One of the central features of Watchful is the ability to monitor critical files in your Joomla web site. Modifications to these files might indicate the presence of an intruder or unauthorized access. Watchful can now scan Joomla sites for malware.

This is the second part in a 3-part series on the all-new Watchful. See also part 1 — Joomla upgrades — and part 3 — usability.

Security improvements

In the latest release of the Watchful Client, we have added 256-bit encryption so that communications between your remote sites and your Watchful dashboard are safe even if intercepted by unauthorized third-parties.

The latest Watchful client is required for this additional security — as well as the other new features — so please update all your sites as soon as possible from the Watchful Dashboard or directly on the site via the standard Joomla installer.

Joomla malware scan

In addition to improved security of the Watchful system, we’ve also added an exciting new feature — the ability to scan your Joomla site for malware!

We’ve partnered with malware and security experts Sucuri to provide an integrated solution for detecting malware.

To start a scan from your Dashboard, select the wrench icon to display the available tools and select Malware Scan.

You can also scan from your site details page as shown in the screenshot above.

Scans take between 10 and 60 seconds (depending on the site/server) and once complete the results will be displayed. 

If all goes well, you’ll see a great result as shown below. However, if malware has been detected, you’ll want to start investigating and cleaning up the site. 

While many of our customers can clean their own infected sites — we even have some basic guidelines in our knowledge base — the malware removal process can be a long, tedious and often fraught with numerous false-positives. 

Thus, we recommend that sites infected by malware should be cleaned by experts like Sucuri.

In the next article, we’ll examine the usability changes we implemented in the new Watchful Dashboard.

Update, 2021-08-11: The Sucuri tools are now integrated into the Vulnerability Scan.

Looking for more security resources for Joomla?

Check out our comprehensive list of resources for maintaining a secure Joomla website.