WordPress
Due to WordPress’ huge popularity and open source technology, hackers find it easy to target sites built with it. WordPress is constantly fixing bugs and security breaches and vulnerabilities, then pushing new versions out for the protection of websites built with it’s platform. WordPress is one of the easiest platforms to maintain when using well supported plugins and themes.
Plugins and Themes
With open source technology comes many ways to adapt your website to suit your specific needs. We do this through plugins and themes, but even they can come with risk. Updates to themes and plugins are released with bug fixes and security vulnerability patches just like wordpress. Keeping your plugins and themes up to date can be even more important than your wordpress version. Most Plugins and themes are built by all different developers with a huge range of experience and security knowledge. Using well supported and managed plugins and themes means that your site is more protected.
What are the Impacts of not keeping up to date?
The Impacts can be huge. That all depends on how much your website is part of your business. Here a few impacts:
Loss of income – This is one of the biggest issues with site down time. An eCommerce website selling all of their products online can miss huge amounts of income. A one page website with little traffic may not, but then why isn’t your website working for you? Even when you are not selling online, access to your site for information can impact income.
Loss of Data – If your site is compromised there is a good chance that you may need to roll back to a backup before the issue started. That means loss of data from form entries, orders, etc.
Brand Sentiment – If your website goes down for a long period of time or your hack is visible to users, they will lose faith in your brand. A breach that results in credit card fraud or stolen user data will also have a big impact on your brand.
Cost – The costs involved in coming back from a security breach or hack can be quite big. Some sites can be restored easily and some not.
Other ways to protect your site?
Regular backups mean you have a recent roll back point to restore if needed.
Regular security scans will allow you to find vulnerabilities before they become an issue and malware if you are affected.
Implement a firewall that helps to stop the hack before it happens. This will protect for brute force attacks and other ways that hackers attempt to access your site.
2 factor authentication for high level users.
