Security Maintenance Includes
If you read about our Malware Scans, you already know that the industry separates these 2 issues. We have implemented a server side antivirus system (on our hosting server) that scans and alerts to any potential issues. Technically we have 2 different virus scanners, because we all know that sometimes one may miss something that the other will pick up. We always prefer a multilayered approach to things that have to do with security. Being infected with a virus is a major security issue as you may be spreading it to every visitor of your site. This is bad for business…
Why is this important to you? Just like with any other security related issue, trust, and time. If you get an infection, you can lose your customers trust. Which can equal a ton of lost revenue. If your site is infected, it can take time to clean it, but also to come off the black lists that scare people before they get to your site. How much money does it cost you if your site if offline for a week? It is a scary thought, it is even scarier to live.
Malware Scans
The industry now defines malware and virus as separate issues to be dealt with. So, we have integrated a daily malware scan to make sure your site hasn’t been infected with malware. This is a huge issue that is a constant battle for hosting providers. The sad part is that a lot of providers don’t offer this services and prefer to sell you into a 3rd party product. We want you to be safe through proactive measures that help to keep you clean. The problem we have found is that once your site becomes infected, there are a few providers that take months to remove you from their “black list”. However, if you are on our plan, we will handle this for you and work with the slow to respond 3 party to get your site cleared of all malware flags.
Why is this important to you? Time saving, should you get black listed, as we handle all of that for you. Proactive scanning helps to find issues before they become major issues. Malware infections on a website is a big pain to deal with on your own. We handle it all for you! Time saved and one less headache, sounds like a win win to us!
Plugin Updates
Plugin updates are similar to the core updates where it keeps your site safe and secure. Here is another thought, each of your plugins were probably created by different developers. Some of you may not even know that you have plugins, much less how many plugins are running on your site. As part of our update process, we make sure the plugins, even the paid for plugins are up to date. We also monitor the plugins against a vulnerabilities list to help ensure that none of them have been compromised. A compromised plugin can open your site to being hacked, which would result in downtime and potential loss of revenue.
Why is this important to you? Besides the already discussed down time, we make sure that you don’t have conflicts with plugins. We want you to be running as optimally as possible and sometimes we must go in to make manual adjustments with plugins. Other times we may have to work directly with a plugin creator to troubleshoot your specific issue. This saves you time and headaches because we speak the same language at the programmers. Which means we can get your problem resolved at a faster rate than if you should go back and forth with the programmers yourself. Would you rather deal with the programmers or let us handle it for you?
Theme Updates
We have covered the importance of Core and Plugin updates, let’s just carry over those reasons here. Security from getting hacked, this is an area where we see the most vulnerabilities. The scariest part of having your theme hacked is that the hack may be lying dormant deep inside of the theme files. So, you think it is cleaned up if you do it yourself, only to find out that it keeps reinstalling or corrupting your files. We dealt with this issue on one site and found the issue was coming out of a file that looked legit and even with our normal scans came back clean. Needless to say, we implemented 2 more layers of scan security after that and haven’t had that issue again.
Why is this important to you? Prevents downtime, prevents conflicts, prevents headaches for you and gives you peace of mind knowing that you shouldn’t have an issue. Should you have an issue we are quick to get them resolved. What we see most of the time when we move people over to our WordPress Maintenance Concierge service is that there are infections that must be cleaned once the migration to our server is complete. How horrible would it be to have an infection on your site that you are passing to your clients and no one even knows? Let us secure your site and keep you up to date.
Wordfence Security
In addition to our server level security, we utilize Wordfence for all of our clients. Wordfence is one of the top on site security plugins for WordPress. There are some great configurations that you can use inside of Wordfence that most of the other plugins don’t allow you to configure. In our server environment, we have found that it works amazingly well and we configure it on your site to provide security, but not slow down your site. The slowness is something your research will show most people complain about with Wordfence, but we have the configuration that prevents that slowness from happening.
Why is this important to you? Security is something we talked about with our updates, this adds an extra level of security. Helping prevent brute force attacks, helping to spot issues with files that are on your system that show up out of nowhere. Yes, this happens and yes, it is an ongoing issue that will always have to be monitored. We like to stay vigilant with our clients, this is one of the ways we help keep you secure. Do you like having extra layers of security so that you can have that extra peace of mind?
WordPress Core Updates
We update your WordPress Core on a regular basis to help ensure you don’t end up vulnerable to hacks based around your WordPress Core. A perfect example of why everyone on WordPress needs updates are the findings for WordPress 4.6.1 and 4.7.1 that allowed WordPress Core to be compromised rather easily. At one point 30,000 websites had been hacked due to this one vulnerability alone.
Why is this important to you? Outside of securing your WordPress Core to prevent hacks. It also helps to prevent downtime. Some of these hacks took days to be found, as the sites weren’t monitored, and can sometimes take days to be fixed. How much does it cost your business when your website is down or if it were hacked?
