Website Defacement Monitoring Tools: Your Guide for Better Security

Website defacement is a growing threat for small to medium-sized businesses since it damages your business reputation. How to prevent it? In this post, you will learn about the best tools, services and software to monitor and fight against website defamation.

What is Website Defacement?

Website defacement is a cyberattack that changes the visual representation of a web page or a website. As the word deface explains, cybercriminals change the images or text on the compromised web page or website. It is comparable to drawing graffiti without permission; it only happens virtually on websites.

For instance, the public-facing website of Lenovo — the top personal computer vendor in market share from 2013 to this day — was defaced in 2015. “Its main website was defaced, redirecting users to a slideshow of pictures of bored-looking teens (apparently the hackers themselves) set to the song Breaking Free from High School Musical. Clicking on the slideshow sends users to the Twitter account of hacking collective the Lizard Squad,” wrote The Guardian.

In another case, the Twitter account of Jack Dorsey — CEO and co-founder of Twitter — was defaced in August 2019. “Offensive messages - some posted directly by the @jack account, and others retweeted from other accounts - used the n-word and made anti-Semitic comments referencing the Holocaust. One post suggested there was a bomb at the social media company’s headquarters,” wrote BBC.

If you are a website admin or owner, website defacement can be a serious threat. After all, your site’s visitors will have a bad experience while visiting a defaced website. Also, you cannot fix or respond to the defacement issue until you are viewing the page as it gets changed or defaced, making it even worse.

In this guide, you will find the solution to the website defacement problem using the best security tools. It is an easy and elegant solution that helps you secure your social media profiles or websites from website defacement. These tools automate the task of monitoring your web pages or websites for defacement issues and instantly notify you when they find unauthorized changes.

1. Visualping

Visualping is a defacement monitoring tool that helps you get alerts whenever a web page or website is changed. It’s one of the easiest website change detectors and monitoring tools, and is capable of detecting textual as well as visual changes. Also, it offers various advanced features to monitor password-protected websites, alert you based on keywords on the web page, monitor the pages on desktop or mobile, etc.

Fortunately, it avails a generous free plan, which provides you 2 checks per day or 65 checks per month with no other limitations, unlike its competitors. Its other plans provide more checks per day or month, per your requirements. It also avails a pay-per-use plan, which is great if you have flexible requirements.

Moreover, it is straightforward to start monitoring websites using Visualping. You can follow the below-given steps to monitor a web page using Visualping:

• Step 1: Open Visualping in your browser: visualping.io
• Step 2: Enter the website link in the text box and press GO.
• Step 3: Optionally, select the area of the web page to monitor.
• Step 4: Enter your email address under Send notifications to.
• Step 5: Choose a frequency under Check every: 1 hr, 3 hrs, etc.
• Step 6: Then, click the button at the bottom to set the monitor.
• Step 7: If asked, open your inbox and verify your email address.

2. StatusCake

StatusCake is a website uptime and performance monitoring service, which allows you to keep an eye on your websites. There can be times when visitors cannot reach your website, StatusCake helps you detect and resolve those bad situations. It alerts you whenever your website is down (not reachable).

In its free plan, it provides uptime tests at 5-minute intervals with root cause analysis as well as page speed tests at 1-day intervals. Its paid plans offer more benefits including SSL monitoring, server monitoring, domain monitoring, and alerts and reports such as SMS credits and templatable email messages.

That said, here’s how you can monitor your site’s uptime via StatusCake:

• Step 1: Open this link in your browser: app.statuscake.com
• Step 2: Click the link named Create an account (above Email).
• Step 3: Type your email and password; click Create My Account.
• Step 4: Enter your website’s address in the box named Full URL.
• Step 5: Click under Contact Groups, pick Default Contact Group.
• Step 6: Configure any other options you think of as beneficial.
• Step 7: When done, click the button at the bottom: Save Now.

Visualping and StatusCake work together to provide a monitoring system that checks for website defacement, website uptime, and other critical aspects of a live website. They are simple to use and combinedly provide all the features to monitor your websites. Moreover, their free plans provide just the required features to monitor a website, allowing you to start monitoring on budget.