In 2013 a worldwide brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations across almost every host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other vulnerable computers).

(WordPress often comes under attack by hackers)

In March 2014, technology sites reported that over 160,000+ WordPress web sites had been hacked.

(160,000+ WordPress sites were attacked in a massive DDoS attack in early 2014. Screenshot: Blog Defender)

According to the Cnet report,

“With some old-fashioned trickery, hackers were able to get more than 162,000 legitimate WordPress-powered Web sites to mount a distributed-denial-of-service attack against another Web site.”

(Source: cnet.com/news/ddos-attack-is-launched-from-162000-wordpress-sites)

As reported by security firm Sucuri, hackers had leveraged a flaw to attack unsuspecting WordPress websites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.

Whenever worldwide attacks happen on WordPress sites, it’s natural for website owners to start questioning just how secure WordPress is as a platform for building and running their websites.

WordPress powers millions of sites around the world, which makes it a target for hacking attempts. But do you need to be concerned about WordPress as being a secure platform for building your business web presence?

In this article, you will learn some of the main reasons why you should definitely consider choosing WordPress if you are concerned about website security.

WordPress Security Explained

Let’s start by looking at some facts …

Thousands of websites are attacked every year … not just WordPress sites!

The sheer number of attacks on websites and blogs worldwide is increasing on a daily basis, and the situation is getting worse.

You can safely assume that if your website or blog hasn’t been hacked yet, then it’s only a matter of time before someone attempts to hack into your site … regardless of the web platform you use!

Since it’s not a matter of if, but when before your website will be targeted by malicious hackers, are there any advantages that WordPress can offer you in terms of security?

Are “Open Source” Programs Safe?

Many people will often try to argue that WordPress is not a secure platform for building and running a web presence because it is a freely available open source software program.

Open source CMS programs like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are free to use and anyone has access to the underlying code.

The argument, then, goes something like this: If anyone can view the Open Source software code for WordPress, then hackers can also easily get hold of all of the code and study every single line in detail, looking for vulnerabilities in the code that can be exploited …

(It’s no longer a matter of if, but when before your website is targeted by malicious hackers … WordPress or no WordPress!)

While it’s true that WordPress is free to download and hackers can easily go through the code looking for security vulnerabilities and weaknesses (hackers can do the same with any software application), the fact that WordPress is a free, open-source software platform actually makes it a whole lot more secure in several ways.

The reason for this is that WordPress is supported by a large community consisting of thousands of people such as software programmers, plugin developers and theme designers who are constantly working to help improve the program and make WordPress more secure …

(The WordPress software platform is built, maintained and updated by a community of thousands of web developers around the world. Image source: WordPress.org)

WordPress evolves largely through the effort of a global volunteer community working around the clock to fix any issues detected by users. Everyone benefits from thousands of web developers, designers and users dedicated to improving the application, fixing bugs and making the WordPress platform safer for every user …

(WordPress is built by a global community of web developers. Source: WordPress.org)

As soon as security holes are discovered by developers or users, the WordPress development team are then notified …

(WordPress is continually being improved upon by thousands of committed individuals community of users and developers. Image source: make.wordpress.org)

The WordPress community support system is quite formidable and anyone can contribute to the process of addressing security issues.

For example:

• If you discover bugs or security exploits, you can report these by notifying security@wordpress.org.
• If you find issues in a WP plugin, you can report these by emailing plugins@wordpress.org.

This is one of the reasons why WordPress is constantly releasing new updates, and why you need to keep your sites and blogs up-to-date …

(WordPress frequently releases new updates to address any security issues found)

WordPress CMS Vs Proprietary CMS Platforms

We’ve just seen that one of the security advantages of using an open source technology like WordPress is that users benefit from a large community of developers who continually contribute to make the software more secure. By contrast, proprietary or “closed-source” CMS applications are normally developed by a small team of developers with limited time and resources to provide continuous security monitoring, software maintenance, bug fixes and software fixes.

WordPress is free to download, modify and use, and thousands of volunteers and expert developers work on improving the technology. Can a proprietary technology company afford to employ as many developers and programmers and still deliver users a free CMS platform that they can download, use and modify as they wish?

WordPress Vs Other Open Source CMS Applications

(CMS Platforms)

Whilst on the topic of Open Source content management applications, there is valid research to support the fact that the WordPress CMS is safer than other Open Source CMS platforms such as Drupal and Joomla.

For example, here is one study showing how many security vulnerabilities were discovered in popular open source platforms during a given period …

(WordPress has less security vulnerabilities than other leading CMS platforms. Screenshot source: National Vulnerability Database)

Other studies also show that, because WordPress is quite easy to use and to maintain, when sites using different CMS platforms were tested for security vulnerabilities, sites run on WordPress had fewer exposure to risk …

(Blog Defender – CMS Tests. Image source: BlogDefender.com)

Don’t Blame The Platform

If someone compromises the security of your WordPress site, don’t be too quick to blame WordPress.

According to security vendor Commtouch and StopBadware, a nonprofit organization that helps webmasters identify, remediate and prevent website compromises in a published report entitled “Compromised Websites: An Owner’s Perspective“, most website owners are not fully aware of the threats their websites are exposed to, how to secure a website, or how to deal with web security compromises.

In fact, over 60% of webmasters surveyed for the report didn’t know how their sites were compromised after an attack …

(Most webmasters don’t know how their sites get hacked. Source: StopBadware.org)

Of immediate concern is the fact that most security issues seem to be related to website owners running sites with an outdated version of WordPress …

(Many security issues come from sites running an outdated version of WordPress. Screenshot: Sucuri.net)

When WordPress security issues were looked at in more detail, it was found that only a small percentage of vulnerabilities discovered in 3rd-party code are found in the WordPress CMS core, while 70% – 75% percent of all security issues are found in plug-ins and extensions …

(WordPress Security Issues. Screenshot source: WebDesign.org)

Like many modern web platforms, WordPress is updated regularly in order to deal with new security issues that may arise. Improving software security is an ongoing concern, and to that end, you should always keep your WordPress software, plugins, and themes up-to-date.

WordPress Is Used By Many Security-Conscious Organizations!

The amount of misinformation online about how secure WordPress is has even led Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, to chime into the online discussion.

In a post entitled “A Bank Website on WordPress” posted on April 15, 2015, Matt wrote the following about WordPress …

There’s a thread on Quora asking “I am powering a bank’s website using WordPress. What security measures should I take?” The answers have mostly been ignorant junk along the lines of “Oh NOES WP is INSECURE! let me take my money out of that bank”, so I wrote one myself, which I’ve copied below.

I agree there’s probably not a ton of benefit to having the online banking / billpay / etc portion of a bank’s website on WordPress, however there is no reason you couldn’t run the front-end and marketing side of the site on WordPress, and in fact you’d be leveraging WordPress’ strength as a content management platform that is flexible, customizable, and easy to update and maintain.

Matt then goes on to provide a couple of security tips, before stating the following …

For an example of a beautiful, responsive banking website built on WordPress, check out Gateway Bank of Mesa AZ. WordPress is also trusted to run sites for some of the largest and most security-conscious organizations in the world, including Facebook, SAP, Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept, eBay, McAfee, Sophos, GNOME, Mozilla, MIT, Reuters, CNN, Google Ventures, NASA, and literally hundreds more.

As the most widely used CMS in the world, many people use and deploy the open source version of WordPress in a sub-optimal and insecure way, but the same could be said of Linux, Apache, MySQL, Node, Rails, Java, or any widely-used software. It is possible and actually not that hard to run WordPress in a way that is secure enough for a bank, government site, media site, or anything.

Millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to build their websites, including banks, leading brands, and e-commerce sites, not just bloggers.

Other Areas That Can Affect Security

Other factors that can affect WP site security include:

• No platform is completely immune to hackers. As many as 90% of all websites across all platforms are vulnerable to being attacked, mostly due to software that is out of date.
• The biggest vulnerability in all CMS platforms seems to be the users themselves. An example of this is users ignoring strong password security practices.
• Lack of constant system monitoring. All security processes need to be regularly monitored, tested, updated and improved.
• Webhosting server setup. For example, sites on shared webhosting servers are only as safe as the least secure website on the grid, so if another user has a weak FTP password on your shared server, then every site on your server is potentially vulnerable.

There’s No Reason To Avoid Choosing WordPress

As this article has hopefully shown, WordPress is quite secure. As long as you commit to implementing basic security measures (which all website owners should do, regardless of their web platform) and keep your WordPress software (and plugins, themes, etc.) regularly up-to-date, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t choose WordPress to power your website or blog.

WordPress Security – Tips

To learn about ways to protect your WordPress site from brute force attacks see this article:  How To Protect Your WordPress Website From Brute-Force Attacks

An unsecured website presents hackers with a valuable resource to launch denial of service attacks, spread malware and engage in information theft. Blog Defender Security Plugin for WordPress Sites makes your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and bots. Go here to learn more:

• Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress

If you are using older versions of WordPress remember to back up your files before updating your software to protect your site from the latest security risks. This way, if things don’t go as planned, you can always restore everything to its previous state.

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Copy And Keep Your WordPress Web Sites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

Article References

For more information on the above, refer to the sites below:

• ITProPortal.com
• National Vulnerability Database
• BlogDefender.com
• UpAndUpStudios.com
• StopBadware.org
• Sucuri.net
• WebDesign.org
• Quora.com
• Ma.tt

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section or subscribe to receive updates and notifications when new articles or tutorials are published.

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