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My website has been hacked. What should I do first?

Having your website hacked is a very stressful time. When a website hack happens, it makes a website owner feel unsafe and troubled. The danger of hacking will strictly depend on the type of hack. The hacks can vary from simple unwanted actions such as malicious verbiage or temporary losing control over your website to something more severe that can threaten the whole integrity of your online presence. In any case, if this unfortunate event happens, you need to follow some basic steps:

React

It is important to recognize the problem quickly and address it. While panicking is not the best approach, be aware that the longer the hack is prolonged the more potential harm it can cause.

Investigate

Start collecting as much information as you can about what and when it happened. In addition, ensure you know your server login information. This all will be necessary information as part of the process of repairing the hack. Don't waste your time looking for people to blame. It will only hold you back from solving the problem.

Don't rely on easy fix

Be aware that site restore from a backup or automatic cleaning are necessary steps that are part of the process, but they don't solve the root of the problem behind the hack. Don't underestimate the problem if you don't want to be hacked again.

How quickly can you fix the hack?

The quick answer is "it depends". It can be fixed within a couple of hours or it can take up to two days. If we deal with experienced hackers, it might take even longer to find out how they attempted to crack the code, block them and back online your website.

How do I know if my problem can be fixed?

Most website hacks can be fixed and it doesn't matter whether your website is built on WordPress, Joomla, Magento, or any other CMS system. The only problem that can?t be fixed is when the hack caused irreversible damage such as website complete destruction. In this case, you can only rely on retrieving all you can from backups.

How much does it cost to bring my site online?

When it comes to the cost of being hacked, it really depends on the hack, but it's always high. The repair can be as simple as finding and removing a file or code added by the hacker. But, if hackers ruined everything on your account, including your site, content, and graphics or they infected the server/host with malware, then it means you have to replace everything, and it can be a much more complicated case. Get in touch with us today, so we could evaluate your situation and provide an estimate on the recovery.

If my site gets hacked, will it affect my search engine rankings?

Search engines do understand that getting hacked is not necessarily your fault, but they also have to protect the people they would otherwise send to your site. Google and other search engines can detect if your website has been hacked and in order to protect users, they will flag it to them. While it is not your fault, you need to act quickly to save your ranking and to ensure your website is not removed or blacklisted. Unfortunately, when the website is down, your ranking drops too. So if you don't address the problem quickly, it may impact your rankings.

What are key reasons why websites are being hacked?

The common reasons why your website can be the target of a hack include:

• Outdated version of your CMS (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc)
• Old or unsupported themes and plugins. They should be updated, and the ones that are not maintained by the developer should be removed.
• Poor customization is done by a freelancer programmer with questionable experience
• Badly written custom code

Most CMS are customizable, which means that you can build your own site, and your own theme and add as many functionalities as you need by setting up third-party plugins. This also increases the attack surface of the CMS, as each plugin may have its own vulnerabilities and can cause side effects during the installation process.

Running updates and patching vulnerabilities should be done on a regular basis to ensure your website is not at risk. If you need help to run updates safely, our maintenance plan provides ongoing security support to keep your website up-to-date and fully performing.

If you're afraid to run updates because it can break things or you don't know what to do, our website maintenance plan is exactly what you need.

What if I get hacked again after the repair being done?

During the repair process there is a risk to be hacked. But once we detect the cause of the hack and block it, you are secured from further attacks. Also, to prevent attacks, we monitor and address any small issues ahead of time, so you can be worry-free about the security piece of your website.

Can I just restore my site from the backup?

You can, however, restoring your site from a backup will make the problem go away only temporarily. But if you don't determine how the hackers broke in and block them from getting in that way, you will typically just get hacked again within the day or two after you restore your site from backup. If your website got hacked once, it means your website is vulnerable and you will not remove this vulnerability by just restoring it.

Restoring from backup is a short term solution to quickly fix the defacement to avoid reputation damage, while you work on a proper fix.

I found automated tools to clean my site from hack. How are you different?

While there are many automated services that can identify and repair the hacked website, the key problem "the cause of the hack" doesn't go away. It means that your website remains vulnerable and hackers can attack your site again. At Bastion, we treat the problem from all angles and ensure your website is repaired and protected from potential attacks. Here is what we do:

• Provide initial clean-up and malware removal
• Detect the root problem that caused the hack so we can block the hackers from getting back
• Protect further the website to ensure there are no security gaps

Furthermore, the majority of the hacks are automated - which means it's just a matter of hours before the automated hacking tool will retry the same exploit which was found previously on your site.

What we provide differs as we not only clean up the initial damage and fine-tune the security of your site, but also determine the cause of the hack so we can make sure that the hack from the same issue won't repeat. Especially if you are running ongoing SEO or marketing campaigns, it is crucial to make sure you don't keep getting hacked over again.

What is your "Malware Insurance Guarantee" feature?

Malware Insurance Guarantee is your peace of mind insurance that while your site is under our maintenance you are fully covered in terms of malware/hacking.

We monitor your site and apply updates as they become available. If an update is an important security patch - it is our goal to apply the update in shortest possible time.

If, however, your site gets infected with malware before we apply the important security update - we guarantee that we will remove it asap without any extra charges.

How do you apply the updates?

Our system monitors your sites and as soon as update to the core or plugin becomes available - we know it and start preparing to apply the update. Our team determines how crucial are the changes in that update, whether it's a security update which has to be applied right away, or minor bug fixing for a website plugin.

A full site backup is then performed (files and database) before we actually start the update process, to ensure we can easily roll back, in case something goes wrong.

Our system will send you an email with all updates performed at the end of the day.

I have commercial plugins installed on my site, how do you update those?

You must possess the required licenses for any commercial themes and plugins on your site. In order to update those for you, we will contact you to obtain the licenses for those commercial plugins, if an UPDATE requires the license key.

What if a plugin update breaks my site?

First of all, we read the changes (changelog) of every plugin/core release before applying them to your site. Following an update, we validate that your website still operates properly. In case of problem, we restore the previous backup which we did right before running an update for your site.

We then look into the problem and if it can be fixed within an hour - we will do that without any extra charges. If we see that it cannot be fixed within an hour - we inform you of that and provide a quote for fixes.

Is it possible to update my site off-peak hours, based on my timezone?

Sure thing! All you need to do is specify a 4-6 hour window when our team can perform the updates on your website(s) to our support team from within your account.

Does your plan cover WordPress Multisite instances?

If your WordPress installation is a Multisite instance, you'll need a custom plan. Please contact us to get pricing for your particular case.

What can I do to prevent hacks?

Once we detect the source of the hack, we can block it and protect you from hacks. As technology evolves very fast, other security gaps can emerge, so it's crucial to keep an eye on the security of your website all the time. At Bastion, we offer ongoing maintenance service to to ensure that your website is up and running 24/7 and let you focus on other business matters.

Does your system offers dashboard for customers?

Yes! We've created a platform called "Citadel" for our customers to view real-time health of their websites.

In Citadel, you can see your website(s) health, all available updates, plugins & themes, the current status of our maintenance, SSL information, backups status, uptime stats & you can also purchase additional services from there including SSL certificates, dead link checking, penetrations tests, ad-hoc website updates.

What kind of customer support do you offer?

You can contact us through your account - support section or by email.

You can expect a prompt response from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM (EST) Monday through Friday. After office hours and during the weekend / holidays, we offer limited support.

We always monitor our support channels and ensure that emergency cases are dealt with regardless of the regular support schedule.

This does not apply to the update-windows. We maintain your website updates regardless of the regular support schedule on 24/7 basis.

What are your usual response time and resolution time?

In general, we reply to any request we receive from our clients within 2-8 hours.  The resolution time really depends on the request received and whether we got all the information required to process the request. Usually, requests are resolved within 24-48 hours.

Can you build a website from scratch for me?

Absolutely! Our primary service is custom web development and design and you can review our portfolio here. We've been building websites and web applications of various complexity for our clients around the globe for more than 8 years now. If you have a project or custom development in mind - get in touch with us to discuss it.

Do you offer custom development?

Yes, we do. We've been doing custom development, various integrations, and projects of various complexity for the past 8 years and have a multi-disciplined, talented team that is ready to take on new challenges. We will be happy to discuss your project in detail - just get in touch with us.

What's your availability for addressing emergency issues?

Our team is distributed, and we work from around the globe! Our head office and core-team is located in Toronto, Canada, while some of our employees are international and work remotely. 

Rest assured, our monitoring tools keep an eye on your website 24/7 and if something happens - it alerts our team immediately. Having a distributed team allows us to immediately react to such events at whatever time of day or night this happens.

Are major core version updates included in the monthly service for CraftCMS?

If your website’s code and all the plugins are 100% compatible, we will perform the upgrade to the next major version (e.g. CraftCMS v3.x -> v4.x). However, if you have custom plugins or a major version upgrade fails - we would have to revert the site to the backup created right before the update and then evaluate the required changes. Once that’s done, we will present you with the quote for a major version upgrade.