Is Your Business Website a Security Risk?

Summary: Most small-business websites run on WordPress, and the biggest risk is usually old plugins that nobody has updated. Attackers scan the web for these known weak spots and use the sites they find to spread malware, post spam, or steal what visitors type into forms. Keeping the site and its plugins updated, and knowing who is responsible for that, prevents most of it.

Your website is one of those things you set up once and then stop thinking about. It sits there doing its job, so there’s no reason to touch it. That’s exactly why a neglected website is one of the common ways a small business gets hacked.

Most small-business sites run on WordPress, which powers more than 40% of all websites, according to W3Techs. WordPress itself is solid. The risk is usually the plugins and themes added to it, which often don’t get updated for years.

How a neglected website gets hacked

Attackers don’t usually pick your business by name. They run automated tools that scan huge numbers of websites looking for known weak spots, like a plugin with a security hole that hasn’t been fixed. When the tool finds one, it breaks in. It’s all automatic, and it isn’t aimed at you personally.

That’s why old plugins are the problem. When a plugin maker finds a security flaw, they release an update to fix it. Until you install that update, the hole stays open, and the automated scanners know exactly what to look for. Security researchers who track WordPress flaws find that the large majority are in plugins and themes, not in WordPress itself.

What a hacked website is used for

A hacked website rarely announces itself. Instead of shutting your site down, attackers usually keep it running and use it for their own purposes:

  • Serving malware. Your site gets changed so that visitors are infected or pushed to a page that tries to install something.
  • Spam and scam pages. Attackers add hidden pages selling fake goods or pushing scams, riding on your site’s good standing with search engines.
  • Stealing form data. If your site has a contact or checkout form, a hacked site can copy what people type into it, including personal or payment details.
  • Redirects. Visitors who click your link get sent somewhere else, often a scam or malware site.

The damage lands on you even though the attacker was after your visitors. Search engines flag hacked sites with warnings and drop them down the rankings, and browsers may block them, so customers see a red “this site may be dangerous” screen instead of your homepage.

Is your website at risk?

It depends on how your site is built.

If you use a hosted website builder like Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify, most of the security and updates are handled for you behind the scenes, so your risk is lower.

If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, usually set up by a web designer or agency on your own hosting, then keeping WordPress, the plugins, and the themes updated is someone’s job. The question is whose. On a lot of small-business sites, the honest answer is that nobody has touched it since it launched.

You can usually tell your site is at risk if you don’t know who maintains it, it hasn’t been updated in a year or more, or it’s running plugins from a developer who has since disappeared.

How to keep your website safe

  • Keep everything updated. WordPress, plugins, and themes all need updating when new versions come out. Many sites can be set to update automatically.
  • Remove plugins you don’t use. Every extra plugin is another thing that can go wrong. If you’re not using it, delete it.
  • Stick to well-known plugins. Use ones that are popular, well-reviewed, and updated recently. Avoid anything that hasn’t been touched in years.
  • Watch for abandoned plugins. Sometimes a plugin stops being updated, or gets removed from the plugin store because of a security problem. When that happens it stops getting fixes, so check now and then that the plugins on your site are still supported, and replace any that aren’t.
  • Lock down the admin login. Use a strong, unique password for the website’s admin account, and turn on multi-factor authentication if your setup supports it.
  • Add a security plugin or web firewall. A reputable one can block common attacks and warn you when something changes. Your web host or IT provider can recommend one.
  • Keep backups. If the worst happens, a recent backup lets you restore the site instead of rebuilding it from scratch.
  • Know who’s responsible. Decide who looks after updates and security, whether that’s your web designer, your IT provider, or your hosting company, and make sure it’s clearly somebody’s job.

What to do if your site is hacked

If your site does get hacked, moving quickly limits the damage:

  • Get help straight away. Cleaning a hacked site properly is a job for your web host, IT provider, or a website security service. Most hosts have dealt with this many times and can help.
  • Take the site offline. Putting up a simple “down for maintenance” page stops visitors from being harmed while it’s cleaned up.
  • Change the passwords. From a device you know is clean, change the passwords for your hosting account and the website’s admin login, and turn on multi-factor authentication.
  • Restore a clean backup. If you have a backup from before the hack, restoring it is often the fastest fix. If you don’t, the site will need to be cleaned by hand.
  • Update and tidy up before it goes back live. Update WordPress, the plugins, and the themes, and remove anything you don’t recognize or no longer use, so the same hole doesn’t get used again.
  • Tell anyone whose data was affected. If the site handled customer details or payments, check whether any of that was exposed, and let those people know if it was.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if my website has been hacked?

Common signs are a warning from Google or your browser, a drop in search traffic, pages or pop-ups you didn’t add, or your web host getting in touch about a problem. If you’re not sure, your IT provider or web host can check.

Do I need to update my website if it works fine?

Yes. A site can look completely normal to you while an out-of-date plugin leaves a door open for attackers. Updates close those holes, which is why they matter even when nothing looks wrong.

I use Wix or Squarespace. Am I at risk?

Much less so. Hosted builders handle the updates and most of the security for you. You should still use a strong admin password and MFA, but you’re not responsible for patching plugins the way a self-hosted WordPress site is.

Who should maintain my website?

Someone should own it clearly: your web designer or agency, your IT provider, or your hosting company, depending on your setup. The important thing is that someone is actually doing the updates.

What is a security plugin or web firewall?

It’s a tool that sits on your website, blocks common attacks, watches for changes, and can alert you to problems. On WordPress, a reputable security plugin is a common, low-cost way to add that protection.

Sources and further reading

If you’re not sure whether your website is being kept up to date, or who’s responsible for it, that’s worth sorting out before something goes wrong. Your IT provider or web host can check where things stand and take over the upkeep. And if you don’t have an IT provider, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll help you sort it.

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This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.

Why You Should Scroll Past the First Result on Google

How to Spot a Scam Email Now That They Look Real

Summary: Scammers now use AI to write their phishing emails, so the spelling and grammar mistakes that used to give them away are gone. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and the FBI both warn that AI makes these messages cleaner, more personal, and harder to spot. The way to catch them now is to look at what an email is asking you to do, because the writing no longer gives anything away.

For years, the advice for spotting a scam email was simple: look for bad spelling and clumsy grammar. A real bank or supplier writes properly, the thinking went, so a message full of mistakes was probably fake. It was easy to teach, and for a long time it worked.

It doesn’t anymore. Scammers now use AI to write their emails, and AI writes cleanly. The typos and awkward phrasing that used to give phishing away are gone, and the messages landing in your team’s inbox read as well as anything from a real company. Worse, they can be written to sound like they came from someone you already know.

Why the old advice stopped working

The spelling-and-grammar tell worked because a lot of scammers were writing in a language that wasn’t their own, and the mistakes showed. AI took that away.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre says generative AI can now create convincing phishing lures “without the translation, spelling and grammatical mistakes that often reveal phishing.” The FBI says the same: criminals use AI to limit the grammar and spelling errors that used to mark a message as fake, so it reads as believable. That means the one thing most people were trained to look for no longer tells you much.

Why these emails are so convincing now

  • The writing is clean. A scam email reads like a normal business email, because a machine wrote it in seconds, in whatever tone the attacker asked for.
  • It’s personal. Attackers can feed public details about your company into an AI tool, pulled from your website, your team’s LinkedIn profiles, or a press release, and get a message tailored to you: the right names, the right job titles, and a believable reason to be in touch.
  • There’s more of it. AI makes each message faster to produce, so attackers send far more. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center added a section on AI to its annual report for the first time, tied to more than 22,000 complaints and nearly $893 million in reported losses.

These days, the scam email isn’t the obvious one anymore. Instead of “Dear customer, your account is suspended,” someone in your finance team gets a message that looks like it’s from a supplier they really deal with, mentions a real project, and asks to update the bank details for the next invoice. It reads exactly like a real supplier email. The only thing wrong is that the supplier never sent it.

Your spam filter won’t catch them all

It’s tempting to assume your email security will handle this. It catches a lot, and you should keep it switched on. But a well-written, personalized email that asks a normal-sounding question doesn’t always look dangerous to a filter, especially when it carries no obvious bad link or attachment. Both the NCSC and the FBI expect AI to push more of these messages through, which is why the last line of defense is a person who knows what to check.

It’s not just email anymore

AI has done the same thing to phone calls and texts. The FBI warns that criminals can clone a voice from a short audio clip, enough to leave a voicemail that sounds like your boss or a family member asking for an urgent payment. The same thing that makes AI emails so convincing makes AI phone scams convincing too. The defense is the same: if a call or voicemail asks for money or logins, hang up and call the person back on a number you already have.

Here are the signs you should still pay attention to

If you can’t trust how an email is written, look at what it’s asking you to do. That’s where the real warning signs are, and AI hasn’t changed them:

  • It asks for money, gift cards, or a payment to a new account.
  • It asks for a login, a verification code, or personal details.
  • It creates pressure: a deadline, a threat, or a “do this now.”
  • It asks you to change the bank details for an invoice or a supplier.
  • It comes with a link or attachment you weren’t expecting.
  • The display name looks right, but the actual email address doesn’t match it.

Every one of these is about what the email is asking for. So the rule to teach your team is simple: when a message is about money, logins, or how you pay someone, slow down before you act.

How to protect your team

  • Check money and login requests another way. If an email asks you to pay a new account or change a supplier’s bank details, call the person on a number you already have. Don’t reply to the email or use a number it gives you.
  • Stop telling staff to watch for bad spelling. Tell them to look at what the email is asking for, and to slow down when it’s about money or logins.
  • Make one rule for payment changes: confirm every change to bank details by phone, even when it’s urgent.
  • Turn on phishing-resistant MFA or passkeys, so a stolen password is harder to use even if someone gets tricked.
  • Make it easy to report a suspicious email and make sure nobody feels silly for checking.
  • Remind the team now and then that scam emails look perfect these days. A quick five-minute chat beats a poster nobody reads.

Frequently asked questions

Can you still spot a phishing email by bad spelling and grammar?

Not reliably. Attackers use AI to write clean, correct emails now, so a message with perfect spelling can still be a scam. Judge it by what it asks you to do.

What are the warning signs that still work?

The request itself: paying money, changing bank details, sharing a login or code, or being pushed to act urgently. Those signs don’t depend on how the email reads.

Is AI-generated phishing really more effective?

Yes. The NCSC and the FBI have both warned that AI makes phishing more convincing and more personal, and the FBI has tied AI to tens of thousands of fraud complaints and hundreds of millions in losses. Cleaner, tailored messages get opened and clicked more often.

Will my spam filter stop AI phishing?

It will catch a lot, and you should keep it on. But a well-written, personalized email with no obvious bad link can still look legitimate to a filter, so don’t rely on it alone. A trained person is the backstop.

What should staff do if they aren’t sure about a message?

Slow down and check through a channel they trust, like calling a known number or asking the person directly. And report it, even if it turns out to be genuine.

Sources and further reading

•  NCSC: The near-term impact of AI on the cyber threat — the UK cyber agency on AI producing phishing lures without the usual spelling and grammar mistakes.

•  FBI IC3: Criminals Use Generative AI to Facilitate Financial Fraud — how criminals use AI-generated text and cloned voices, and how it removes the usual signs of fraud.

If you’d like help teaching your team what to watch for, or turning on phishing-resistant logins so a fooled password doesn’t turn into a break-in, your IT provider can set both up. And if you don’t have an IT provider, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll help you sort it.

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This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.

What to Do in Case of a Cyberattack (Step by Step)

Article Summary: If your business is hit by a cyberattack, the first hour matters. Disconnect the affected devices from the network instead of powering them off, call your IT provider by phone, and leave the evidence in place. If money was wired to a scammer, call your bank right away. This post is the step-by-step plan, plus where to report an attack in the US, UK, and Australia.

If a cyberattack hits your business, what you do in the first hour really matters.

It’s also the easiest time to make a costly mistake, like turning off the wrong machine, deleting evidence, or replying from an email account the attacker is already reading.

The steps below tell you what to do, in order, so you’re not guessing in the moment.

Doing these steps doesn’t require technical knowledge.

Before anything else: don’t make it worse

Before you touch anything, avoid these:

  • Don’t turn the affected computer off, if you can avoid it. Disconnecting it from the network is better, because powering it down can wipe evidence that helps work out what happened.
  • Don’t delete anything. Leave the ransom note, the suspicious email, and any alerts exactly where they are. They’re what your IT team and investigators will need.
  • Don’t pay a ransom on the spot.
  • Don’t use the hacked email or accounts to talk about the attack. If an attacker is in your inbox, they can read those messages. Switch to phone calls or a different account.

The step by step

Work through these in order, starting the moment you notice something’s wrong.

  1. Disconnect the affected devices from the network. Unplug the network cable and turn off Wi-Fi on anything that looks affected. This stops the problem spreading to other computers and to your backups. CISA’s guidance is to isolate devices rather than power them off where you can, and to shut a device down only if you can’t get it off the network any other way.
  2. Call your IT provider straight away, by phone. Don’t email, in case the attacker is watching your inbox. If you have cyber insurance, call them next, because many policies require you to involve their incident team early.
  3. Leave the evidence alone. Don’t wipe, reinstall, or tidy up the affected machines yet. Screenshots of the ransom note or suspicious emails are useful, but keep the originals too.
  4. If money was sent, call your bank immediately. Ask them to recall the transfer and freeze it if they can. With wire and bank fraud, acting in the first few hours makes the biggest difference.
  5. Reset passwords from a clean device, and turn on multi-factor authentication. Start with email and any admin accounts, and use a device you know isn’t affected.
  6. Report it. That can help you recover, and it’s sometimes legally required. Where to report depends on your country.

Where to report it

You’ve reaWhere you report depends on where you are:

  • United States: file with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), and report to CISA.
  • United Kingdom: report through the NCSC, and to Action Fraud.
  • Australia: report through ReportCyber, or call the 24/7 hotline on 1300 CYBER1.

If money was wired to a scammer, report it fast.

The FBI says reporting wire fraud to IC3 within 72 hours gives its Recovery Asset Team the best chance of clawing it back, and that team recovers funds in about 70% of the cases reported in time.

If personal data about your customers or staff was exposed, you may be legally required to notify a regulator and the people affected, sometimes within 72 hours.

The rules depend on where you operate, like GDPR in the UK and Europe, state breach-notification laws in the US, and the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in Australia.

Ask your lawyer or IT provider early so you don’t miss a deadline.

Should you pay the ransom?

If it’s ransomware, the big question is whether to pay.

The FBI does not recommend it. Paying doesn’t guarantee you get your files back, it marks you as a business that pays, and the money funds more attacks.

It’s ultimately your decision, but it’s one to make with law enforcement, your IT or incident-response team, and your insurer, not alone in the first panicked hour.

Sometimes a free decryption tool already exists for the exact ransomware that hit you, which is one more reason to get the experts involved before you pay anyone.

The best time to prepare is before it happens

All of this is far easier if you’ve decided some of it in advance. You don’t need a thick binder, just a simple plan that covers:

  • Who to call first (your IT provider, your insurer) and their numbers, kept somewhere you can reach without your main systems.
  • Where your backups are, and proof they’ve been tested by restoring from them.
  • Which accounts and devices matter most, so you know what to protect first.

A single page covering those is enough for most small businesses, and it’ll save you a lot of scrambling if the day ever comes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the first thing to do in a cyberattack?

Disconnect the affected devices from the network, by unplugging the network cable and turning off Wi-Fi, then call your IT provider by phone. Getting the device off the network stops the problem spreading while you get help.

Should I turn off the computer if I get ransomware?

If you can, disconnect it from the network instead of powering it off. Shutting it down can wipe evidence stored in memory that helps work out what happened. Only power a device off if you can’t get it off the network any other way.

Should I pay the ransom?

The FBI does not recommend it. Paying doesn’t guarantee you get your data back, and it funds more attacks. Make that decision with law enforcement, your IT or incident-response team, and your insurer, and check whether a free decryption tool already exists first.

We wired money to a scammer. What do we do?

Call your bank immediately and ask them to recall the transfer. If you’re in the US, report it to the FBI’s IC3 within 72 hours, because reported quickly, their Recovery Asset Team recovers the money in about 70% of cases. In other countries, contact your bank and your national reporting service straight away.

Who do I report a cyberattack to?

In the US, the FBI’s IC3 and CISA. In the UK, the NCSC and Action Fraud. In Australia, ReportCyber. Also tell your cyber insurer, and check whether you have a legal duty to notify a regulator if personal data was exposed.

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This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.

What Are Passkeys, and Should Your Business Use Them?

Article Summary: A passkey lets you sign in to an app or website using the same fingerprint, face, or PIN you use to unlock your phone or laptop, with no password to type. It’s built on a security standard called FIDO that can’t be phished, because the passkey only works on the real site and there’s no password to steal or reuse. Most major platforms and a growing list of business tools support passkeys, and Microsoft 365 includes them at no extra cost. For most businesses, it’s worth starting to roll them out, beginning with the most sensitive accounts.

Passwords are the weak point in most businesses.

People reuse them across accounts, write them on sticky notes, and type them into convincing fake login pages without realizing it.

Passkeys are the technology built to replace passwords, and they fix the parts that cause the most trouble.

A passkey lets you sign in with the same fingerprint, face scan, or PIN you already use to unlock your phone or laptop. There’s no password to type, so there’s nothing for an attacker to steal, guess, or trick out of you.

Let’s look at what passkeys are, why they’re so much harder to attack than passwords, and whether your business should start using them.

What is a passkey?

A passkey replaces your password with your device’s own security.

Instead of typing a password, you prove it’s you the same way you unlock your phone: a fingerprint, a face scan, or a PIN.

When you set up a passkey for a website, your device creates two matching keys.

The private key stays locked on your device and never leaves it.

The public key is stored by the website.

When you sign in, the site sends a challenge that only your private key can answer, your device answers it once you confirm with your fingerprint or PIN, and you’re in. The website never sees a password, because there isn’t one. This approach comes from a standard called FIDO, which Apple, Google, and Microsoft all build on.

Why passkeys are harder to attack than passwords

A password is a secret you share with the website every time you log in, and that’s exactly what attackers go after.

A passkey has no shared secret. That one difference fixes the biggest problems with passwords.

  • They can’t be phished. A passkey only works on the real website it was created for. Land on a convincing fake, and the passkey simply won’t work, so there’s nothing to hand over. That matters, because phishing is how most break-ins start.
  • There’s no password to steal in a breach. The website only keeps your public key, which is useless on its own. If the company gets hacked, there’s no password list to grab and try on your other accounts.
  • Nothing to reuse or forget. Each passkey is unique to one site and made automatically, so reused and weak passwords stop being a problem.

Older methods like text-message codes and app approval prompts can still be tricked out of people.

Where you can use passkeys already

Support has spread fast.

You can already sign in with passkeys to Microsoft, Google, and Apple accounts, plus a growing list of banks, password managers, and business tools.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft have built passkeys into their phones, laptops, and browsers, so the device in your pocket can already store and use them.

There are two types worth knowing.

A synced passkey is backed up to your Apple, Google, or Microsoft account, so it works across all your devices and you’re covered if you lose one.

 A device-bound passkey stays on a single device, like a physical security key you plug in, which is the most locked-down option and a common pick for sensitive accounts.

Should your business use them?

For most businesses, yes, and you can start small. There’s no need to switch everything overnight or drop passwords on day one.

If you use Microsoft 365, passkeys are already available through Microsoft Entra.

Staff can sign in with a passkey stored in the Microsoft Authenticator app, a security key, or their own device. Google Workspace supports them too.

They’re also just faster. Microsoft says signing in with a synced passkey takes about 3 seconds, against roughly 69 seconds for a password plus a traditional MFA code. Across a whole team, that adds up.

Here’s how you can start using passkeys:

  1. Turn passkeys on for your most sensitive accounts first: administrators, finance, and anyone who can move money or change systems.
  2. Let everyone else add a passkey as a faster, safer way to sign in, alongside their normal login at first.
  3. Make sure each person has a backup, like a second device or a security key, so a lost phone doesn’t lock anyone out.

Your IT provider can switch this on and run the rollout so nobody gets locked out along the way.

What to watch out for

Passkeys aren’t magic, and a few things are worth planning for.

  • Account recovery. If someone loses the only device with their passkey and has no backup, they can get locked out. A synced passkey or a second registered device fixes this, but you have to set it up ahead of time.
  • Not everything supports them yet. Support is growing fast, but some older systems and smaller vendors still rely on passwords, so you’ll run both side by side for a while.
  • Shared devices and logins. Passkeys are tied to a person and their device, so any shared computers or shared accounts need their own plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a passkey in simple terms?

It’s a way to log in using your fingerprint, face, or PIN instead of a password. Your device proves it’s you to the website, and no password is ever typed or stored.

Are passkeys safer than passwords?

Yes. They can’t be phished, there’s no password for a hacker to steal in a data breach, and there’s nothing to reuse or forget. Security agencies like CISA recommend FIDO-based logins, which is what passkeys are, as the strongest widely available option.

What happens if I lose the device with my passkey?

If it was a synced passkey, it’s backed up to your Apple, Google, or Microsoft account and still available on your other devices. If it was device-bound and you have no backup, you’d use a recovery method to get back in, which is why setting up a second passkey or device in advance matters.

Does Microsoft 365 support passkeys?

Yes. Passkeys are available through Microsoft Entra at no extra cost, including the free tier. Staff can use a passkey in the Microsoft Authenticator app, a security key, or their device.

Do passkeys replace multi-factor authentication?

A passkey can count as multi-factor authentication on its own. Unlocking it needs both your device (something you have) and your fingerprint, face, or PIN (something you are or know), so it covers two factors in one step and can replace the old password-plus-text-code routine.

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This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.