Nine Tips to Protect Your Website

Protecting your website security is just as important as protecting a physical store’s security. With a store, thieves only have one or two access points but with a website, it can be multiple points of entry that you must protect.

1. Update Software Regularly – No matter what type of software you use for your website, it’s imperative that you keep it up to date. Yes, sometimes updates are scary, but they are important because they’re often used to close security holes that wrongdoers want to exploit.
2. Use CAPTCHA – If you have contact forms, comment areas, or discussion forms, you need to set up something that helps determine if a real person is trying to access the information or if it’s a robot. Since most scammers use programs and bots to break in, it makes sense that letting in a human is safer.
3. Use Hard Passwords – Your password should be at least 16 characters long and include letters, symbols, and numbers. In addition, they should have several lower case letters, upper case letters and even spaces depending upon the system.
4. Use Website Security Tools – There are tools you can install to help protect your site for many different building choices, such as WordPress. For example, WordPress offers both free and paid plugins that help to improve the security of your website.
5. Restrict User Access – If your users are allowed to sign up and register on your site, you’ll need to control their access and what they can do on your site. There are a lot of sneaky ways that people get information, so make sure you always have the strongest security for strangers.
6. Change Default Settings – If you use a builder like WordPress, you should change some of the default settings such as the name of the database. Create a password for the database to ensure that you can keep out the bad.
7. Avoid Too Many Plugins on WordPress – Each plugin you add is another place that can be breached by wrongdoers. Therefore, it’s important to only use plugins when they have a clear purpose that you need.
8. Keep It Backed Up – Always back up your site before you make changes and after you make changes, to ensure that you have a copy of your site in case anything goes wrong. If you get hacked, you can delete the site and then upload an uninfected version.
9. Hire an Expert – The best thing to do if you’re a novice is to hire an expert to keep up your website security and to help you if there are problems. There are some inexpensive monthly plans such as this monthly maintenance plan: https://www.tmprod.com/wordpress-maintenance-packages/
Protecting your website also protects you from liability, and your customers from having their information taken too. So much can go wrong with websites but if you install the right security protocols, you can help prevent problems.