What can I do to prevent website hackers?

Website hacking is an ever-present danger unfortunately. A couple of weeks ago, LinkedIn was hacked, and many passwords were accessed as a result. And then over the weekend, Australian news site Crikey! was brought down.

Once thing is apparent – it doesn’t matter how big or small you are – if someone wants to hack your website they will find a way in.

So what can you do?

There are a couple of steps you can take, and while they won’t guarantee anything, they can certainly make life harder for your would-be attacker.

  1. Choose good passwords. Your email and website editor passwords should be hard to guess. I know that makes life a bit harder sometimes, but being lazy with password selection can be an invitation for trouble.
  2. Keep your software up to date. Everyone knows you need to keep your computer’s anti-virus software up to date. If you’re running a website built on a Content Management System (i.e. you can log in and update it yourself) then that software needs to be kept up to date as well. Regardless of which CMS you have, the updates released for that system often contain bug fixes and security updates. Staying up to date with these releases means the hacker can’t simply exploit old issues to access your website.

There are no guarantees of course, but keeping these 2 points in mind can make your website a harder target, and the hacker may just move on to easier pickings.

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