Website security is essential and more so if you manage a WordPress website. After all, WordPress runs on more than 35% of all sites in the world and is a prime target of hackers, spambots, and assorted online villains looking to get through your website’s security apparatus. But did you know that vulnerable web hosting is one of the primary reasons for WordPress security breaches? In this post, I will explain how quality web hosting can help you to secure your WordPress website with proactive monitoring and mitigation.
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Quality web hosting protects from brute force attacks
Brute force attacks are the new normal for websites with moderate to high traffic. In a brute force attack, a hacker uses automated software to try every possible combination of alphabets, numbers, and characters to gain entry to your WordPress website.
If you’re using an easy to guess username, it provides a natural starting point for the hackers to try different combinations of words to guess your login username and password. But how can your web hosting protect you from brute force attacks?
Ideally, your web hosting provider should protect your WordPress login page by checking for suspicious login attempts from unknown IPs or known IPs with a high spam score. Of course, you should also install a WordPress security plugin but the fact that your web hosting provider is protecting your WordPress login page at the server level is quite reassuring for any website owner.
Your web hosting provider should provide DDoS protectionv
Want to take down a website? Flood it with so much traffic at very short intervals that its server cannot handle the load, and the site becomes unresponsive or, worst, its web hosting provider pulls the plug off the website.
This tactic is called Denial of Service (DoS) attack and is carried out by hundreds and thousands of botnets visiting your site at once. If the attack is coming from dispersed locations, it is called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
The trend of DDoS attacks is growing worldwide, and DDoS attacks could double to 14.5 million by 2022. So, how do you protect your website from DDoS attacks? There are two essential methods.
Firstly, ensure that your web hosting provider protects DDoS attack prevention and mitigation. A quality web hosting company will provide DDoS surveillance at the server level itself and block unusual bot traffic without requiring your intervention.
Also, if a DDoS attack hits your WordPress website, your hosting company should immediately take steps to block the unwanted bot traffic and work with you to keep your website safe and active.
So, check with your web host, whether it provides DDoS protection or not. If it doesn’t, you should consider shifting to a web hosting provider that offers DDoS protection and mitigation.
Secondly, you should employ free DDoS protection offered by Cloudflare as an additional security layer against DDoS attacks. The free plan is not comprehensive, but it is still good enough for most sites with moderate web traffic.
Does your web hosting provider offer free SSL certificates?
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) has come into focus ever since Google announced that SSL would be a factor in its search rankings, and a not secure warning would be displayed in Chrome on websites that did not implement SSL.
SSL plays a vital role in securing the communication between your website and your users’ browser by preventing sensitive financial information and usernames and passwords from being intercepted by hackers.
If you’re managing a WordPress website, you should have already installed an SSL certificate on your website. But in case you haven’t, you should do it right away.
Fortunately, you do not have to spend a penny on SSL certificates thanks to the free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate available for all websites. The website owner also gets an SSL certificate individually for which they can get the highest discount price at a cheap SSL coupon code that helps to save their money. Some managed WordPress hosting providers like to install these free SSL certificates on all of their client websites with just 1-click.
A quality web hosting provider should provide malware scanning and removal
MySQL injections, adware, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), etc. are all on the rise. 42% of the WordPress hacking takes place owing to vulnerabilities in the plugin code. Some of the most popular WordPress Plugins are always on the radar of hackers.
If your WordPress website is hacked, you shouldn’t be left at the mercy of companies like Sucuri that charge a bomb for fixing your website. Instead, your web hosting company should provide not only daily malware scanning but also its removal.
Malware scanning at the server level is much more effective at stopping these malware attacks right in their tracks before a hacker plays havoc with your WordPress website.
Another good security practice is to install only genuine plugins and themes since most of the pirated or ‘nulled’ plugins and themes have malicious code installed on the theme, and your WordPress website could turn into a soft target for these bots.
Perform free daily backups
Maintaining a regular backup of your WordPress website is the right contingency plan in case you lose access to your website and wish to restore the earlier version.
Again, there are WordPress plugins like Backup Buddy that automate the task of website backup. But what better than backups taken at the server level itself. For this reason, your web hosting provider should offer free daily backups with 1-click restore.
You can also utilize your backup for migrating your WordPress website to a new host. While selecting a web host, always check how many days the hosting provider offers backup and do the reserves count against your web hosting storage or are stored separately.
Summary
You have seen 5 ways in which web hosting plays a crucial role in protecting your WordPress website from harm’s way. But can you find a web hosting provider that provides such a comprehensive security cover at no additional charge?
Fortunately, some quality managed WordPress hosting providers like WPX Hosting offer all the website security features listed above for free. You can read an in-depth review of WPX Hosting to know more about it.
