What to Do When Your Website Is Hacked

Do you do most of your business online? It’s not surprising given the opportunities there are for making a tidy profit and the fact that the Coronavirus has brought many people who own physical businesses to a stand-still.

But like if you have a shop you would need to protect yourself from burglaries and have a strategy in place for dealing with it, you need a plan for when your website is hacked. More and more people are worried about cybersecurity.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to respond when a malicious hacker is trying to crash your website.

1. Call in Security

You might wonder how to check if my website is hacked? As soon as you realize there’s been a hack you need to call in your security team. Don’t delay. Even if it’s the middle of the night, it’s imperative that they are kept in the loop about what is happening.

They should have some emergency technicians on duty to come in and try to wipe the hackers of the system. Time is of the utmost importance in these scenarios. The longer the hackers stay on the system the more information they can collect and the more damage they can produce.

Remember website maintenance is crucial to avoiding a hack so you need to ask yourself if your security team has done a good enough job of keeping on top of this.

2. Shut Your Network Down

As a business, your first instinct will be to keep your systems online. After all the longer you are online the more sales you are likely to make. However, the safest option is to close your system down when you know there is a hacker online.

Turn off your machines and instigate a total shutdown. Try to mitigate the damage as best you can while you wait for an expert to take you through cleaning up your system to kick out the hackers.

3. Inform Everyone: Be Honest

Covering up your hack never works and never goes down well. It means that your customers distrust you and will start to question whether they will shop with you or use your services again.

Having that conversation with them about the fact their details have been hacked will be hard but it’s better than being dishonest or trying to cover it up. This is particularly important if you have sensitive information on your clients such as information of their sexual partners like the dating site for cheaters, Ashley Madison, or browsing history.

Tell your customers as soon as possible and consult your PR and media teams—or hire a team—to carefully craft your message both to the media and to your customers or clients. This is the answer to what to do when your website is hacked or compromised. 

If Your Website is Hacked: Stay Calm at All Costs

The worst thing you can do if your website is hacked is to overreact or to panic. This can lead to rash decisions that might not play out well.

Instead, try to stop the attack as soon as you can by consulting your digital security team as soon as it takes place. But keep your strategy for dealing with it rationally and proportional.

If you are interested in learning more about what to do if your website is hacked, be sure to check out the rest of our site.