10 Tips For Keeping Your Coaching Website Safe From Hackers

If you think your coaching website is safe from hackers because you’re “just a small business”, you are wrong! Hackers don’t care if you’re a little one-woman operation working out of your home office, or if you’re running Netflix – they want in. As soon as your coaching website is live, the door is open for ill-intentioned visitors to walk right in and erase your hard work.

Inside this blog post you’ll learn:

✔️ Why hackers want into your coaching website.

✔️ How to tighten your security and keep your website safe.

✔️ What to do now that will rescue your site in case of emergency.

Keep reading for 10 tips to keep your coaching website safe from hackers.

Unlike real-life burglars, you’ll never even know a digital bandit has been there – that is, until dozens of spammy pop-ups appear on your coaching website, none of your pages will load, or it just shuts down altogether. Worse yet – what if you sell coaching products through an e-commerce store, and your crook steals customers’ personal information?

Without protection, you leave yourself open not only to embarrassment but costly litigation.

Here are some steps you can take to defend your coaching site from unwanted intruders:

1. Install a quality website security tool.

There are a lot of different security packages that allow you to scan your website or blog for malware, trojans, viruses, and online threats. Your hosting provider may provide this for free or they may have an option to upgrade your security. No matter what, it’s worth the cost, so there are zero excuses for not protecting yourself.

2. Tighten up access to your coaching website.

There is only one person that needs admin access to your website – you. If you need an employee or contractor to make changes to your webpage, blog, or newsletter, there are other, more appropriate, levels of access they can be granted – without having access to all of your confidential information.

3. Always run the suggested updates on software.

If you own a computer or smartphone, you receive update notifications on the regular. Often, those updates contain fixes for known security errors or vulnerabilities in the system. The same is for websites. When you don’t run the updates for plugins and software, you leave your coaching website vulnerable to hackers – because it is literally their job to exploit those holes in security.

4. Tighten network security.

Prevent unwanted network access by taking the appropriate measures up front. Always require a password for wifi access, program network devices to automatically log out after a period of inactivity, and change passwords at least every 90 days.

5. Limit file uploads.

Allowing users to directly upload files to your coaching website can be a huge security risk. Any file uploaded, even if it’s just a profile picture, can contain script or code that could infect your site. In order to reduce risk, limit the types of files which can be uploaded and scan shared files for malware.

6. Hide admin pages.

The first thing a hacker will look for is your admin page – it ’s where all the important information is kept. To help avoid this, mark those pages as “invisible” so they’re not picked up and indexed by web crawlers, and name them something offbeat so they’re not easily recognizable if they are found.

7. Remove auto-fill from all your pages.

Auto-fill makes things convenient, but it’s also a huge security risk. When a user’s device is lost or stolen, any would-be hacker can just pick it up and use auto-fill to gain access to your site. Don’t let a legitimate customer’s information be used to attack your business.

8. Limit error messages.

Give out as little information as possible when displaying error messages. Errors should strictly be on a need-to-know basis – and all your audience needs to know is that the page isn’t working. Save the details to your server and let the pros deal with them.

9. Keep everything backed up.

This may be the most important tip on the list… save everything you do. In the event of a catastrophic virus or inescapable Trojan, you want to be able to restore your site to where it was in the past. Every time you make any changes or updates, make sure you run a new backup.

10. Choose your website platform wisely.

Last, but not least, choose where you build your coaching website wisely. All website builders and hosts are not created equally. At Lovely Impact, we build our coaching website templates on Showit not only because it’s easy to use and is beautiful, but also because it is one of the safest places to build your website. Here’s why we love it:

• Free SSL: New users will automatically have SSL applied to their website/blog. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and it’s the standard technology for keeping an internet connection secure, safeguarding any sensitive data and preventing criminals from reading and modifying any information transferred.
• Draft Backups: While you work inside of Showit, automatic snapshots are taken every 10 minutes and are saved for 7 days.
• Published Backups: Showit saves a new snapshot every time you Publish and older publishes are also stored for backup purposes.
• Image Backups: All files uploaded to the Showit Media library are stored across Amazon’s S3 network, even if the sever fails your images and uploads are safe.
• Blog Backups: Showit blogs are powered by WP Engine, a leading managed WordPress hosting company. All blog posts, pages, and media are all automatically backed up every day and stored for 30 days.
• Emergency Support: If your site goes down you can fil out Showit’s Emergency Support Form and they will help you get your site back online by reverting the site to a previous backup.

You may think your coaching website is safe from hackers, but there is always someone who would love to access it for malicious purposes. Most of the time, those people aren’t even trying to steal personal information – instead, they want to upload spammy messages and malware onto your page.

The consequences can be dire – not only does this slow up your site and make it look bad, but it frightens away legitimate customers, making you lose business.

It only takes one hacker to completely destroy all of your hard work, but it doesn’t have to be that way. A few simple measures, taken in advance, can help keep you and your site safe. Follow our tips above and keep yourself protected for the foreseeable future.