In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a global-scale brute force attack.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computers infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable installations).

(WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attempts by hackers, due to its global popularity)

In March 2014, many leading technology sites reported that 162,000 WordPress-powered sites had been hacked.

(Over 160,000 WordPress sites were attacked in a massive DDoS attack in March 2014. Source: BlogDefender.com)

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)

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

When global brute-force attacks happen on WordPress sites, it’s natural for website owners to question if WordPress really is a secure software for building and running their sites.

WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers. But do you really need to be concerned about WordPress as being a secure web platform?

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 facts …

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

The sheer number of attacks on websites and blogs around the world is rising, and it’s getting worse.

It’s safe to assume that if your website or blog hasn’t been hacked yet, then it’s inevitable that at some point in time someone will attempt to hack into your site … regardless of the web platform your website has been built with!

Since it’s no longer a matter of if, but when before someone will attempt to hack your website, are there any advantages that WordPress can offer you in terms of security?

How Secure Is “Open Source” Software?

Many people will often argue that WordPress cannot be a safe platform for building and running a website or blog because it is a freely available open source software program.

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

The argument, then, goes something like this: If everyone can examine the Open Source software code for WordPress, then hackers can easily obtain the code and study it, searching for security vulnerabilities that can be exploited …

(It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when before your website will be targeted by malicious hackers … WordPress or no WordPress!)

While it’s true that WordPress is a free program and hackers can easily go through the code searching for holes and weaknesses (hackers can do the same with any software program), the fact that WordPress is a free, open-source platform actually makes it more secure in many ways.

The reason for this is that WordPress is supported by a volunteer community that consists of thousands of software programmers, plugin developers and theme designers who constantly help improve the platform and make WordPress more secure …

(With WordPress, a community of developers worldwide is responsible for keeping the software code up-to-date. Image source: make.wordpress.org)

WordPress continually evolves through the effort of a huge volunteer community working around the clock to fix issues. Everyone benefits from thousands of web developers, designers and users dedicated to improving the application and making it safer for every user …

(WordPress is built by an open community of web developers. Image source: WordPress.org)

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

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

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

For example:

• If you come across bugs and a security issue, you can report these by notifying security@wordpress.org.
• If you find any issues in a WP plugin, you can also report these by sending an email to plugins@wordpress.org.

This is the reason why the WordPress community releases new updates on a regular basis, and why you need to keep your site frequently up-to-date …

(WordPress continually releases new version updates to address any security exploits found)

WordPress Vs Proprietary CMS Applications

Compare what we have just discussed above with proprietary platforms where often the responsibility for maintaining software security, fixing bugs, etc. falls to a much smaller team of developers with limited resources and you will very quickly realize the value of using WordPress to power your business web presence on a secure platform.

The WordPress CMS is 100% free to download, use and modify, and thousands of volunteers and expert developers are continually working to improve the platform. Can a proprietary CMS company afford to employ as many developers and programmers and still deliver users a completely 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 actually safer than other Open Source CMS platforms like Drupal and Joomla.

For example, the chart below shows how many security vulnerabilities were discovered in popular open source CMS platforms …

(WordPress has fewer security vulnerabilities than other CMS applications. Screenshot source: National Vulnerability Database)

Other research indicates that, because WordPress is easy to use and to maintain, when sites across different CMS platforms were tested for security issues, WordPress sites had fewer exposure to risk …

(Blog Defender – CMS Tests. Screenshot: BlogDefender.com)

WordPress Is Not At Fault

If someone breaks into your WordPress site, don’t be too quick to blame the WordPress CMS platform.

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 webmasters have no idea about the security threats their websites are exposed to, how to secure a website, or deal with compromised web security.

In fact, 63% of webmasters surveyed for the report didn’t know how their sites were compromised by hackers after an attack …

(Most webmasters don’t even know how their sites got hacked. Screenshot source: StopBadware.org)

Of immediate concern is the fact that many security-related problems arise from website owners running sites with an outdated version of WordPress …

(Many WordPress sites are running on outdated versions. 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 third-party code are found in the WordPress core software, while most security issues are found in plug-ins and developed externally …

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

Like many modern web platforms, WordPress is regularly updated in order to address new security vulnerabilities that can arise. Improving software security is an ongoing concern, and to that end, you should always keep up to date with the latest version of WordPress.

WordPress … Secure Enough For Banks To Use!

The amount of misinformation online about how secure WordPress is has even led the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, to chime in and reply to posts online.

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

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 Issues Affecting Website Security

Other issues that can affect WP site security include:

• No platform is safe from hacking. 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 security threat of all content management systems seems to be the users themselves. For example, many users ignore strong password security practices.
• Lack of constant monitoring. Security systems need frequent monitoring, testing, updating and improvement.
• Webhosting setup. For example, sites on shared hosting are only as secure as the least safe site on the grid, so if someone else on your shared server gets their site hacked into, then all sites on that server become vulnerable.

There Is No Reason Not To Choose WordPress

As you can see, WordPress is a secure web platform. As long as you remember to implement basic security measures and keep your WordPress software (and plugins, themes, etc.) regularly up-to-date, there is really no reason why you should not choose WordPress for your website or blog.

WordPress Security – Practical Tips

To learn about ways to protect your WordPress site from brute-force attacks see this article:  Preventing WordPress Brute-Force Attacks

An unsecured web site provides malicious users with a valuable platform to launch denial of service attacks, spread malware and use your site to defraud online users. Blog Defender Security Plugin for WordPress makes your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets. Learn more about this plugin here:

• Prevent Malicious Intrusions On Your WordPress Websites By Bots And Hackers

If you are using outdated WordPress versions make sure to back up everything before updating your software to benefit from the latest security updates. This way, if things don’t go as planned, you can always restore.

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

Article References

The facts quoted above were sourced from the following sites:

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

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To learn more about using WordPress please see our related posts section or subscribe to receive updates and notifications whenever new articles are published.

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