The risk of a computer or web resource becoming infected with malware is always present—no internet user or website is immune to attack. Remediating the consequences of hacks is extremely costly, both financially and in terms of time and energy. Therefore, it's essential to proactively ensure the security of your resource. The same principle applies here as in medicine: the best defense against viruses is prevention. Preventing an infection, or at least minimizing its potential, is far more effective than any treatment. In this article, we'll share recommendations on how to prevent a website from becoming infected with a virus, even without extensive technical knowledge.

Instructions on how to protect your website from malicious code
Let's be clear that it's hardly possible to 100% protect a website from viruses or unauthorized access. Any action you take will be countered, as not only security systems but also methods for bypassing them are constantly evolving. Hackers invent new types of threats, find loopholes, and use social engineering. Anticipating every possible scenario is simply impossible. However, protecting yourself from the vast majority of existing cyberthreats is achievable.

To protect your website from viruses and hacking, follow these recommendations:

Set complex passwords for your server software.
Use licensed software.
Don't use the same passwords for different services.
Scan your PC for viruses with a reliable antivirus program.
Update your scripts and CMS.
Monitor news about vulnerabilities in your CMS.
Monitor user input.
Manage user access rights. Remove unnecessary CMS extensions.
Set up backups.
Choose a reliable hosting provider.
Enable HTTPS.
Install antivirus software on your website.
Use distributions and extensions only from trusted sources.
Regularly scan your website for viruses.
Protect your database from SQL injection attacks.
We'll cover each point in more detail below.

#1. Set strong passwords for server software
Server software includes FTP clients, hosting control panels, content management systems (CMS), databases, and so on. Protect all programs and accounts that can even indirectly access website files with strong passwords. There are many applications, including free ones, that can crack passwords, so passwords like "123456" or "oleg1995" are easy to guess. A strong password is considered to be at least 11 characters long (the longer, the more secure), including numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and allowed special characters. For example, XQ!wvRl7!U8i.

#2. Use licensed software
There's no such thing as a free lunch, and every webmaster should keep this in mind when considering using pirated versions of software. Someone who's already hacked someone else's product can easily hack your site, especially if you download and install their previous work yourself. Unlicensed software often contains viruses that can later infect your computer.

#3. Don't use the same passwords for different services.
Furthermore, it's recommended to change passwords for at least the most important programs at least once every 1-3 months. No matter how complex and secure they may seem, the risk of accidental leakage is always present, and it would be a shame if one compromised account password allowed hackers to access all your other services. Be sure to create unique sequences of letters, numbers, and symbols and update them regularly.

#4. Scan your PC for viruses with a reliable antivirus.
And it's best to do this periodically. Websites are often hacked by introducing a virus onto the personal computer of its administrator or owner. Connect a good antivirus with updated databases to all devices (even smartphones) that have access to the server admin panel, and scan them regularly. This will help secure not only the devices themselves and the information stored on them, but also the web projects you work on using them.

#5. Update your scripts and CMS
Make sure your server is running the latest software versions. Download script and CMS updates only from official websites where they are posted by the developers themselves. Otherwise, the patch may contain unnecessary filters, dangerous scripts, and even Trojans. Content management systems are constantly being improved—not only in functionality, but also in terms of security: discovered vulnerabilities are patched, errors are fixed, and protection is improved. Update them promptly and use only the latest officially released versions.

#6. Follow news about vulnerabilities in your CMS
Knowledge is power, and this rule is especially true when it comes to website security. Because CMS platforms typically support numerous plugins and extensions from third-party developers, vulnerabilities are often discovered that hackers can exploit to gain access to projects built with them. To prevent this, engage with your system's user community and monitor the latest news. Stay informed so you can respond promptly and fix vulnerabilities before they are exploited.

#7. Monitor user input
If your website contains any input forms, and especially if users can upload files (images, videos, documents, etc.), set restrictions on such operations. Prohibit special characters and code from being entered into fields, and filter the HTML markup of entered data, especially if it will later be embedded into page code (e.g., reviews in an online store). Before embedding files received from users on the site, check on the server whether they meet the specified requirements: is the size acceptable, and are the values ​​within the allowed ranges and lists.

#8. Control user access rights
Passwords for the admin panel and other server software should be assigned only to those specialists who directly work with it. Don't forget to delete the accounts of former employees, and carefully monitor regular users' access to your site. In particular, restrict access rights to the CMS admin panel, databases, configuration files, backups, and version control system metadata. Also, be sure to provide protection against CSRF (cross-site request forgery) attacks.

#9. Remove unnecessary CMS extensions
Again, the question of the relevance of the content management system is relevant. If you have plugins installed in your dashboard that you haven't used in a while, remove them from your system to prevent hacking. The same applies to installation and debug scripts. If you don't need them, you likely haven't updated them in a while, and as we've already established, this can lead to vulnerabilities. Remember that the more extensions added to a project, the higher the risk of conflicts between them, and the greater the opportunity for attackers to infect your site with a virus.

#10. Set up backups
The importance of backups cannot be overstated. While backups eliminate the worry of "clicking the wrong button and everything breaks," they are also the only way to restore your site after a virus infection. Malicious code doesn't always act immediately: it can sit inside your project for weeks or even months, gradually infecting more and more files and affecting their functionality. By the time you discover it, it's too late to try to fix the situation, as you'll have to redo the code for months. In this case, only a backup made before the implementation will save you.

#11. Choose a reliable hosting provider
Protection against viruses and hacking is not only your responsibility but also the responsibility of the hosting provider on whose servers your project is hosted. They should have built-in antivirus software, and their infrastructure should be reliably protected. If you don't want your website to become infected because one of your hosting partners installed malware, refuse free plans and choose a provider with a high level of security.

#12. Enable HTTPS protocol
If for some reason you haven't done this yet, take care of this issue right now. Using an insecure HTTP protocol puts not only you but also your visitors at risk, since data is transmitted over the network in cleartext and can be intercepted at any node. This can lead to the leakage of users' personal information and, of course, a loss of trust—from both people and search engines.

#13. Install antivirus software on your website
To avoid fiddling with your code, searching for infected sections, install antivirus software on your server that will automatically scan your website for viruses and remove malicious fragments. This is a paid service, of course, and not available on all hosting providers, so check with your provider to see if it's available. If not, you can purchase a license for the required software (again, from the official website) and implement it yourself (assuming your hosting type allows it).

#14. Use distributions and extensions only from trusted sources
Repetition is the mother of learning, so again: don't trust dubious online resources that offer to download software without the developer's permission. Even if the original software is freely distributed, it has a trusted source, which you should contact. Otherwise, it's highly likely you're infected with a virus.

#15. Regularly scan your website for viruses
You can never run too many antivirus scans, especially when it comes to an important web resource. It's better to be overcautious and miss a virus after a thousand scans than to be overcautious and discover it too late. Run thorough scans regularly, even if your antivirus is running in the background. Run it against reputable databases and check after each virus signature update in your security solution.

#16. Protecting Your Database from SQL Injection
SQL injection attacks allow an attacker to perform various unauthorized actions on a database by injecting arbitrary SQL code into a query. To protect against this type of attack, it is recommended to carefully filter the input parameters whose values ​​will be used to construct the SQL query. Some protection methods include:

Filtering string parameters. To prevent code injection, some database management systems require quoting all string parameters. Filtering integer parameters. Type checking: if the variable is not a number, the query should not be executed.
Truncation of input parameters. If the maximum length of a valid parameter value is small, one protection method may be to truncate the input parameter values ​​as much as possible.
Other recommendations
In addition to all the above methods, we recommend never leaving website development and administration tools (e.g., phpMyAdmin, Adminer, and other scripts) or backups (of the website or its database) in the website directory itself. You should also additionally password-protect the website admin panel and change its default URL. These methods will help protect your website from unauthorized access and malicious code injection.

Conclusion
To effectively protect against hacking and infection, it is essential to think ahead and prevent vulnerabilities, eliminating the very possibility of their occurrence. Essentially, the main steps in virus protection boil down to responsible control of access to the admin panel, ensuring that the software you use is up-to-date, ensuring that antivirus systems are running correctly, and proper server administration.