How secure is your WordPress website?

6th November 2017

How many individual accounts do you hold online? 10, 20,100? The large majority of your online accounts are secured with a combination of two pieces of information. With either a username, email or account number being used alongside your password. What could be more secure? Only you know them.

How can my WordPress site be hacked if only I know the login credentials?

If your website hasn’t been correctly protected, at it’s default, most WordPress sites allow bots to infiltrate your site and discover your user name, which is 50% of a hackers job complete. The unfortunate fact is that a lot of users have weak passwords that they created whilst gazing at items on their desk or out of the window. Inevitably, however random the word may seem to you at the time, this will be a word that is easily found in the dictionary and easy to find using a brute force attack by hackers. Using basic tools which are worryingly, legally available on the internet, it is possible to detect a dictionary password in minutes or evens seconds. In addition a password made up of your child’s name combined with your wedding anniversary or your first pet combined with you birthday may not be a secure as you think.

How would your password hold up under attack?

a-z
7 characters = 2 seconds to hack

a-z A-Z
7 characters = 6 minutes and 2 seconds to hack

a-z A-Z 0-9
7 characters = 20 minutes and 40 seconds to hack

a-z A-Z 0-9 £%&
7 characters = 6 hours and 20 minutes to hack

A random password such as “Make it secure” as Mak3!t$3cur3
12 characters = 5389762 years, 2 months to hack

With the above in mind what can you do to secure your password?

• Always use a non-dictionary password
• Use a phrase instead of a password
• The longer the password the longer it takes to hack
• Use a mixture of uppercase, lowercase letters, number and special characters

Consider Nu Secure to protect your WordPress site from attack.

Our Nu Secure customers benefit from enhanced security to fully protect your WordPress website from attack. We ensure that your website usernames cannot be easily discovered and eradicate weak passwords. This is amongst the many benefits you will be entitled to when you sign up to Nu Secure. In the unlikely event that the worst happens and your WordPress website is hacked, thanks to regular Nu Secure backups, we will have everything we need to get your site back up and running in no time, ensuring your downtime is minimised and repair costs will not escalate as everything is included in your monthly fee.