I had the opportunity to speak at WordCamp Sacramento, which holds a special place in my heart. Sacramento was my introduction to the WP Community, thanks to the amazing Jennifer Bourn. I am always happy to come back. It was great to have a fun Star Wars theme! Jose Castaneda did a fantastic job as lead organizer of the event at the Falls Event Center in Roseville. Thank you to the organizers for inviting me; I am always honored to come to WCSAC.
Here are my slides. You can copy them, you can share them, you can reuse them or parts of them for your own talk wherever you want to spread the good word about WordPress security.
A reminder:
- Use unique passwords everywhere. Use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password to manage your complicated and unique passwords.
- Use two-factor authentication everywhere, including on your WordPress site. Use time-based two-factor authentication wherever you can. Remember the horror story of the SMS sim port attack.
- Functionally isolate your WordPress site. This means to keep core functions of your business isolated in your hosting account. Don’t put 10 installations of WordPress in one cPanel. Remove plugins and themes you’re not using. Don’t try to install 70 plugins in one WordPress installation. There’s a lot we covered here, but the core principle of functional isolation will help you make good security decisions.
- Take a layered security approach. Think of security at every step of your business. Complex passwords everywhere. Secure your network, your website, your computer, and use the tools available to make it harder at every step of the hacker’s journey.
Thanks for coming to my talk! I hope it was helpful to you. You can email me at kathy {at} zant {dot} com with your feedback, suggestions and questions!.
If you’d like to see some of my previous talks, I have videos from WordCamp Miami and WordCamp Boston available.
Until next time, Sacramento! Thank you for the hospitality.
