One of the first things you need to do is secure your users accounts and actively monitor user roles and permission. It will help you manage the user access and grant them permission required for their designated roles.
Since WordPress powers over 39.5% of websites on the internet, we’ll talk about the user roles available in WordPress.
- First are the Administrators. They have complete control over everything. They are the ones who can create users and assign them roles.
- Next, we have editors who are typically responsible for managing the website content and have publish, edit, and delete access.
- Then we have the Author role, which has fewer permissions than editors. Authors are only able to access their own content and modify it.
- Then we have the contributors, who can read the published content and delete or edit their own posts.
- The lowest on the roles ladder is the Subscriber, who have only the privilege of reading and managing their own profiles.
- In most cases, Admin is the top-level role. But in multisite installation, Super Admin is responsible for the entire network. A super admin has the permission to add or delete sites and make other high-level changes.
Now, let’s explore the other measures you have to take to protect your website against attacks and other vulnerabilities.
1.Tools to scan your Website Security Audit :
Running a website security scan will help you find if your website is free of malware and other vulnerabilities. It will also help you find if your website is running obsolete software and needs updates. Additionally, some tools can also identify if your website has been blacklisted for some reason. You can find out why it has been blacklisted, fix the issues, increase your website security and then recover it by getting it whitelisted again.
We are going to share some free tools that will help you run a website scan and detect any vulnerabilities:
i) Sucuri Scanner:
Succuri helps you check your website for malware, viruses, website errors, malicious codes, out-of-date softwares, and blacklisting status. You can check your website status by entering your website URL and hitting the scan website button.
ii) HostedScan Security:
Hosted Scan Security scanners allow users to scan not just websites but also servers and networks. You can run a free scan to check the security status of your website. The results will show the risk and the threat level. The risks with higher threat levels should be fixed on priority.
iii) UpGuard Website Security Scan:
With Upguard, you can run a free website security scan and get an assignment and a free security score for your website. It helps detect vulnerabilities such as server information header exposed and checks the status of your SSL certificate. It also tells you more details about SSL certificates, including days left to renew.
iv) Mozilla Observatory:
Mozilla Observatory is a free resource that tests your websites for factors such as content security policy, cookies, cross-origin resources sharing, redirection, and referrer policy. It assigns a score to each test, showing how well your website fares on each scale. It also offers a detailed report helping you understand the vulnerabilities and giving you suggestions on how to fix them.
2. Update your Site Settings and Components:
Businesses and professionals using Content Management systems such as WordPress can check their site settings and update any if required.
WordPress users can review and update their site settings by carrying out the following actions:
- Website visitors shouldn’t have access to your backend data. Hide the information. When you leave such information unhidden, hackers use these details to attack your websites.
- Spam comments may also leave your website vulnerable to attacks. So, use your moderation privileges to filter Spam comments and delete them.
- Add validation to all the input fields on your website. These are the fields that take information from visitors. You can prohibit the use of unwanted characters.
Regardless of which CMS you use, you have to implement these tactics to ensure that your website is secure.
Also, remember to perform regular updates of website components such as themes, plugins, and other add-ons that are essential to the working of your website. It reduces the risk of cyber-attacks, ensuring your website remains secure from hackers.
So, don’t overlook a notification mentioning a new update for website elements. These days software makers tend to add new features and continuously fix bugs to make it better and provide the users with a better experience. When you ignore these updates, you not only leave your website vulnerable to attacks but also miss on new features.
3. Check your Email Domain Reputation with tools:
Activities such as sending spam emails, hosting phishing websites, and distributing malware can get your website blacklisted. If you have partaken in such activities, you should stop and start exploring whitehat techniques to grow your business. Running a website audit should help you narrow down the issue and find why your website was blacklisted. You could also use Email Domain Reputation checker tools that can help you detect these issues.
We are going to share some of the best Email Domain Reputation checker tools to ensure that you get the help you need:
i) Google Postmaster Tools:
Google Postmaster Tools helps you get a better understanding of your website. It gives you access to Gmail data and diagnostics, which can help you learn about Gmail delivery errors, feedback loops, and spam reports. It gives you an understanding of how Google sees your website or domain. This tool is available to websites that have high sending volumes. For it to work, you have to add a custom record to your DNS.
ii) Mail Tester:
Mail-tester is an Email Domain reputation checker that will examine your mail server, sender IP address, and content. It will provide a detailed report telling you what needs to be configured and what was done right. It helps you determine the quality of your emails, ensuring that they don’t present as spam.
iii) Sender Score:
Sender Score assesses the reliability of the sender’s IP Address and evaluates your email quality. It then assigns your domain and IP address a score to signify your reputation. The higher the score, the more reputable your domain is. It will also ensure that your emails aren’t blacklisted but are delivered on time.
iv) MXToolBox:
Hackers tend to target vulnerable websites and send spam emails from their domain. MX Toolbox will help identify who is sending the email from your domain with their location and IP Address. It will also help identify any existing issues with your web server, DNS, Mail Server, and your blacklist status, notifying you if anything changes.
4. Renew your website’s SSL Certificates
An up-to-date SSL Certificate has a lot of advantages for your websites, including an improved search ranking. An SSL Certificate uses encryption that ensures that hackers aren’t able to access the data in transit. If you let the SSL certificate lapse, it will remove the padlock from your URL. The change will instantly notice the visitor, who’ll suspect something is wrong. You might even lose a few visitors.
To buy an SSL Certificate for your website, use these Bluehost coupons
A website with an SSL certificate gets the HTTPS prefix in the URL. They also get the secure tag with a padlock that usually signifies that the website is secure to visit. Google has changed its algorithm to ensure that HTTPS enabled websites rank better to improve their security.
If your business website has an e-commerce store that needs to make a payment or any other services that need to accept payment, it needs to have an SSL Certificate. It is one of the primary requirements of PCI/DSS.
If you let the SSL certificate lapse, it will remove the padlock from your URL. The change will be instantly noticeable to the visitor, who’ll suspect something is wrong. You might even lose a few visitors.
Final Word
Apart from these four website security audit measures, you can also improve your website security by monitoring the incoming traffic. A sudden spike in traffic, with no identifiable reason, could mean your website is under botnet attack. It is why you need to filter irrelevant traffic from untrusted sites. You can protect your website from malicious traffic with the help of DDoS protection offered by reputable services such as Cloudflare.
To maintain the security of your website, you need to purchase hosting from a reliable provider such as Bluehost. To know more, check out Bluehost reviews.
Refer to our Guide: Website Security: Secure Your Website Against Malware & Spam for more tips on running website checks and more ways to secure your website.
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