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Many small businesses rely on their WordPress website to connect with customers, build revenue, and increase online exposure. Unlike a brick and mortar location, it’s impossible to set up security cameras and prevent compromised access to your online assets. Things like stolen passwords, data breaches, and locked accounts are just a few side effects of having been hacked.
When a WordPress website is hacked, quick restoration is critical. It can take quite a while if you don’t have the right resources — putting your business at risk for missed sales. Recognizing the early warning signs of a hacked WordPress site and knowing the steps to take, your business is better positioned for a fast recovery.
Get YOU Found Helps Businesses Recover From Being Hacked
Hacked WordPress Site Warning Signs
Even if you haven’t clicked any suspicious links in a phishing email or text message, it’s still possible to be a victim of malicious activity online. Before covering ways to restore a WordPress site after a hack, here’s a list of warning signs that your site may have been compromised. If you notice any of these, it’s important to take action immediately. Website vulnerability allows an attacker access to your website and potentially:
- Steal personal information or customer information to commit identity theft
- Exploit open source vulnerabilities
- Decrease revenue
- Inject malicious code
- Redirect your hard-earned traffic to another site
- Break trust between you and your customers
- Slow your website down
- And more
E-commerce sites and websites that collect or use customer data may especially be at risk for a serious data breach. Take a look at the checklist below and use these signs as a way to warn yourself that your account may have been compromised.
Your website security software or digital marketing agency notifies you
Website security programs can detect and alert website owners of a hack precisely when it happens. If you’re managing your own WordPress site, you’ll have to keep an eye on your analytics and security for this reason. Your analytics will be able to show a sudden drop-off in traffic and possible redirects to another site you’re unfamiliar with — which are potential signs of a hack. If you’re using an advanced security program or firewall, it should be able to detect any unusual or suspicious activity.
However, if you’re partnering with a digital marketing agency to manage your site, they’ll take care of this for you. Chances are, if you work with the right agency, they’ll have security measures in place to decrease your chances of a hack to begin with. If you believe customer data may be compromised, contact Get YOU Found now to get the issue corrected immediately.
Your WordPress admin credentials stopped working
A huge cause of breaches is compromised credentials. If your password and username (or email address) no longer grants you access to your site’s WordPress dashboard, you likely have a serious problem on your hands.
Unless you’ve recently changed your credentials and have forgotten them, there’s a chance you’ve been hacked. An attacker could have potentially gained access to your WordPress website because of a weak password (it’s one of the most popular ways hackers gain access to accounts). Moving forward, it’s best to create a strong username and password with special characters, lower case letters, upper case letters, and numbers.
Strange ads or website content show up on your WordPress site
Fake product reviews or blog comments, advertisements, or even inappropriate language showing up on your website (that you didn’t publish) are hack indicators.
Not only can these types of content turn away potential customers, they can also damage your search engine performance. Certain WordPress themes and plugins may be a backdoor for hackers and malicious programs to make their way in.
One of the best ways to protect your website is to install only trusted plugins with high-security ratings and partner with a digital marketing agency to manage your WordPress site for you. Get YOU Found has a team of WordPress experts who are well-versed in security best practices. Not only do we monitor potential hacking threats, but we also aim to prevent them from even happening.
You’ve received emails or phone calls asking for money
A specific type of malware is ransomware. Ransomware essentially threatens website owners with publishing or leaking information if they don’t agree to pay a fee (i.e. ransom). If you’re receiving threatening emails, calls, or text messages, asking for money in exchange for access to your website, or not publishing personal information, you could have been infected with ransomware.
Work with a professional to recover from a WordPress hack
Whether you’re certain your site has been hacked or you simply have a suspicion, it’s recommended you contact a team of professionals to start the recovery process. Not only can this save time, but it can also give you greater peace of mind that every bit of malicious code has been found and removed.
As well, businesses who try and resolve hacking issues on their own may accidentally break a part of their own website in the process. By partnering with Get YOU Found, you can make sure your website is successfully recovered without any skipped steps or mistakes.
Get YOU Found helps businesses find success after a hack
We’ve been working with all types of businesses across Greensboro, North Carolina, and the surrounding Triad Area, for years. Our team of WordPress professionals quickly identify and resolve security issues with as little disruption to your business as possible. Below are just a few of the strategies we use to help business recover after a hack.
Identifying malicious software
Sophisticated malware may only display hacked content to website visitors (and not logged in WordPress administrators). Because of this, many business owners aren’t even aware their site has been hacked until they work with us.
Whether you’re aware of a hack or not, we can pinpoint malicious programs in order to remove them quickly.
Updating old plugins (or installing new, more secure alternatives)
Older versions of WordPress plugins may not be as secure as their updates. As well, some plugins may have a poor reputation due to a lack of security. Get YOU Found analyzes your WordPress themes and plugins to find older versions that can use an update, or a replacement.
Enable a multi-step verification method to stop account hacking
Although two-step authorization (or two-factor authentication) logins may seem like a hassle, they’re highly recommended for added security. Essentially, every time you (or your digital marketing agency) logs in to the website, a code will be sent via email or text message. The code must be entered along with the site’s login credentials to proceed.
By making the login process more difficult, it helps secure your account from being compromised. Get YOU Found can help you get set up with a two-step login process to prevent hackers from finding a way into your WordPress website.
Restoring previous versions of the WordPress website
Sometimes restoring an older version of your website before it was attacked is the best solution. If you regularly back up your site’s data, this could be an option for your business. However, it does revert the entire website back to how it was previously. This means any new content, updates, or even images that you’ve published could be lost.
If we determine a restoration is the best course of action, we’ll search through older versions to find the most recent one prior to the hack and work to get your website current quickly.
Recommending security monitoring programs and other hacking prevention techniques
Because Get YOU Found has worked with countless businesses to recover from a WordPress hack, we’ve learned which security programs are the strongest. Depending on the type of WordPress website you have, we can recommend applications or software to keep your site secure. We’ll walk you through the important steps to secure your log-in process and set up an SSL certificate.
When it comes to running a business, it’s critical you take all reasonable steps to protect the personal information of your customers, your employees, and yourself. If you suspect your WordPress website has been hacked, we can verify that your account has been compromised and get it recovered quickly.
Get YOU Found takes appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to your WordPress site. Our team of developers are ready to keep your website secure and stop hackers from attacking your business. If intrusion is detected, we’ll get it resolved as fast as possible.
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