Security is not guaranteed, nor is it one and done. New ways to gain access to sites and cause havoc are discovered every day. So we need to be proactive.
I recently read an article where Colette Chamberland, a Senior Security Analyst for Wordfence, was interviewed. She has some pretty interesting things to say.
Getting Hacked is Scary
In this article, she describes the emotional state of the typical site owner who gets hacked:
As you would expect, most site owners are frightened, scared and sometimes a bit panicky when they find out their site has been compromised and infected. They don’t think that attackers target their business or site because it’s so small. What they don’t know is that attackers don’t just go after the big guys like Target, Home Depot and big banks – they often use the little guys as an intermediary to carry out a large scale attack. No one is safe, everyone is a target.
Does that scare you, or make you angry? It does me. It makes me feel vulnerable.
Security Involves Thinking Like a Hacker
Furthermore, in order to identify what’s bad on a site, you have to know the technology it’s built with and how hackers hide malicious code.
As vulnerabilities are discovered, software gets patched and updated. If your site was created and then you have no further contact with your web designer, for whatever reason, it won’t get the necessary updates, leaving your site at risk of being hacked.
Attacks still happen because new methods are uncovered almost every day. Once you stop one type of attack, another surfaces. The only way to completely secure your site is to take it offline – but then what good does that do you?
Prevention is Always the Best Policy
Putting preventative measures into place, such as keeping software up to date and having secure passwords, will go a long way toward keeping your site safe.
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