Service · Infrastructure

Website Security Audit and Cleanup

A website security audit that finds the holes before somebody else does. Most small business sites are broken into by automated scanners looking for a plugin nobody updated.

Scan my website How sites get hacked

website security services by RankDrive — Finding the gap before somebody else does

The reality

How Small Business Sites Get Hacked

Almost never by a targeted attack. Four routes account for most of what we clean up.

An outdated plugin: A known vulnerability, published publicly, scanned for automatically. The fix existed before the break-in did.
A weak or reused password: One password used across hosting, email and the site. One leak elsewhere opens everything.
An abandoned account: A developer who left two years ago still has admin. Nobody removed the access because nobody kept a list.
Spam injected quietly: Pages added under query parameters, invisible on your site but indexed by Google. Owners usually find out months later from a search result.

Process

What a Website Security Audit Covers

One to two weeks for an audit and hardening pass on a typical business site.

Scan

Files, database and server checked for known malware, backdoors and injected content.

Access review

Every user account listed, with dates. Old accounts and shared logins are the most common finding on a WordPress install.

Harden

Updates applied, admin protected, file permissions corrected and unused plugins removed rather than deactivated.

Clean

Where something is already there, malware removed, backdoors closed and reinfection routes documented.

Monitor

File change alerts and uptime checks, so the next attempt is noticed the same day rather than the same quarter.

Deliverables

What You Receive

A findings report in plain language
What is exposed, what it would cost you, ranked by risk rather than listed alphabetically by a scanner.
A cleaned installation
Where malware exists, removed with the entry route documented so it does not simply return.
An access list
Every account that can log in, with a recommendation on which to remove. Usually more than the owner expected.
Monitoring configured
Alerts on file changes and downtime, reaching a person rather than sitting in a dashboard nobody opens.

Honest view

What This Does Not Cover

Three things worth being clear about.

We are not a penetration testing firm for enterprise applications. For a business website, this is the right level. For a banking platform, it is not.
No audit makes a site permanently safe. New vulnerabilities appear weekly, which is why monitoring matters more than a one-off scan.
A hacked site often loses rankings. Recovery is a separate technical job after the security one.

Most of what we find traces back to build decisions. Ongoing protection sits with managed hosting.

FAQ

Questions About a Website Security Audit

How do I know if my website is hacked?

Common signs are Google flagging the site, unfamiliar pages appearing in search results, redirects for some visitors, or sudden unexplained traffic. Query-parameter spam is the sneakiest, because the site looks normal while Google indexes pages you never created.

How much does a security audit cost?

It depends on site size and whether an infection already exists. Auditing a clean site is straightforward. Cleaning one takes longer, because finding the entry route matters more than removing what you can see.

Can you recover a hacked WordPress site?

Usually. We remove the malware, close the entry route and document how it happened. If the infection is old and backups are all compromised, a rebuild may cost less, and we say so rather than billing indefinitely.

Will a security plugin protect me?

It helps and it is not enough alone. Most breaches come from outdated software, weak passwords and forgotten admin accounts, none of which a plugin fixes. Process matters more than tools here.

How often should I check?

Continuously through monitoring, with a full audit annually or after any major change. Waiting for symptoms means finding out months late, usually from Google rather than from your own systems.

Next step

Find out what is exposed right now

If your site is already compromised, say so in the message and we will treat it as urgent.

Run a scan Report a hacked site