What Does cPGuard Do for Website Security?

Proactive Website Security Before Something Goes Wrong

What does cPGuard do for website security? Quite a bit more than simply scan a WordPress website for malware. It gives us an always-on layer of security that watches the website, hosting account, files, database, and traffic coming into the site.

That is one of the big reasons we love cPGuard at Full Scope Creative.

We believe good website security should be proactive. The worst time to decide how to protect a website is after it has been attacked.

Once attacked, you will be dealing with downtime, lost sales, compromised data, or information that was stolen. There can be damage to your reputation – personally and of the business.

We would much rather have the tools in place before we need them.

That is why cPGuard is included with our Security Max hosting plan, which is $1,150 per year and the plan we recommend for most small businesses.

cPGuard Is Always Scanning for Malware

One of the main jobs cPGuard has is looking for malware.

The scanner is always running in the background and checking for files that should not be there or files that are acting like malware. It doesn’t wait for someone at Full Scope Creative to remember to push a button and start a scan.

cPGuard doesn’t take weekends off. It doesn’t celebrate holidays. It doesn’t get tired.

It keeps watching.

We can also run a malware scan manually whenever we want. If we see something that concerns us or simply want to take another look at an account, we can tell cPGuard to scan it again.

What Happens When cPGuard Finds Malware?

Finding malware is good. Knowing what to do with it is even better.

If cPGuard knows a file is malware, it can clean or remove the infected file. In other cases, it may quarantine a suspicious file so it cannot keep causing problems while Full Scope Creative reviews it.

That’s an important part of how we use cPGuard.

The business owner doesn’t receive an email asking them to decide if some strangely named PHP file belongs in a folder they have never heard of.

We get that job.

If cPGuard needs a human to make the call, we’ll review the file and determine what needs to happen next.

A Website Is More Than Just WordPress

There are several good WordPress security plugins available. We have used tools such as Wordfence and All In One WP Security ourselves.

They can add useful security to WordPress.

The difference with cPGuard is where it works.

cPGuard runs at the server level. It isn’t another plugin installed inside WordPress.

That matters because your website is more than the WordPress files you see when you log into the dashboard. There is a database, FTP accounts, cron jobs, email accounts in some cases, and many other files inside the hosting account.

cPGuard can watch more of that environment.

There is another benefit too. Every WordPress plugin adds something else to the site. Too many plugins can add extra work for WordPress and create more things that need updates.

A WordPress security plugin can also potentially be disabled if an attacker gains enough access to WordPress. cPGuard is running outside of WordPress at the server level.

That gives us another layer of protection.

cPGuard Also Scans the Database

Malware doesn’t always hide inside a website file.

It can get into the database too.

The database is where WordPress stores the information to build and run the website. That can be page content, settings, user information, and more.

cPGuard includes database scanning so it isn’t only checking the normal files on the website. It can look for problems there too.

Again, the goal is to protect more of the whole website and hosting account instead of only one part of it.

cPGuard Helps With Serious Plugin Security Problems

WordPress plugins have updates to run all the time. An update might be adding a feature or fixing a small bug.

An update sometimes fixes a serious security problem.

You may hear those problems called CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures). That is really just a way of identifying known security problems in software.

We have cPGuard configured to help protect against severe vulnerabilities instead of simply waiting for our normal update schedule.

That gives us another way to react quickly when a serious security problem is found.

cPGuard Can Watch for Unauthorized Cron Jobs

A cron job is basically an automatic task that is scheduled to run on a server.

There are plenty of normal reasons for a website to use them.

The problem is that attackers can use them too. A bad cron job could be used to bring malware back after infected files have already been removed.

cPGuard can help look for unauthorized cron jobs that may be part of an infection.

This isn’t something a business owner should need to think about.

We’d like to keep it that way.

The Firewall Helps Stop Bad Traffic

cPGuard also includes firewall protection.

Think of the firewall like a security guard standing at the door. Lots of traffic wants to reach your website every day. Most of it is normal visitors, search engines, and other services that should be there.

Some of it isn’t.

The firewall helps identify and stop suspicious traffic before it can get farther into the website.

It can also help filter bad bots and scrapers. These automated tools can crawl websites looking to copy content, collect data, attack login pages, or use website information for things it was never intended for.

It is another layer between your website and someone trying to cause problems.

cPGuard Can Watch Outgoing Email Too

Some of our clients still use email accounts that are hosted through cPanel.

We recommend Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for business email, but cPanel email is still used by many businesses.

For those accounts, cPGuard can monitor for unusual outgoing spam.

If an email account is compromised, attackers can use it to send spam emails. A lot of them.

Catching that activity helps stop the infection before thousands of unwanted emails are sent from the business’s account.

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have security features for email, so this part of cPGuard is more for accounts where the email is hosted on our server.

What Happens After an Attack?

Stopping the malware is the first step to cleaning up an attack.

If someone got into the account, we need to know what else may have been touched.

That may mean changing cPanel passwords and FTP passwords. We can review WordPress users and remove accounts that shouldn’t be there. We may change email passwords, database passwords, or create a completely new database user.

In some situations, we may even move the website to a new database just to be safe.

cPGuard gives us the malware protection and cleanup tools. Full Scope Creative handles the work around it to make sure everything is buttoned down again.

With Security Max hosting, that cleanup and remediation work is included.

Proactive Website Security Matters

A lot of website security is reactive.

The website gets hacked. Then someone looks for malware.

The website goes down. Then someone starts checking what happened.

Customer information gets exposed. Then passwords start getting changed.

We want to work the other way around.

Keep WordPress updated. Watch for security problems. Scan for malware. Run a firewall. Look at the database. Watch suspicious activity. Have cleanup tools ready before an infection ever happens.

Attacks are changing too. Attackers now have access to AI and other tools that can help automate and speed up parts of an attack. Security tools are changing right along with them.

There will never be one button we can push that guarantees a website can never be attacked.

The goal is to keep adding good layers of protection and stay ahead of as many problems as we can.

Why We Love cPGuard

We love cPGuard because it gives us more tools to be proactive.

It watches the website even when nobody at Full Scope Creative is sitting in front of a computer. It scans for malware, checks the databases, protects against vulnerable software, watches the traffic, and provides the cleanup tools when something still manages to get through.

Most importantly, our clients don’t have to manage it.

We get the alerts. We review the files. We make the security decisions. We handle the cleanup.

That is why cPGuard is included in our Security Max hosting plan and why Security Max is the hosting plan we recommend most often.

I wouldn’t want the Full Scope Creative website running without this level of proactive security. We don’t think our clients should have to either.