Viruses on my website, what can I do about it?

If you own a business or have a web store, this is probably one of the worst things that can happen to you. A virus on your website can cause a lot of damage to your business as well as your visitors.

Of course you want your hosting to be protected against this at all times.Therefore, in this blog post we are going to go through what you can do about it and what some of the causes of this might be.

How do viruses get on my website?

It is important to know where viruses come from so you can protect your website against them. Viruses or malware most often get on your website when you haven't done any maintenance on your website.

Think of an outdated WordPress website, plug-ins or even the theme you use for your website. It is therefore important that you regularly check if there are updates for this, you should also regularly update it.

Many of these updates ensure that leaks in the relevant plug-in are closed. We do realize that this can take a lot of time and we have a solution for this.

You can make use of Managed WordPress Hosting. Each update is performed automatically so you don't have to put in the time and effort yourself.

What should I do if there is a virus on my site?

Despite frequent security updates, it can still happen that a virus gets onto your website. Often you have to deal with zero-day attacks, which means that an attack is carried out on the day that the leak is found.

It is therefore common for malicious users to have discovered the leak themselves and to immediately take advantage of it. A possible way to protect your website against this is to have write permissions turned off at all times.

This will ensure that the user cannot make any changes to your files. If you have a virus on your hosting it is recommended to download the files locally.

Then you need to scan it with a virus scanner and you can remove it. When you upload your website again you should change the admin password and update everything as soon as possible.

How can I protect myself from viruses?

The most important thing is to protect yourself against viruses. You should always maintain your website properly.

Think about installing updates on your website but also making backups. Should it be that someone takes over your website then you can restore it within seconds.

When restoring backups, make sure you change the admin password after this, otherwise it can still be abused. You should also never open attachments or links that you receive via e-mail, as these can also contain malware.

If you have any further questions on this subject, you can always see if a chat employee is available. If there is no one on the chat, you can always submit a ticket to our helpdesk.Contact via Facebook or Twitter is also possible.