Why website security is important.

I’ve recently just expe­ri­enced some­thing which has inun­dated my expe­ri­ence as a per­son who runs web­sites that are online. Secu­rity is a big thing and as soon as you let your guard down, there are peo­ple out there who will go out of their way to find ways to exploit web­sites which haven’t been updated. i.e. Easy targets

Since I’ve been work­ing full-time, my main web­site armour.ws faced a few attacks from peo­ple try­ing to upload .html files which con­tained phish­ing web­sites, mainly or only to do with banks.

I first noticed this when my web host informed me and when Google also informed me. I’m not sur­prised at-all if they’ve penalised my web­site. But all that mat­ters is that I’ve secured my website.

I’ve totally re-installed Word­Press on that site, backed up every­thing again, looked at the MySQL data­base for any anom­alies and I’ve started anew with the design to ensure that it wasn’t the theme/design caus­ing any cracks in terms of secu­rity. I’ve also installed a few fire­wall scripts for Word­Press, essen­tially a tool which will scan all my files for any anomalies.

I just let my guard down, stopped updat­ing my web­site and sud­denly I find myself being attacked. Now things should be okay, but I’ll say some­thing, it would have been a lot eas­ier to keep my site updated from the start. I spent most of the day mak­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tions, back­ing up, opti­miz­ing the MySQL data­base and chang­ing a few aspects and fix­ing a few things on the web­site itself.

I will also stress, as would other expe­ri­enced web­mas­ters, MAKE BACKUPS con­stantly. You never know when you’ll need a backup to help you out of a dis­as­trous situation.