Key takeaways:
- Website attacks can affect more than your site itself, potentially harming customer trust, search visibility, and business operations if left unchecked.
- cWatch is a cloud-based website security solution that helps monitor, protect, and recover websites from online threats.
- cWatch combines continuous monitoring, malware detection, and other security tools to help identify and address threats before they become costly crises.
Many businesses today rely on their websites to attract customers, generate revenue, and build credibility online. But as websites become more important, they also become attractive targets for cybercriminals. Microsoft alone reported 600 million cyberattacks daily from 2023 to 2024. And according to IBM’s 2026 Report, the global average cost of a data breach reached a record $4.99 million. Together, these figures highlight how costly and disruptive cybersecurity incidents can be for businesses of all sizes.
Even a seemingly minor website vulnerability can create an entry point for attackers. If exploited, these weaknesses can lead to malware infections, website downtime, search engine blacklisting, or the exposure of sensitive information. For SMBs and first-time website owners, taking a proactive approach to website security is often easier and less costly than recovering from an attack.
One way to strengthen your defenses is with cWatch, which helps monitor your website, detect threats, and protect against common cyber risks. Let’s take a closer look at what cWatch is, how it works, and how it can help keep your website secure.
What is cWatch?
cWatch is a cloud-based web application security service designed to help protect websites from malware and other online threats. It helps you take a proactive approach to website security by continuously monitoring your website and identifying potential risks before they become serious security incidents.
Regardless of its size, your website faces security risks around the clock. cWatch helps reduce the risks associated with outdated software and hidden security gaps through continuous website monitoring, malware detection, blacklist monitoring, and web application firewall (WAF) protection.
At its core, cWatch is built to help websites remain secure, available, and trusted. Below, we’ll explore the key features that make that possible.
Protect your website with cWatch
Online threats can happen at any time. cWatch helps monitor your website, detect risks early, and maintain a secure experience for your visitors.
cWatch security features
cWatch combines several security tools that work together to help protect websites from common cybersecurity risks. Each feature addresses a specific aspect of website security, from identifying malicious activity to helping websites recover from security incidents.
Key cWatch features include:
- Malware detection and removal
- Web application firewall (WAF)
- Website blacklist monitoring
- One-click recovery
- Content delivery network (CDN) and dynamic caching
Malware detection and removal
Malware can enter a website through common security weaknesses such as outdated software, vulnerable plugins, weak login credentials, and compromised user accounts. Because many infections are not immediately visible, you may not realize your site has been compromised. Effective malware detection helps uncover hidden threats and supports a faster response when suspicious activity is detected.
cWatch helps protect websites through:
- Continuous malware scanning: Regularly scans your website for suspicious files, malicious code, and known indicators of compromise to support early threat detection.
- Automatic malware removal: Helps remove detected malware quickly, reducing the time threats remain active and supporting faster attack mitigation.
- Emergency malware cleanup: For websites that have already been compromised, cWatch 911 provides a one-time malware cleanup and recovery service to help restore normal website operations.
If you’re concerned about malware on your website, check out our guide on how to detect malware and remove it from your website for practical tips on malware detection, removal, and website protection.
Web application firewall (WAF)
WAF is the security layer that sits between your website and incoming website traffic. In cWatch, the WAF helps inspect incoming requests and filter out suspicious activity before it reaches your website.
cWatch’s WAF helps strengthen website security by:
- Filtering incoming traffic: Examines incoming website traffic and helps distinguish legitimate visitors from potentially malicious requests before they reach your website
- Blocking common attack methods: Helps prevent attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) that target weaknesses in web applications
- Reducing unwanted bot activity: Limits malicious bot traffic that can consume resources, interfere with performance, or attempt unauthorized access
- Adding an extra layer of protection: Creates a security barrier between your website and potential attackers to help reduce exposure to common web-based threats
While a WAF is an important security layer, it’s not designed to defend against every type of cyber threat. It works best alongside other security features to provide more comprehensive website protection.
Website blacklist monitoring
Website blacklisting occurs when search engines, web browsers, or security providers flag a website for suspicious and malicious activity. If your website is blacklisted, it may lose visibility in search results and display security warnings to visitors. This can drive away potential customers, reduce traffic, and damage trust in your business.
cWatch helps website owners stay informed by continuously monitoring blacklist status and security reputation. It provides:
- Blacklist status monitoring: Regularly checks whether your website has been flagged by major security and reputation services
- Immediate alerts: Notifies you when blacklist-related issues are detected so you can take action quickly
- Reputation protection: Helps website owners maintain customer trust and reduce the risk of security warnings that can discourage visitors from accessing their sites
For a deeper understanding of blacklisting and recovery, read our guides on IP blacklist removal and URL blacklists.
One-click recovery
cWatch includes one-click recovery tools that help you restore your website after a security incident. You can use recovery tools to simplify the restoration process, reduce downtime, and help protect sensitive data following a compromise.
One-click recovery is useful when:
- Malware compromises website files: Helps restore website functionality after malicious code has been detected and removed
- Website changes cause unexpected issues: Provides a faster path to recovery when unexpected issues occur during website updates and maintenance
- Security incidents disrupt normal operations: Helps businesses get their websites back online with minimal interruption to visitors and customers
One-click recovery instantly puts website owners in a better position to restore website functionality and resume business operations. This simplifies website recovery for businesses without dedicated technical teams.
Content delivery network and dynamic caching
A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of servers that stores and delivers website content from locations closer to your visitors. In addition to improving website performance, a CDN can strengthen website resilience by distributing traffic across multiple servers rather than relying on a single origin server.
Distributing traffic across different servers alleviates pressure on the origin server, keeping websites robust during traffic surges and reducing the impact of disruptive, high-volume attacks, such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, that attempt to overwhelm website resources.
Available on advanced cWatch plans, CDN and dynamic caching work together to help websites remain responsive while adding another layer of support for overall website protection.
Together, they contribute to both website performance and resilience through the following capabilities:
- Faster content delivery: Serves website content from servers closer to visitors, helping pages load more quickly and consistently.
- Improved website performance: Reduces the workload on your origin server by distributing traffic across multiple locations.
- Better traffic handling: Helps websites remain stable during traffic spikes by spreading requests across the CDN network.
- Additional support for website security: Works alongside cWatch’s other security features to help manage traffic more effectively and strengthen overall website resilience.
Why does your website need cWatch?
As websites become more important to business success, the impact of a security incident extends far beyond the technology. A single compromise can affect customer trust, search visibility, day-to-day operations, and revenue. cWatch helps businesses reduce these risks by providing benefits that extend beyond website security alone:
- Stronger visitor trust: Visitors are more likely to engage with websites that feel safe and reliable. By helping protect against cyberattacks, cWatch facilitates a trustworthy experience for your customers.
- Reduced financial and legal risk: Security incidents can lead to costly downtime, data recovery expenses, lost revenue, and potential compliance concerns when customer information is involved. cWatch helps businesses strengthen their security and compliance posture and support more effective incident management.
- Improved SEO resilience: Search engines may penalize websites that are infected with malware or flagged for suspicious activity. Through malware detection, malware removal, and blacklist monitoring, cWatch helps you identify issues that could affect search visibility, protecting the organic traffic and rankings you’ve worked hard to build.
- Protection against human error: Not every security issue is caused by sophisticated attacks. Simple mistakes, such as weak passwords or configuration errors, can create vulnerabilities. cWatch helps identify and address these risks, providing an extra layer of protection when human oversight occurs.
As a low-maintenance solution, cWatch helps website owners spend less time managing security and more time running their businesses. Combined with automated security tools and human expertise when additional support is needed, it helps create a safer online environment for both website owners and visitors.
What threats does cWatch protect your website from?
Websites face a wide range of security threats, from malware infections to automated attacks that can disrupt your online business. Through its layered approach to website security, cWatch helps businesses defend against several common cyber threats, including:
- Malware: Malware refers to malicious software or malicious code commonly designed to steal information or gain unauthorized access. cWatch helps combat malware through continuous scanning, malware detection, automatic malware removal, and emergency cleanup services.
- Injections (SQL injection and black-hat SEO injections): Injection attacks occur when hackers insert malicious commands or code into a vulnerable website. These attacks can manipulate databases, redirect visitors, or inject unauthorized content into web pages. cWatch’s WAF helps identify and block suspicious requests that attempt to exploit these vulnerabilities.
- Cross-site scripting (XSS): XSS attacks involve injecting malicious scripts into legitimate web pages, potentially affecting both website owners and visitors. cWatch’s WAF helps detect and filter malicious requests associated with common XSS attempts.
- Bots: While some bots are legitimate, malicious bots may attempt credential stuffing, content scraping, spam submission, or vulnerability scanning. cWatch helps filter unwanted bot traffic and reduce automated activity that can affect website performance and security.
- DDoS attacks: Distributed denial-of-service attacks attempt to overwhelm websites with excessive traffic to make them unavailable to legitimate visitors. Through its WAF and CDN capabilities, cWatch helps keep websites accessible during traffic spikes and reduce the impact of certain high-volume DDoS attacks.
- Search engine blacklisting and phishing lures: Malware, compromised pages, and phishing content can result in websites being flagged by search engines. cWatch helps monitor blacklist status, providing visibility into issues that could affect website reputation and search visibility.
cWatch pricing and plans on Network Solutions
cWatch’s comprehensive website security solution is available directly through Network Solutions. Setup is simple and integrates with your hosting environment, eliminating the need for complex manual configuration. Once activated, cWatch begins monitoring and protecting your website through a range of security capabilities designed to help identify threats and maintain website security.
Whether you’re looking for continuous website protection, advanced security controls, or emergency malware cleanup, there’s a security solution designed for different website security needs. The following plans provide varying levels of protection, helping you choose the coverage that best fits your websites and risk profile.
Plans | cWatch Premium | cWatch Defend | cWatch 911 |
|---|---|---|---|
Features |
|
|
|
cWatch Premium
cWatch Premium is the entry-level plan designed for everyday website protection. It includes daily website scans, automatic malware removal, blacklist monitoring, a website trust seal, and a WAF.
It’s a great fit for blogs, portfolio websites, and small business websites that want ongoing security without adding complexity. If you’re just getting started and want a solid foundation against common online threats, this plan covers the essentials.
cWatch Defend
cWatch Defend is a more advanced plan built for growing websites and online stores. It includes everything needed for stronger protection, including advanced firewall capabilities, protection against SQL injection and XSS, automatic CMS vulnerability patching, and CDN-powered performance enhancements.
This plan is ideal if your website handles customer data, processes transactions, or receives regular, massive traffic. It offers additional protection and performance features without requiring you to manage website security yourself.
cWatch 911
cWatch 911 is a one-time recovery service for websites that have already been compromised. It includes malware removal, unlimited page scanning, and immediate recovery assistance to help restore website functionality as quickly as possible.
If your website has been infected with malware, flagged for suspicious activity, or taken offline by a security incident, cWatch 911 provides a fast path to recovery. It’s a practical option when you need immediate help securing your website and getting back online.
cWatch vs SSL certificates vs Xcitium Backup
Website security involves several layers of protection, which is why different security products exist to address different needs. At Network Solutions, these include cWatch, SSL certificates, and Xcitium Backup. While each solution serves a different purpose, they work together to create a more complete approach to website security.
But to better understand how these solutions differ, let’s examine the table below, which compares their primary functions and benefits:
Feature | cWatch | SSL certificate | Xcitium Backup |
|---|---|---|---|
Focus & benefit | Website security and threat protection | Encrypts data between visitors and your website | Creates backups for website recovery |
Protection offered | Helps identify and mitigate malware, attacks, suspicious activity, and website vulnerabilities | Protects data in transit from interception | Protects website files and data through backup copies |
SSL encryption | No | Yes | No |
Pricing | Monthly or one-time plans depending on coverage | Varies by certificate type; free with most hosting plans | Subscription-based backup service |
Do you need it? | Yes, if you want proactive website protection and threat management | Yes, if you collect or transmit visitor information | Yes, if you want a reliable way to restore website data after unexpected issues |
Protect customer data with HTTPS encryption
While cWatch helps protect your website from threats, SSL helps secure the information shared between your website and its visitors.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. cWatch can automatically detect and remove malware from your website. It also continuously scans for malicious code and other security threats, helping reduce the need for manual cleanup.
Yes. cWatch helps protect websites through tools such as malware scanning, WAF protection, blacklist monitoring, and vulnerability monitoring. Together, these features help reduce the risk of common website attacks and other security incidents.
Yes. An SSL certificate only encrypts data exchanged between your website and visitors and doesn’t protect your website from malware, SQL injection, and other online threats the way cWatch does. For stronger protection, it’s best to use both.
Absolutely. In fact, they complement each other. SSL helps secure sensitive data in transit, while cWatch helps monitor, protect, and recover your website from security threats. Together, they provide more complete website protection.
Without website security tools like cWatch, your website may be more vulnerable to malware, cyberattacks, website blacklisting, downtime, and data loss. Such incidents can disrupt your online business, with consequences that extend beyond lost revenue.
cWatch helps protect websites through continuous monitoring, malware detection and removal, WAF protection, blacklist monitoring, recovery tools, and other security features designed to help websites be more resilient to cyberattacks.
For domains registered with Network Solutions, log in to your account, select Security from the left-side menu, and choose Add Website Security. Select the cWatch plan you want to use and follow the on-screen checkout process to complete your purchase.
If you’re registering a new domain or purchasing a hosting plan, you can also add cWatch during the checkout process as a security add-on. Once activated, you can access cWatch from your Account Dashboard > Security to manage your website’s security settings.
Strengthen your website security with cWatch
Cyber threats continue to evolve, making website security an essential part of running an online business. Building a secure website requires ongoing attention, proactive monitoring, and the right tools to address new security challenges as they emerge.
cWatch helps simplify website security by combining threat detection, malware removal, website monitoring, and recovery tools into a single solution. With continuous protection working in the background, you can spend less time worrying about security issues and more time growing your business and serving your customers.
Be proactive against threats and get started with cWatch today! Explore cWatch website security plans and choose the level of protection that fits your business needs.
