Website Security Audit Salford

Security questions Salford businesses get asked

Start-ups coming out of the University of Salford are often asked about security sooner than they expect: by an investor’s adviser, a large customer’s supplier form or a cyber insurance application. “Who can log in to your website?” is hard to answer honestly when the site was assembled in a rush.

Digital and media firms around MediaCityUK have another reason. When an agency hands a finished site to a client, the client inherits whatever was left behind: test accounts, debug settings, forgotten staging copies. An independent check before handover protects both sides. Retailers near Salford Shopping Centre in Pendleton face a third risk, because checkout pages are a favourite target for injected card-skimming scripts, even when payments go through a provider.

An audit is a check and a report, not a clean-up. If your site is already hacked, you need malware removal for Salford instead, and penetration testing happens only when agreed in writing. The full method is on our website security audit Manchester page.

How we carry out the check from just over the river

The audit itself is remote, using a temporary admin account and read-only hosting access where your host offers it, arranged by phone, email or WhatsApp. Nothing heavy runs against the live site without your agreement, and you can switch our access off the day the report lands.

Some Salford clients prefer the results in person. Our Cheetham Hill office is roughly 10 to 20 minutes by road depending on where you are and the traffic, so you can come to M8, or we can visit your office by arrangement.

Our audit sequence

Deliverables at the end

• A risk-ranked written report that non-technical readers can follow
• A one-page summary suitable for an investor, insurer or client
• Exposed files, staging sites and subdomains we found, with fixes
• Vulnerable or abandoned plugins and themes, with replacements suggested
• An account list showing who holds admin rights and why
• Server, TLS and security header findings
• An optional fixed quote to put everything right

Leftovers we look for before a site launches or changes hands

On new or newly handed-over sites, most findings are things left behind during the build:

• WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY switched on, printing file paths and errors to visitors
• A staging copy on a subdomain, public and indexed, running older plugins than the live site
• Backup archives or a wp-config.php.bak file sitting in the public web root
• An exposed .git folder or .env file revealing code history or credentials
• Test administrator accounts with simple passwords that nobody removed
• Usernames listed openly through the REST API at /wp-json/wp/v2/users
• Payment or email API keys hard-coded into theme files

Certificate and redirect problems are put right through our SSL and HTTPS set-up, and WordPress maintenance in Salford keeps fixes in place once the audit is done.

Frequently asked questions

Audits for Eccles, Prestwich and Stretford businesses

The same service is available nearby through website security audit Eccles, Prestwich and Stretford. Read the Manchester audit page for more detail, or see our services in Salford for everything else we do locally.

Planning a launch, a handover or an insurance renewal? Request an audit quote, speak to us on 0161 315 1151 or WhatsApp the site address to 07737 902425.