Imagine with me for a moment that you’re a hacker looking for ways to hijack reputable websites and use them to funnel unsuspecting traffic to a nefarious phishing scam.
How would you target websites for maximum impact? One option would be to locate and target a single vulnerability that affects hundreds or thousands of sites. If such a thing could be found and exploited you could create digital carnage in very short order.
Are you starting to see why hardening WordPress is so important?
As the most popular content management system on the web, WordPress is a prime target for hackers everywhere. But there’s something you can do about it.
Why Do Bad Hacks Happen to Good Websites?
Thankfully, the WordPress core software is quite secure. Hacks are rarely able to get under your website’s skin by going straight after the core. When exploits in the core are identified they’re promptly patched.
Rather than go after the core – which they know is a tough nut to crack – hackers generally target things like lazily chosen passwords, poorly-coded plugins, lax file permissions, and sites that haven’t been updated in far too long and are therefore vulnerable to patched exploits.
Since hackers tend to go after the low-hanging fruit, it really isn’t that complicated to harden WordPress and keep it secure. As a matter of fact, you can keep your site at the far upper end of the security bell curve by taking eight simple steps.
Let me walk you through them.
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