Prevent Website Hacking

How do you prevent website hacking?

You’ve got a lovely legal nurse consulting website. You’re proud of it. One day you discover that cybercriminals have gotten to it and inserted nasty code that infects everyone who views it.

Prevent website hacking with strong user names and passwords

What are the two worst passwords? Never use these: 123456 and “password”. The website developer who created an LNC site that was hacked used 123456 as the password. Read more about the worst passwords.

What do you do instead? Use a password generator to create a long password with a combination of numbers, letters and special characters. You ask, “How do I remember it?” You don’t have to if you use a password manager.

I realized I needed a password manager when the Word document I used to store passwords got longer and longer. I worried about what would happen if I lost my laptop and someone could break into the computer and grab that file.

Now I use LastPass to securely store my passwords. SplashID and 1Password are other password managers. I’ve not used them.

2) Don’t use admin as your username. It is easily guessed.

Hire the right person to install and maintain website security

Have a knowledgeable person set up the right security on your site. There are some free tools and plugins that you can get that can help you if you’re doing this by themselves, but I would say you probably shouldn’t. You wouldn’t do surgery on yourself even if you were a surgeon. Have your site built by a professional (not your nephew Tom) who understands security. Leave it to somebody who does that and just does that.

I’ve written in other blogs about the importance of using WordPress for your site. There are several WordPress plug ins that prevent website hacking. There is a free plugin called “Wordfence”. Wordfence is available in WordPress.org repository.

Debra Lloyd discusses much more about website security in her podcast for Legal Nurse Podcasts. Get the interview here.