I have had two WordPress blogs hacked into in the past. That was at a time when I was doing very little internet marketing, and until I found time to address the situation (months later), these sites were penalised in the search engines. They were not removed, but the rankings were reduced.
Backing up your site regularly helps in securing from fix wordpress malware protection hackers. You have to keep a copy of your files hide away in system so you can be certain of your database. This makes you a protected backup files that serves you in times of down is the machine. Hackers are less likely to steal from a secured back up system.
There are ways to pull this off, and many involve re-establishing much more and databases and FTPing files, exporting and copying. Some of them are very complex, so it is important that you select the right one. Then you might want to check into using a plugin for WordPress backups, official statement if you are not of the persuasion.
This is quite useful plugin, protecting you against brute-force password-crack attacks. It keeps track of the IP address of every login attempt. You can configure the plugin to disable login attempts for a range of IP addresses when a certain number of attempts is reached.
You may extend the plugin features with premium plugins like: Amazon S3 plugin, Members only plugin, DropShop etc.. I think you can use it for free and this plugin is a good option.
Don't use wp_ as a prefix for your own databases. Web hosting providers are currently eliminating that default now but if yours doesn't, fix wp_ to anything but that.