The greatest fear or challenge that a network administrator or even a blogger could face is for his or her website to get hacked by someone on the internet. Whether it was done by professional hackers or even by script newbies, one bare fact remains: It’s going to be a huge headache. Due to the fact that all of your precious data are saved online, there’s a small chance that you have made a backup of your own website. The part that is usually hard to accept is the fact that whether it is big or small, you will experience loss. But whatever that is, you will need to fix it.
However, before you start troubleshooting, you must do these things first and foremost.
- You must stay Calm and Focus in what you do. Before you start, make sure that there are no potential distractions in your workplace. That could either mean pausing or turning off your software download, stop your internet surfing, switching off your cell phone and the like.
- Take down your website by making it available offline. Display an ‘under maintenance’ page or redirect your website to your official Facebook or twitter profile. If your customers or readers will see a ‘hacked’ page, you will surely lose your internet reputation. And if you’re selling something online, people will surely get afraid of sharing their credit card details to you because of your hacked website.
- Once your Website gets hacked, change your account details. This means changing the account that is associated with your website, along with the password. This will give your site a renewed security measure.
- Contact your website hosting service regarding this matter. Contact your website hosting service by going to their online site and creating a support ticket or opening a support chat and tell them about this hack.
- Scan your website by using an online Antivirus Scanner. Since most hacking-related issues are done by viruses or malware, scanning for these programs is a basic necessity.
- Find the culprit or the cause of your problem. This can either mean that you have installed an unwanted script or even a plug-in in your site. Before doing any kind of removal, you must make sure that you have secured a backup of your site.
- Inform your readers or customers about the hacking. It’s mainly up to you if you want to tell your customers about this or not.