Your website isn’t just a digital business card.
It’s where people decide whether to trust you, book you, pay you, or walk away quietly and never come back.
Other than a vague worry about “hackers,” business owners are more immediately worried about:
- Their site breaking
- Customers losing trust
- Someone messing with their content or payments
- Waking up to an email that says, “Your site has been flagged as unsafe”
Here’s the good news:
You do not need to become a cybersecurity expert to put in place basic protections for your website.
You do need to know what’s normal, what’s not, and what to do when something feels off.
Let’s talk about how website attacks actually work, how to spot them early, and what “good enough” protection looks like for most small business websites.
First: What a Website Attack Actually Looks Like (Hint: It’s Not Always Dramatic)
Website attacks are rarely personal.
They’re usually automated. Boring. Opportunistic.
Rarely is someone sitting in a dark room targeting you specifically, like in the movies.
Most attacks happen because:
- Software wasn’t updated
- A password was weak or reused
- A plugin had a known vulnerability
- No one was really watching the site
In real life, an attack might look like:
- Your site suddenly loading very slowly
- Pages redirecting to spammy or sketchy websites (often pharmaceuticals, gambling, or porn)
- Pop-ups appearing that you didn’t create
- Google warning visitors that your site may be unsafe
- Customers emailing you to say, “Hey… something weird is happening”
Behind the scenes, this often means malicious code was added to your site without your permission.
This can happen quickly. New websites are often discovered and scanned by automated bots within minutes to a few hours of going online. One study even found the first scans hitting in just a few minutes.
How to Spot an Attack Early (Before It Becomes a Bigger Problem)
You don’t always need advanced monitoring tools to notice something’s wrong.
Here are common red flags that deserve your attention:
🚩 Changes You Didn’t Make
- New pages, links, or content you don’t recognize
- Your homepage looking different for no reason
- New admin users in your website dashboard
🚩 Performance Issues
- Your site suddenly takes forever to load
- Pages randomly crash or time out
🚩 Strange Traffic or Emails
- A sudden spike in traffic from countries you don’t do business in
- Contact forms sending spam nonstop
- Emails from your hosting provider or Google about “suspicious activity”
🚩 Customer Feedback
- If a customer says something feels off, believe them. They’re often the first to notice.
What to Do Immediately If You Think Your Website Is Under Attack
Step one: Pause and breathe.
Panic makes everything harder.
Here’s a calm, practical response plan:
- Document what you’re seeing
- Take screenshots
- Write down what looks wrong and when you noticed it
- Contact the right support
- Your hosting provider is usually the best first stop
- If you work with a web designer or developer, loop them in
- Change important passwords
- Website admin accounts
- Hosting account
- Email accounts connected to the site
(Use a password manager. Please.)
- Enable multifactor authentication
- Follow professional guidance
- Your host may scan or clean the site
- They may recommend temporarily putting the site in maintenance mode
Most website attacks are fixable, especially if you catch them early and have backups.
Acting quickly matters far more than knowing the perfect technical response.
How Website Attacks Happen
Think of your website like a physical space.
- Outdated software = unlocked doors
- Weak passwords = keys under the mat
- Too many users with access = copies of keys floating everywhere
- No backups = no insurance
Common causes include:
- Not updating WordPress, plugins, or themes (use my free resource on securing WordPress sites or share it with your web developer)
- Using the same password everywhere
- Not using multifactor authentication
- Leaving old accounts active
- Installing plugins you don’t really need
- Never checking whether backups actually exist (or testing that you can restore them)
How to Prevent Website Attacks (What’s Sufficient for Most Small Businesses)
You generally do not need enterprise-level security for a typical small business website.
If your site is primarily:
- Informational
- Lead-generation focused
- Booking-based
- Service-oriented
…then the following is probably sufficient protection for most businesses.
The Non-Negotiables
- Keep Everything Updated
- Your website platform (like WordPress)
- Plugins
- Themes
Turn on automatic updates where possible.
- Use Strong, Unique Passwords
- One strong password per system
- Stored in a password manager
- No reusing. Ever.
- Enable Two-Factor Authentication
- Yes, it’s an extra step (though they continue to get easier!)
- Yes, it’s worth it.
- Limit Access
- Remove old users
- Only give admin access when absolutely necessary
- Never ever share passwords
- Have Regular Backups
- Automated
- Stored somewhere separate from your site
- Know how to restore them (or who to call)
That alone will stop a large percentage of common attacks.
You can choose hosting that includes basics like automatic backups, malware scanning, and a firewall, or work with someone who can add those for you.
When “Basic” Isn’t Enough: A Note About E-Commerce Websites
If your website:
- Processes payments directly
- Stores customer account information
- Handles sensitive personal or financial data
…you need additional protections.
This might include:
- More advanced monitoring
- A web application firewall (WAF)
- Security scanning and alerting
- Stronger hosting-level protections
- Compliance considerations depending on your industry (For example, if you process credit cards directly, your setup needs to meet payment card security rules, not just use https. If you’re not sure you want that responsibility, use trusted third‑party payment processors (Stripe, Shopify, etc.) instead of ‘rolling your own’ payments.)
This doesn’t mean your site is “unsafe.”
It means the risk profile is higher, so the safeguards need to match.
Different business. Different risks. Different needs.
What “Good Enough” Website Security Actually Means
Cybersecurity is not about being unhackable. There’s no such thing.
It’s about:
- Reducing risk
- Catching issues early
- Having a plan when something goes wrong
Most attacks fail when a business is just slightly harder to mess with.
Or, as I like to say:
You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be a pain in the ***.
The average attacker wants the low hanging fruit. Don’t make it easy for them.
One Last Thing: Security and Trust Go Hand-in-Hand
Protecting your website isn’t just about stopping bad things.
It’s also about signaling safety to the people you want there.
Things like:
- Clear contact information
- That little lock icon and https in the address bar (an SSL certificate).
- A clean, warning-free experience — no browser or Google ‘unsafe’ messages.
Those are called trust signals, and they matter more than you might think. (We’ll be talking more about those in a coming blog post.)
What to Do Next
You don’t need to overhaul everything today.
Start with one action:
- Check for updates
- Review who has access
- Confirm your backups exist
And if you want help staying ahead, without doom-scrolling security headlines, Join my newsletter.
Each week, I share:
- What’s happening in cybersecurity that actually matters
- What small business owners should do (and what they can safely ignore)
- Plain-English guidance you can use immediately
I’d love to have you join us.
