Many business owners don’t appreciate how vulnerable their website is to attack from hackers. I guess we all just think that hacking is something the larger, more popular websites have to deal with but the truth is that it’s more likely that your website is a better target for hackers than the big e-commerce sites.

Over the last 11 years we’ve seen a growth in hacking on the sites we manage but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it as bad as it currently is. It’s an incredibly frustrating and time consuming thing to resolve too – more so if you don’t have a recent backup of your site!

This is why I’ve started to recommend our clients sign up to Sucuri.net – an on-line security service that provides everything you need to keep your site secure. But they don’t just help to prevent hacking, they also clean up the site should something happen.

I’ve used the service for a couple of years now and have been impressed with the speed that they react to an issue. Recently, we’ve had a couple of issues with two sites where both were taken completely off-line by hackers injecting malware. One site was even turned into a potential spam bot!

Signing up to Sucuri takes a little time as you have to know your FTP details or be able to upload a small txt file to the root of your site. Once this has been done Sucuri will start scanning the site for potential threats and return either a clean report or provide a list of compromised files.

And this is where you really start to see Sucuri in action. Should the scan reveal an issue all you need to do is create a Malware Removal Request using their simple contact form, provide your FTP details and wait. Usually within an hour the site will be checked by a specialist and cleaned up – it’s that quick.

The Sucuri service doesn’t just stop there though. They also offer a Firewall option that will reduce the potential threat further and a backup service so should the very worst happen, you can always return to a previous version of your site. We also recommend VaultPress as a backup service for WordPress sites.

The basic package for Sucuri is just $199 a year which isn’t a lot when you consider the potential damage a hacked site could do to your reputation or loss of sales.