You wake up one morning and your business website has been hacked. What do you do? We have 10 strategic tips.

1. HACKED
Ten tips on
what to do next.
MY SITE WAS
!

2. You wake up one morning, get
your coffee, open your browser,
and navigate to your website.

3. To your horror, your discover that your website is
simply not there anymore. Or worse, it's been
replaced by a NSFW (not safe for work) page or a
crowd of ads for unsavory pharmaceutical
products.
To your horror, your discover that your website is simply
not there anymore. Or worse, it's been replaced by a NSFW
(not safe for work) page or a crowd of ads for unsavory
pharmaceutical products.

4. Even without reading the
solemn notification from your
browser, you know the grim
truth: you've been hacked.
Now you're in a panic.
How did this happen?
Where are your site
assets? Will you ever
get control back?
Oh No!

5. STEP 1
Calm down.
You can recover from this. You can contact a
professional service or fix it yourself.
Google even has an
that's ready to help you when you are ready.
8-step DIY recovery process

6. STEP 2
Let people know
you've been hacked.
Notify your host, webmaster, and, if you can, your
customers. Now either clean up your local PC by
running anti-virus/anti-malware software, along with
your latest OS update, or, if you have doubts that
your machine is truly uninfected, commandeer a PC
that you're sure is clean.

7. STEP 3
Make sure.
Log into your hosting account to make sure you’ve
been hacked. Sometimes what you think is a hack is a
product of a service outage or maybe even a bad
plug-in that you might have installed. Your host will be
able to tell you if you were actually hacked and, if so,
begin to trace what caused it.

8. STEP 4
Backup (or back to
the drawing board).
In some cases, a good hosting company will have an
old backup of your site to serve as a starting point to
rebuild your site. You may also have backed up your
site locally. If your site is built with WordPress,
here is a guide for restoring your site from a backup.

9. STEP 5
Worst case scenario:
There is no back up. Data is corrupted beyond repair.
You need to rebuild.
There is one last refuge
you need to visit:
The Internet Archive
may have recorded your site
in its 456 billion page directory.

10. STEP 6
Find your site snapshot.
Go to the last date your website was archived in a site
snapshot. It’s tedious, but you will at least see your old
data, and be able to copy and paste it into your new
site's pages.*
* I realize that this process is impractical with large database-driven sites, but for small sites
without hundreds of entries, it’s better than nothing, and can be a real life saver.

11. STEP 8
Get a secure username
and password.
Many hackers use "brute force" attacks that look for
the easiest method to break into your site’s control
panel, often by using the username “admin” and
password “password.” If you've failed to change the
default settings that came with your hosting setup,
you're just inviting the hackers to get you.
Use http://passwordsgenerator.net/ to create names
and passwords that are harder to crack.

12. STEP 9
Don't wait for the next
catastrophe to strike.

13. Always back up your website
on a regular schedule.
WordPress site users have a vast library of backup tools
to choose from. For the rest of us, logging on via FTP
and whacking your content to your local PC is a task
that you need to mark on your calendar and stick to.

14. STEP 10
Check your users.
Delete any unwanted users
Delete users that are no longer
using your dashboard (guests)
Only give others the access they
need. For example, a guest
blogger on your site should
never be given admin status,
but give contributor status.

15. If this all seems to difficult, then by all means hire a
professional, or upgrade your hosting service to
include automatic backups, with managed security.
You may pay a premium for
this service, but it is totally
worth the peace of mind.

16. 1. http://www.katalystcreativegroup.com/blog/140-5-critical-steps-if-your-
website-is-hacked.html
2. http://www.katalystcreativegroup.com/blog/137-how-can-i-protect-my-
site.html
3. http://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/tips-tricks/what-to-do-when-
your-wordpress-website-has-been-hacked
4. http://www.slideshare.net/michelebutcher/your-site-has-been-hacked-
now-what
SOURCES

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