There are wolves at your door. You might not see them but they are there. They are disguised behind bits and bots and they quietly test the handle on your door a thousands times a day to see if they can get it to open. They are hackers and they are trying to get into your site right now.
If you are running WordPress on your websites, you need to stop what you are doing right now and do three things. (All things in threes.)
- Change your admin name to something other than “Admin”. Why? To log into an account a hacker just needs the user name and password. Since most people leave the default username as “Admin” a hackers work is already 50% completed. Now they just need to figure out your password. To do this, you will have to set up a second user account with administrator rights. Name it anything other than “admin” and then log out, log in to your newly created account and delete the old “Admin” account. Don’t worry, you will not loose all of the great posts you have written, as long as, you select the option to associate all of your old posts to your new admin account.
- Install the WordFence Security plugin. It is a free enterprise class security plugin that includes a firewall, virus scanning, real-time traffic with geolocation and more. It also alerts you when someone logs in as Admin and it shows you all of the failed “Admin” login attempts and where they originated from.
- Upgrade to the Premium API key to do even more. At $17.95/year it is cheap insurance for any business website.
Taking these steps can save you some heart-ache, frustration and if your website is revenue generating, it might just save your business.