Improved insurance website security: access restriction and user roles
WordPress is the most popular and widespread website content management platform on the market, with a market share estimated by some to be over 60%. Website owners (or those responsible for keeping their WordPress sites secure) can and should manage user access to tasks like writing and editing, creating pages. Category creation, comment moderation, plugin and theme management, user management, by assigning specific roles to all users.
WordPress predefined functions:
- super administrator
- Administrator
- Editor
- Author
- Taxpayer
- Subscriber
Role definitions
- Super Admin – Allows access to all features and administration of the entire site. This feature should be severely limited as it is the most powerful and allows the user to make major changes to the site.
- Admin – Not as powerful as Super Admin, but you still have access to all the admin features within a single website.
- Editor: Allows users to publish and manage posts, including posts from other users.
- Author: Allows the user to publish and manage their own posts.
- Contributor: Allows the author to write and manage their own posts, but does not allow them to publish the content.
- Subscriber: read-only access, which allows the user to review content and manage their profile.
Harnessing the power of user access helps ensure a more secure WordPress website. Let’s start by discussing roles and tasks. Each assigned user role allows you to perform a set of tasks called capabilities. There are many capabilities, some examples include publishing posts, moderating comments, and editing users. Default capabilities are pre-assigned to each role, but other capabilities can be assigned or removed, allowing the creation of custom user roles. Greater control and refinements of user roles will improve the overall security of the website and limit user errors that can cause security breaches.
Website owners can also harden their WordPress sites using permission modes. For example, permissions can specify who and what can read, write, modify, and access directories and files. This is important as WordPress may need access to write files to your wp-content directory for the site to function properly.
FTP access is another area to address to improve website security. For example, if you need an outside contractor to modify your site or customize a plugin, you may need FTP access. But you don’t have to give them full access to the root directory of your website. Limit access to the specific area they are working on, such as the theme directory. Provide support logs if needed instead of granting FTP access to logs on your site. And make sure the FTP access and password are time-limited, expiring in a week or two (the shortest duration possible).
Following these WordPress best practices will help ensure a more secure insurance agency website by employing greater user role restrictions and limiting access to the website.