Five Free Ways to Protect Your Website

January 20, 2026

Most people assume website security is expensive or complicated, but the truth is that you can make your site a lot safer without spending a single dollar. A handful of simple habits and free tools can go a long way toward keeping hackers, bots, and random glitches from ruining your day.

Whether you’re running a small business site or just keeping a personal project online, these five steps are easy wins that help you stay ahead of trouble.

1. Add a Free Website Firewall

Think of this as putting a bouncer at the door of your website. A free firewall filters out sketchy traffic, blocks bots, and stops a lot of bad behavior before it ever reaches your server. It’s one of those “set it and forget it” protections that quietly does a ton of work in the background.

2. Turn On Uptime Monitoring

If your site goes down, you want to know right away — not when a customer messages you saying something’s broken. Free uptime monitors check your site every few minutes and send you an alert if it stops responding. It’s a simple way to catch issues early instead of discovering them hours later.

3. Use Multi‑Factor Authentication

Your website is only as secure as the accounts connected to it. Hosting logins, admin dashboards, domain settings — all of these are prime targets. Turning on multi‑factor authentication adds a second step to the login process, which makes it dramatically harder for anyone to break in, even if they somehow get your password.

4. Run a Free Malware Scan

Even well‑maintained sites can pick up junk over time. A free malware scanner can check your files, look for suspicious changes, and warn you if something doesn’t look right. It’s basically a quick health check for your website, and it’s worth doing regularly.

5. Make Sure You Have Automatic Backups

Backups are the safety net everyone hopes they never need — but when something goes wrong, they’re priceless. Many hosting companies offer free backups, and there are also free tools that can handle it for you. If your site ever gets hacked or corrupted, having a recent backup can save you hours of stress.

If you’re not sure where to start, I can help you figure out which of these protections you already have in place and which ones would make the biggest difference.

Layer Eight IT, LLC