Greetings All, I trust you had a good start to the new year… A quick reminder that protecting your site from hacking is an important part of managing your website in 2017. EZiHosting has numerous sophisticated systems that protects our servers from malicious attacks. We also take continuous backups but these serve the purpose of restoring the server as a whole; not individual sites. Protecting access to your site and taking appropriate backups is your responsibility. I have listed the most common question about hacking and what you can do to avoid it... Will my site be hacked? This depends very much on your level of security. One thing is 100% assured; there will be attempts to hack your site. Why is my site targeted by hackers? Unless you are a large organisation that is specifically targeted for ideological, political or economic reasons, it is more likely that your site is randomly attacked to gain access to server resources. Often hackers want to send bulk scam emails or search for private data such as credit card details. What can I do to protect my site? 1. Use secure passwords Hackers often create software that perpetually roams the Internet. These bots try to log into your site’s back-end in order to gain access to the server. 9 out of 10 times, they gain access by running a series of passwords that are known to appear regularly. This includes “password”, “admin”, “letmein123” and other similarly easy to guess options. Passwords like this are generally cracked under 0.01 seconds. If your password falls into this category, then change it now. If not successful, the bot will then apply a dictionary algorithm which uses words and combinations of words from the dictionary. For example, “bigdaddy”, “superdad” or “creazydude”. Passwords like this are usually cracked within 12 seconds. If your password falls into this category, then change it now. A good password is long (12 characters+), includes letters (upper and lower case), numbers and punctuation (!@#$%^&*?><”’+). A good password is also no older than 3 months old. 2. Update your platform and all its plugins In 10% of cases, bots may find alternative ways to access your site by way of exploiting vulnerabilities in your software. For example, you need to update your WordPress (or other platform) each time an update is released. New releases often contain security patches that are essential for safeguarding your site. Equally important is updating any modules or plugin you have. Delete any unused plugins and consider where the plugin comes from in the first place. The frequency and sophistication of hacking seems to be on the increase so please consider the security of your site. If you have any questions then please open a ticket or call us directly… Rene Nusse Administrator