protection; they typically work best against Brute force attacks. While useful, these are reactive as the attack is already occurring.

Automated backups: Do not assume that your host is backing up your website; investigate options to backup your website. The frequency of your backup should be determined by how often you add content and whether your website is used for transactions, consider a weekly backup as minimum for most basic websites. Many backup methods can be automated and require little management ongoing.

Cloud firewall: An effective method to help prevent malicious attacks on your website is the use of a firewall. A firewall will scan all website traffic before it reaches your website; these firewalls are always updated and identify trends quickly. If a suspected attack occurs, access to your site will be prevented.

CMS updates: Review the available patches and updates for your CMS, ensure your website is updated every 3-6 months at a minimum. This process may require the assistance of your website developer, you may also benefit from enhanced functionality and stability through these updates.