Google Steps Up Help For Webmasters After 761,000 Hacked Websites Detected

Google has ramped up efforts to assist webmasters that have had their websites compromised by hackers. This comes after the company joined forces with the University of California for a research that found around 761,000 websites were hacked and infected with malware targeted at those sites’ visitors last year.

Webmasters are those who create and manages websites, be it for an individual or an organisation. According to Google, over 10 million internet surfers run into websites riddled with malware and online scams every week. Personal blogs and small business pages are more susceptible to being hacked and loaded with malware due to poor password security and outdated software.

Those who manage those smaller websites often don’t have the expertise to deal with security threats and breaches. Some don’t even know their websites have been compromised. Google recognised this as a major problem and has committed to helping inexperienced webmasters reclaim control of their websites. It has a stake in this as well since it owns Blogger, one of the biggest blog-publishing service.

The research Google did with the University of California was aimed at finding the best way to assist webmasters when they are faced with a compromised website. The two parties did this through trial and error to find out the best way to contact webmasters, distilling tips on cleaning up harmful content on a website and ensuring a site stays clean.

Google has since made it easier for webmasters to manage the security on their websites through its Analytics and Search Console services. It has also provided resources to guide webmasters through updating their sites’ software and adding additional authentication methods.

According to Google:

“As we work to make the web a safer place, we think it’s critical to empower webmasters and users to make good security decisions. It’s easy for the security community to be pessimistic about incident response being ‘too complex’ for victims, but as our findings demonstrate, even just starting a dialogue can significantly expedite recovery.”

You can find out more on how Google is providing security help to webmasters over at the Google Security Blog.

[Via Google Security Blog]


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