Unfortunately, there are nefarious people out there. Here are some who seek to hack into other websites for their own purposes. There are many reasons they may want to do this – too many to cover in this post (and perhaps a post for another day.)
But in this post, we want to touch upon some of the things to look for when a site gets hacked.
Problems Logging in – One of the first problems you may have is that you have trouble logging into your website. If someone hacks a site, the password is one of the first things that they may change.
Source Code Scanner – There are a number of online tools you can use that scan a website and identify potential security flaws. We have access to these scanners and use them regularly for our clients.
Look at the files – If you know how to read source code yourself, you can look at the files and see if anything looks odd. If it does, either fix the problem or get an expert to look at the site and fix it for you.
Google Chrome Warnings – Sometimes, if you are using Google Search through the Google Chrome browser you will see flagged websites. Google issues warnings for sites that might be vulnerable
Google Search Console – Google offers great tools for helping you manage your website. The Google Search Console is one tool that every website owner should use. There’s a section in the Search Console for “Security Issues” and you should check this regularly to see if anything is flagged.
Traffic Spikes – Generally you want to see increases in traffic to your website but sometimes unexplained traffic spikes can be a bad thing. If there’s an unexplained traffic spike this could signify an issue.
Here’s a couple of tips below of things you can do to minimise the chance of being hacked in the future.
Monitor your site regularly – If you haven’t put Google Search Console on your site that would be a good start. If you are worried about how to monitor your site effectively, you could consider engaging the services of a Web specialist (hint: we’d be happy to have a no-obligation chat.)
Update your passwords regularly – When’s the last time you updated the passwords on your website. If you’re like most people, you should probably update your passwords today!
With this article, we have shared with you a number of tips to proactively manage your website and try to avoid hacks. If something has gone wrong and your hosting company and web designer aren’t helping you we would love to have a chat with you.
It’s not hard to avoid having your website hacked or checking it’s security, you just need to get into a regular routine – and if you don’t have time to manage it yourself you need to speak to someone who can help you.
