Why You Should Scan Your Website For Malware

The last thing you want as a website owner is for attackers to sneak into your website unaware, alter its appearance, steal sensitive information, and wreak havoc on your bottom line. This is why you need to keep abreast of your website safety and beat website hackers to the game. Website scanning allows you to gain full visibility of any changes and alterations that might have been done to your website.

Website malware is software, programs, or files that are developed by hackers to damage, steal data or destroy your site. There are different types of malware and can come in various forms. It is very important to detect and remove malware from and scan your website for malware as soon as possible to avoid the risk of losing your site to hackers. Not to talk of the issues that may arise with your SEO, customers or visitors being scammed, and your reputation being dragged in the mud.

Website Malware

Website malware is of course never to do your website good but for malicious purposes. Malware can affect both your site and visitors negatively in various ways depending on the aim of the cybercriminal. The popularity of the internet, web applications and services has gained the attention of cybercriminals and they are leveraging websites with poor security. This is why you need to scan your website for malware or any malicious activity to avoid being a victim.

How to scan your website for malware

There are different types of website malware, they include phishing, malicious javascript, defacements, backdoors, hack tools, Ecommerce malware and credit card pilfers.
The easiest way to check for malware on your website is to use a remote scanner. There are different types of scanners that are free and easy to use.

Also, it is advisable to use a scanner that can also scan the main server because remote scanners are limited. Hence, it’s important to use scanners that are reliable and able to scan the server effectively.

Scan Your Website For Malware

There are various website scanning tools online that can help you scan your website for malware or malicious activity. When you scan your website with these tools, you can detect any harmful threats. The good part is that some of the tools can also help you remove the malware or threat. The scanning tools are not only limited to checking for malware but issues like blacklist status, website security and outdated plugins and software are also detected.

Malware scanners for websites offer various benefits to those that choose to use them. The advantages of using a malware scanner include the following:

24/7 Protection

Most malware scanners are designed to provide round the clock protection to keep your website clean and free from malware. If there is any malicious activity, the scanner will alert you immediately, so you don’t have to worry about being caught unaware.

Tranquillity

The relaxation and peace you get knowing fully well that your website is protected cannot be compared to being worried. Since you will be notified if there are any threats when you use an automated scanner.

Build Visitors Trust

When your website is protected it is easy for visitors to trust it and they can confidently browse through knowing they are secured. With a good website security provider, your visitors can see that your site is secured which gives a sense of confidence and trust.

Maintain Site Speed

A website with malware becomes slow and if care is not taken it can freeze or crash later on. Being able to detect and eliminate malware will keep your website up and running without affecting the speed.

Improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Malicious activity or links on your site can affect the site’s SEO or can even lead to your site being flagged as spam. This will prevent people or users from having access to your website. The use of a malware scanner can help detect such links and prevent malware from affecting your SEO.

How Malware Can Get To Your Site

Malware can be placed on your website through various means such as:

Poor Login details

Using poor login details as an admin can give room for hackers to access your website. Nowadays, hackers have become smarter as they make use of different ways to hack into websites. Common methods they use are manipulation of cookies or Metadata, guesswork or savage force to access the admin page. Once they are in, they have access to the control panel and admin panel.
To prevent this, a strong password should be used and various factors authentication. Also, make sure you are only the one that has access to your site.

Failure to update your website

Once your software is vulnerable, website malware can always invade your website. Mostly, what these hackers do is use an automated form by running a script that runs a scan to target weak websites. Once one is detected, they ramp up hundreds of infections within hours.

To prevent this, ensure your CMS and its other parts are up to date security-wise. Also, web application firewalls can be used to patch them virtually.

Inter-site contamination

Most multi-domain sites are hosted by one server. These are usually used by companies with different projects. When there are different projects, it is possible to have different sites hosted by one server.
The issue about hosting different sites by one server is if one site is successfully attacked, it affects the others. This makes hackers have access to the other website with the same account.
Most reinfected websites are due to configuration failure or sites that have been forsaken

Infected servers

Hackers sometimes attack the server directly. When this happens, every website that has been hosted by the infected server will be attacked. A common example of a malware server is Darkleech. And this requires root server fixing.

Bottom line

As they say, prevention is better than cure. Protecting your website should be your topmost priority because once malware has its way, it destabilizes a lot of things on your website. There are various recommendations to protect your website which are strong passwords, Multi-factor authentication, strong firewall patches and an up to date software. Once your website is infected, you can scan your website for malware.