In 2018, security on your website is a big deal. One security measure you may have heard of is “security by obscurity” or SBO for short. While it may sound like a great idea, the results will likely leave you frustrated. Security by obscurity – while sounding logical – is actually a huge vulnerability.

SBO can be traced as far back as Alfred Charles Hobbs, who in 1851 (yes, 167 years ago) demonstrated and spoke of the issue as it applies to padlocks of the time. The idea behind SBO (again, yes logical) is that if the bad guys (hackers) don’t know how your systems are laid out, they’ll never be able to hack them. Many programmers, including yours truly, have used this technique only to see it fail… miserably. Hackers and spammers are just simply too good. Yes, SBO might keep the rookies out, but anyone who has been at it a while will still get through.

Thankfully, with WordPress (my content management system – CMS – of choice), there are a couple of great ways to provide security to your site. One way is with the plugin WordFence. We talked about WordFence in a recent blog about brute force attacks. You can easily install and set up the plugin to block unnecessary logins in and scan your site for vulnerabilities.

Another great feature of WordPress is that the core system (and themes and plugins) are updated fairly often; in fact, we just had another big update this week. While the hackers do have access to the new code, they will need to dig into it and start working up a new way to hack into sites all over again. Of course, this is only a benefit if you keep your site regularly updated. If you have Security Essentials Hosting from Full Scope Creative, no worries – we handle all those for you.

While it sounds logical, security by obscurity will eventually lead to headaches for your site. It’s been proven wrong for at least 167 years thanks to Alfred Charles Hobbs. Security is a big deal, obviously, for any website. Take the time and make sure you use the best security measures available for your site.