Spotlight: How a Social Media Expert Finds Website Security

With the new year upon us, it makes sense to reflect on how things have changed. Our Malware Research and Incident Response teams just published their latest report on trends in website security, and in the coming weeks we plan to write about the latest upgrades to the Sucuri dashboard.

Looking back at our website content over the past year, we started a new series of webinars, guides, and industry reports.

Two years ago we started our case study initiative. In the past year we’ve made significant improvements to the way we collect, create, and promote case studies from our customers around the world.

Sucuri Reviews

By collecting feedback and stories from our website security customers around the world, we now have a catalog of over 60 case studies from various website owners, businesses, and agencies. The pages have a fresh new look now thanks to our design and development team!

See the New Sucuri Case Studies!

When we started the initiative, we began looking for clients who were already writing reviews on their own blogs. After reading a post describing how he used Sucuri to clean up a hacked website, we contacted Mack Collier to see if we could feature him as one of our very first case studies.

Marketing Nightmare

As a speaker, author, and one of the Top 25 Social Media Marketers in the World (according to Forbes), Mack Collier cares about availability of his website. He uses it to blog about social media, promote his Amazon bestselling book, and give people a way to book him for speaking events.

With an audience of 44K followers on Twitter, Mack Collier has a large network of people who read his content and engage with him on a regular basis. One thing you never want to hear from your website visitors is that they’ve been blocked from accessing your website because it’s been labeled as dangerous.

When I was hacked, visitors were coming to my site and either being immediately redirected to a ‘spam’ site – or their browser or antivirus program was flashing up a huge warning that this site cannot be trusted! Obviously, that’s not a very good thing, so I knew I needed to get help from professionals to fix the problems on my site.

Mack’s website had been blacklisted by multiple authorities, including Google. In order to completely remove a malware warning from your site, you have to thoroughly clean your site. There can be limits and delays if you submit a review request before all malware has been removed from your site.

After confirming the problem, Mack spent a long time battling the problem on his own before getting some advice.

Seeking Recommendations

As many people involved in social media might do, Mack consulted his Twitter network for advice on how to deal with this problem.

I did some research on my own, but what really cinched using Sucuri for me was I asked my Twitter network who I should contact about removing malware. Everyone was in agreement that Sucuri was the way to go, which sold me.

Mack took this feedback and decided to try Sucuri for himself. In the end, his experience led him to produce a blog post on the subject and become one of our first official case studies.

Responsive and Attentive Customer Service

After dealing with DIY solutions, free plugins, and constant reinfections, Mack was tired of seeing his website blocked by a red warning page. As soon as he could get the malware and blacklist warning removed, the site would be reinfected. The malware campaign would redirect visitors to spam sites set up by the hackers, which triggered the blacklist warnings all over again. This went on for a long time before Mack chose to invest in a plan with Sucuri.

At this point the Mack took interest in how our team lived up to the high expectations set by his friends on social media.

What I loved about Sucuri is that they were very patient with working with me, since the attacks were coming over the weekend, they were very good about responding and addressing the issues usually within an hour or so, even on Saturdays and Sundays.

Especially in technology, it’s important that customer service takes the time to ease frustration and educate users on the problems they are seeking help with.

They did a good job of explaining to me what happened and how I can avoid it in the future. For example, previously I would only update my plugins when I saw I had notices that a dozen or more were ready to be updated. Sucuri taught me that plugins are often updated to address potential security holes! So now I update all plugins as soon as they are available and haven’t had an issue in about 18 months. Now with Sucuri I feel completely protected.

For more information on how we provide WordPress security, visit our website and chat with our Customer Happiness Team.

Read the Full Mack Collier Case Study!

If you would like to be featured as our next customer case study, email us at marketing@sucuri.net