WordPress security firm Wordfence has released an advisory advising to be vigilant about an increase in hacking activity following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and offering tips to help prevent falling victim to state-sponsored cyberattacks.
Additionally, the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has just updated their Shield’s Up web page to add more information about cyberattacks that may originate from Russia.
Website Security Protection Search Visibility
Many in the SEO community do not consider website security to be an SEO issue. However, cyberattacks can have a devastating impact on search visibility and the ability to display web pages to website visitors.
Ideally, website security should be an important part of SEO, as search visibility can be compromised by hacking and other security incidents.
Wordfence advises increased vigilance
State-sponsored cyberattacks are common, especially against government and infrastructure-related websites.
But at this particular time, the threat may expand to commercial websites. Wordfence advises all website publishers to be vigilant.
While Wordfence admits that it hasn’t seen an increase in state-sponsored hacking at this early stage, it still advises publishers to be vigilant in the coming hours and days.
The founders of Wordfence suggest:
“If you’re running a business, I suggest you go into a higher state of vigilance.”
Wordfence Alerts provide the following steps to help prevent cyber attacks:
- Learn about social engineering and phishing attacks.
- Enable multi-factor authentication
- WordPress plugin developers should be extra vigilant to avoid being attacked and spreading exploits to all client sites.
- Check your logs for suspicious activity from hackers
- Watch out for new (and malicious) files appearing on your site
Cyber Security Tips
The US Government CISA has also published a list of tips and resources and tools to help organizations prepare for cyber intrusions and other attacks.
CISA offers several preventive measures:
Fix known security vulnerabilities in the software.
Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Replacing obsolete software products that no longer receive software updates
Replace any system or product that relies on known/default/unchangeable passwords
Sign up for CISA’s Cyber Hygiene Vulnerability Scan (vulnerability@cisa.dhs.gov)
Keep your stuff out of search (SOS)
Free Internet Security Tools
The CISA website provides a comprehensive list of free tools that can help prevent or mitigate cyberattacks.
Among the free tools and services, here is a partial list:
Consider increasing your security
All websites are subject to various attacks at almost any given time of day or night.
However, recent developments in Ukraine have raised the possibility of Russian state-sponsored hacking.
Publishers on WordPress should consider using a trusted WordPress security plugin such as text fence Plus increase your security with the tips and free tools above.
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Going to a higher state of alert – Ukraine is under attack
