Last week we received a phone call from a frantic business owner asking if we fix hacked websites. John (not his real name) has a small business website that another web developer created. He uses the website to sell his products online and also uses his website to bring customers into his local shop. He said he noticed the site was running slow and a day later the site is completely down with no access to emails. The loss of orders from his website is costing him money every minute the site is down.
We found his site had been hacked, infected with malware, passwords compromised, and many files destroyed. John did not have a site backup for his website. With money being lost every minute the website was down, our entire team of programmers jumped in and started cleaning his site and restoring it piece by piece.
We were able to get John’s website back up in less than 10 hours from when he called us. His online store was accepting orders less than 24 hours later. The entire cleanup process took about a week and we are still implementing additional security features to prevent future hacker attacks. The cost of removing the malware, repairing files, and sorting out the damage to get John’s website running again was extensive and could have been prevented or minimized if security measures were in place before the attack.
Think about your home for a minute. You have locks on your doors, locks on your windows, neighborhood watch, and maybe even a high tech security system. While that high tech security system may not prevent someone from breaking into your home, the alarm that sounds will scare them off before they can steal everything inside your house. Most of the time, hackers will look for the weakest sites to hijack. If your website has security measures in place they typically move on looking for another website that is easier to hack.
If John had security measures installed on his website, it may have been skipped over by hackers saving tons of time, stress, and money. If John had a website backup service like what we offer to Surf Your Name clients, we could have restored his website immediately. With the security software, our team installs on websites, the instant an attack is attempted our security team is notified and hackers attempts are blocked.
Do NOT assume your website has advanced security features installed. Just because GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace, or another big box company built your website, it does not mean that you have security software installed. Do not assume your website is being backed up daily, weekly, or even monthly.
The repair costs for a hacked website can reach into the thousands depending on the damage. Many times the hack repairs cost more than the original site build costs. The cost of adding security measures to prevent an attack is pennies on the dollar compared to fixing a hacked website. While no security measures are fool-proof, your risk of being hacked is lowered dramatically when security measures are in place. Not having your website files backed up can result in a total loss of your website in extreme cases.
Don’t be like John, call us today at 910-452-6345 and we will perform a security review on your website to determine your risk of attack. Can you afford for your website to go down for days or weeks? Do you want to take the risk of losing everything you put into your website or lose your emails? Don’t fall victim to hackers, let us help prevent the hack from ever happening.
