 So what is malware and how do you protect your website from attacks? Well, we're talking about it here on The Journey. Have you ever been in a situation where you wondered how to get rid of malware on your website? If you haven't, you're one of the lucky ones. According to statistics, 75% of small business websites are at risk for cyber attacks, which means online security is more important than ever. And as such, monitoring your website and ensuring proper security measures are in place is crucial. So in today's video, we're gonna talk about how malware finds its way to your website. We'll also cover how to identify if your website has in fact been infected. And then lastly, we'll talk about how to get rid of malware on your small business website, covering it all. So let's kick things off, Naly. What is malware and how does it infect your website? Well, malware is a pretty broad term and it refers to malicious software created and used by cyber criminals for the purposes of extorting money, stealing identities, hijacking websites, damaging software, and just other illegal activities. Malware comes in many shapes and forms such as viruses, worms, adware, spyware, Trojan, Keyloggers and more. All those just sound terrifying. But malware is usually distributed in a couple of different ways, either through phishing emails that contain suspicious links or attachments, visiting malicious websites, manipulation of source code and themes or templates, disguised in plugins, it's pretty popular on WordPress, not reputable plugins, but out of date ones, drive by downloads, brute force attacks and unfortunately so much more. So let's talk about cyber criminals. Now, cyber criminals can target your hosting company to distribute malicious files or they can target random websites as well as your own personal computer. So once you have a virus on your computer, it can easily infect your website. And unfortunately, you can unknowingly infect your website by uploading files containing malware to your site. Another way to compromise your site is by logging in while your computer has been infected with a Keylogger, thus granting access to hackers. So this all sounds pretty scary, but how do you actually identify malware? Before you really figure out how to remove malware, you need to be able to identify it. And this is not easy as it's often hidden in different files on your site. But there are some warning signs that you can be on the lookout for that can help you recognize when your site has been infected. A couple of things you can look out for is your website doesn't display any of its usual pages, instead it displays graphics signed by the hacker. This is known as website defacing. It can also be Google displays warnings that your site contains malware. They like to notify their visitors to ensure that they stay safe. Some other things to look out for, your website has been blocklisted by browsers. Also, your hosting company disabled your site, yikes. In addition to that, your website is loading slowly, also a potential sign, and your customers or clients might be complaining about the drastic increase in strange emails, oof, coming from your own domain's email address. And when you visit your site, you and your visitors are redirected to a third-party website with suspicious or usually inappropriate content. You can also see strange ads on the front of your site that just don't make sense to be there in the first place. Or you notice new and unusual files or folders. Now, once you notice one or more of these signs, there's a handful of ways that you can actually confirm your suspicions, starting with a Google Safe Browsing Site Status Report. And what it is, basically Google offers a free safe browsing site that you can use to scan your entire website for malware. And once the tool has finished the scan, it will notify you of any suspicious files and code containing malware. And if you are code savvy, you can manually inspect your site's files for malicious code. Malware is usually hidden in the HD access, PHP or WordPress core files. It could also be in just random HTML or just scripts in general. The files containing malicious code will usually have lines of code encoded in base 64 format. Basically, it's encrypted code that when you look at it, it's just a long string of characters, but unencrypted, it's doing a lot of bad stuff for your visitors. And the third option that you have for detecting malware on your site is actually GoDaddy website security. And this is a tool that offers basically a malware scan on all plans for unlimited number of pages on your site. And you also get the benefit of block listing issues, which those can be damaging to your SEO rank. You don't want that. And one big benefit of using this tool is that you don't have to go through hundreds of files manually. All right, now, if you've found your website has been infected, you're probably wondering how to actually get rid of the malware. There are two ways to remove malware from your site. You can do it manually, but keep in mind that unless you're very familiar with code, you really run the risk of not removing all the infected files. And another downside of manual removal is that it is super time consuming. When someone hacks your website, it's usually not just one file manipulated. I helped a woman with her business one time and I think it counted to 764 individual files containing malware. And that would have been a nightmare for me to clean up manually. But a better and easier way to get rid of the malware is just to use a dedicated tool, such as our GoDaddy Express malware removal or any of our plans that kind of offer that. It really does save you a ton of time and it's worth the money if you're not that expert. So what to do after a malware removal? Well, once it has been removed from your site, there are a few steps left to complete that will keep your site safe. So update your CMS, your plugins and themes to ensure that they're using the latest versions, as well as removing any potential vulnerabilities. You'll also want to implement a backup plan for your website. So you can easily restore your website at any point in time, sometime easier than just fixing the hack. Next, install an SSL certificate just to protect you and your visitors sensitive information such as logins or credit cards. But again, with any of this, continue to scan your site regularly for the malware, either do it manually or through some automated tools. It's super important to be up to date and top of mind so that when something does happen, you are right there to attack. But above all, you'll really want to change your admin passwords and really any other user that has access to your site or your control panel. Now hacked and compromised site will ultimately lead to a block listed website. And that's going to ultimately damage your reputation. It's going to cost you customers and sales. In addition to that, it ruins the brand image that you've worked so hard to build. Keeping your site safe and secure is a must. Luckily having a tool that helps get rid of malware and just prevents you from being on browser's block list and prevents future tasks is not only easy but also gives you that peace of mind. But if this video is helpful for you, make sure you give it a like and drop a comment below. And don't forget to subscribe and ring that bell so you are the first to know when our next video comes out. This is a journey.