Building a Secure Website in 12 Steps

By following foundational steps, website owners can protect sensitive data and maintain safe, reliable experiences for their visitors. This article covers useful tips for building a secure website or blog, allowing you and users to stay safe while online.

Why does securing your website require a structured approach?

Before exploring the steps for securing a website, it helps to understand that effective protection involves multiple layers working together rather than a single action or tool. Strong security comes from combining software maintenance, reliable hosting, authentication controls, encrypted connections, and continuous scanning and monitoring. By following a clear framework, website owners can reduce exposure to threats and create a safer environment for their website users.

The following twelve steps outline foundational practices that strengthen your defenses and support long-term website security.

1. Keep your website up-to-date

To help keep your business website or blog secure, it’s important to keep all of your website software up-to-date. This includes the core platform, themes, plugins, extensions, and any third-party components that interact with your site. If you use a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla!, or Drupal, installing any updates they release is a must.

These updates are designed to correct problems and security issues in the software, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Because outdated software is one of the most common entry points for attackers, maintaining consistent updates significantly reduces system exposure. Be sure to run these updates as soon as they are released to help protect your site from possible threats.

2. Use a website security scanner

Another essential security practice for websites or business owners is to regularly scan their sites to check for vulnerabilities. A website scanner is a tool that evaluates your website files for a wide range of security issues, such as vulnerabilities and malware. Because new threats emerge frequently, daily scanning helps ensure that weaknesses are identified before attackers attempt to exploit them. There are many free online scanning tools available, but these basic options are generally unable to detect all potential security problems.

It’s advisable to invest in a professional website scanner, like SiteLock, to thoroughly review your website files for malware and vulnerabilities. SiteLock’s website scanning service performs daily, automated checks for malware, viruses, and other threat indicators across your website files. If malicious code is detected, SiteLock’s malware removal tools can automatically clean infected files to restore a safe browsing experience.

3. Use a web application firewall

A web application firewall (WAF) is a type of firewall specifically designed to monitor the traffic transmitted to your website server. By filtering incoming requests and analyzing patterns of behavior, a WAF helps distinguish legitimate visitors from potentially harmful activity. WAFs may be network-based, host-based, or cloud-based, and each option evaluates traffic before it reaches your application. If malicious traffic is detected, the Web Application Firewall will prevent it from accessing your website.

WAFs can effectively block hacking attempts and filter many kinds of malicious traffic that target web applications, including automated bots, spam, and malware.

They serve as a critical defense layer against injection-based attacks and attempts to exploit weak user input handling. They are also useful in stopping other top attacks websites face today, like cross-site request forgery (CSRF), cross-site scripting (XSS), file inclusion, SQL injection (SQLi), and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on your website.

That said, WAFs can’t protect against all kinds of threats and are best implemented as part of a larger security solution. Combining a WAF with secure coding practices, frequent updates, and ongoing monitoring provides a more comprehensive approach to building a secure website.

4. Update security plugins

Any website or blog owner should install security plugins to help monitor their security and protect their website from hacking attempts and malware. Typically, plugins work by monitoring and addressing security vulnerabilities and preventing hackers from exploiting them.

Once you install these add-ons, it’s crucial to keep them updated. Plugin developers frequently release patches that correct newly discovered flaws or improve detection accuracy, and outdated versions may leave your website exposed. This is because updates often address security vulnerabilities found in earlier versions of the plugin. For this reason, website or blog owners should install plugin updates as soon as they are available, especially if they involve a security or bug fix.

5. Secure your passwords

Using strong passwords is a must for any website owner to help protect their site from hackers and cybercriminals. A secure password is hard to guess, has a minimum of eight characters, and consists of a random assortment of letters, numbers, and symbols. If your passwords don’t meet these criteria, then it’s advisable to update your passwords to make them more secure.

Additionally, two-factor authentication (2FA) strengthens website security by requiring an extra verification step beyond passwords, such as a code sent to a user's device. This added layer of protection makes it harder for hackers to access websites even if passwords are stolen. 2FA helps stop common cyber threats like brute force attacks and phishing, improving overall security for users and businesses.

Since it can be difficult to create new random passwords and attempt to remember them, consider using a high-quality password manager to help you generate and securely store your passwords. Password managers improve security consistency by ensuring that all accounts use strong, unique credentials, while sparing you the frustration of trying to remember them.

6. Check your admin permissions

Regularly checking website administrator permissions is a simple process and significantly aids in the goal of securing your website. This ensures that only authorized people can access sensitive areas and functionality, reducing the risk of unauthorized changes, data breaches, and malicious activities.

It is also helpful to apply the principle of least privilege, granting each user only the level of access necessary to perform their role. By maintaining tight control over admin permissions, website owners can protect their site's integrity and user data. Periodic reviews help identify outdated accounts, unnecessary privileges, or roles that should be removed or restricted.

7. Install an SSL/TLS certificate

For an added layer of security, it is crucial to install an SSL certificate on your website or blog. When you use an SSL certificate, the data that is transmitted between your website and the web server is encrypted, which helps protect sensitive information as it travels across the internet.

Search engines, like Google, favor sites using an SSL certificate and will rank them higher. Installing an SSL certificate is usually quite simple, and there are many options available to choose from, so you can pick the right one for your business needs. After installation, ensure your full site is configured to use https so that visitors always access the secure version of each page. This reduces mixed content issues and strengthens overall trust signals in the web browser.

8. Run regular backups

Regularly scheduled website backups enable you to quickly restore your site to its previous state in the event of an attack or system failure, minimizing downtime and data loss. A dependable backup routine also safeguards content that might otherwise be lost due to accidental deletions or corrupted files. Automatic backups eliminate the risk of human error and ensure that critical data is regularly stored without requiring manual intervention.

This step proactively protects your website's data and functionality, mitigating the risk of cyberattacks and improving your overall site’s security.

9. Work with a reliable hosting provider

Using a reliable hosting company is a critical best practice for any website owner. Trustworthy website hosting ensures that your servers are secure, backed up, and regularly maintained, reducing the risk of data breaches.

However, using a cheap web hosting service that is more easily compromised can expose your site to significant vulnerabilities, putting your sensitive data and reputation at risk. Higher-tier hosting plans typically offer additional security features, such as SSL certificates, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems, that can further improve overall website security and provide peace of mind.

10. Secure your database

Your database stores valuable information such as customer records, account details, and other sensitive data that must remain protected. To reduce security risks, use strong and unique database passwords, restrict access to authorized users only, and confirm that your database management system is fully updated.

Implementing prepared statements or parameterized queries also helps prevent SQL injection attacks that target unprotected input fields on your website. Regularly reviewing database permissions and connection settings further strengthens your ability to safeguard critical information.

11. Monitor activity and access logs

Consistently reviewing your website’s access logs can help you identify unusual behavior and respond before an issue becomes more serious. You can detect repeated login failures, suspicious IP patterns, unauthorized file changes, or unexpected administrative activity.

Many hosting providers and security platforms offer centralized log dashboards that make this process easier. By routinely checking logs, you can react quickly to emerging threats and maintain better oversight of your website’s security posture.

12. Conduct regular security testing

Security testing complements automated scanning by evaluating how well your site performs under realistic attack scenarios. This may include vulnerability assessments, penetration tests, or application-level reviews designed to identify weaknesses that attackers could exploit.

Regular testing ensures that patches, configuration changes, and new features do not introduce unintentional security gaps. Incorporating scheduled assessments into your website maintenance routine helps confirm that all protective measures continue to function correctly over time.

Consequences of cybersecurity risk

Poor website security can have severe consequences for individuals, businesses, and society as a whole. It is as important to understand the impacts of cyber threats as it is to take proactive security measures to mitigate them. As online activity continues to grow, the potential reach of these incidents expands as well, creating wider exposure for businesses and website owners. Below are the most common ones:

• Loss of sensitive information: This includes the theft of credit card numbers, phone numbers, emails, and other personal data from hackers.
• Interruptions to website operations: Data breaches can make your eCommerce site or blog shut down and unavailable until the problem is fixed, leading to lost sales and reduced customer trust.
• Fines for failing PCI compliance: Businesses can be fined for not meeting PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) requirements, which protect customer payment data.
• Poor SEO performance: Search engines, like Google, can and will blacklist websites that have malicious code on them. This could result in major decreases in web traffic and revenue.
• Damaged business reputation: A single hacking incident can have a big impact on your reputation, and restoring trust may not be as simple as recovering from being blacklisted.
• Exposure to evolving security threats: Cyberattacks continue to grow in complexity, and unprotected websites may face repeated attempts that target known weaknesses.
• Legal or regulatory consequences: Depending on the nature of the breach, organizations may be responsible for disclosure requirements, penalties, or mandated remediation efforts.

Securing a website starts with SiteLock

Securing your website is an ongoing process, but it becomes far more manageable with a structured approach. Implementing these practices outlined above significantly reduces your exposure to cyberthreats and strengthens the overall resilience of your website.

To further improve your security posture, explore our website security plans or contact the experts at SiteLock. Our solutions help identify vulnerabilities early, strengthen core protections, and support safe website performance as your business grows.