It is important to follow website security best practices to safeguard your website from malicious attackers. Malware is a common form of security exploit used by hackers to damage websites. In this article, we will look at how to protect website from malware and improve website security.
How to Protect Website from Malware
Malware is a very common way for attackers to exploit website vulnerabilities. Therefore, taking proactive steps is very important to prevent malware attacks. Here are some tips to protect website from malware.
1. Keep your website up-to-date
If you use a popular content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or Magento, then it is very likely that hackers will exploit its security vulnerabilities and even plant their code on your website, without your knowledge or permission.
Malware can even creep in through one of your website plugins, libraries or themes. So make sure that you regularly update your website framework, plugins and themes. Similarly, also update your web server such (e.g. Apache) and operating system (e.g. Ubuntu). In most cases, the makers of these software identify and fix these issues quickly. So you don’t need to look into these vulnerabilities yourself.
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2. Use Website Scanner
There are many website scanners that automatically scan your web pages to look for suspicious code that may not be a part of your website, and notify your website administrator about it.
Some security tools go a step further and even remove these codes from your website. IONOS, Webinspector and SiteLock are popular malware scanners that you can try on your website.
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3. Use Strong Passwords
Usage of weak passwords is a common vulnerability that is often exploited by attackers. Make sure to use strong passwords at every instance, of your website stack.
A strong password consists of more than 8 characters, has a combination of uppercase & lowercase characters, includes digits and special characters. Also, it should not be a dictionary word, or similar to your username, or similar to your email. Whether it is your WordPress password, database password, or operating system password, ensure that it is a strong password.
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4. Clean up your website
Over time, websites end up becoming a cluttered mess of files. Delete unnecessary/old files in your website’s folder. Also delete any unused codes on your web pages. Remove any unnecessary plugin, add-on, theme, library, to avoid their vulnerabilities.
Organize your website’s files in an easy to understand manner so that you can quickly investigate and fix issues.
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5. Web Application Firewalls
Web application firewalls such as CloudFlare and Akamai are useful in preventing malicious attacks to your website. They analyze incoming traffic, based on where they are coming from, their requested URLs, and other criteria, and determine if it is legitimate traffic or malicious traffic.
Malicious visitors are straightaway blocked from visiting any of your web pages. Combined with malware scanner, they provide an effective way to tackle malware problem.
Hopefully, this article will help you protect website from malware.