In April 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to worldwide brute-force attacks.

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable installations, also commonly known as “botnets”.

(WordPress often comes under attack by hackers, due to its global popularity)

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

(160,000+ WordPress sites were attacked in a massive DDoS attack in March 2014. Image: 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 leading security firm Sucuri, hackers had leveraged a well-known flaw to attack unsuspecting WordPress web sites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service cyber-attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.

When global attacks happen on WordPress sites, it’s natural for website owners to question if WordPress really is a safe software for running their websites.

Being the world’s most popular CMS makes WordPress an obvious target for attacks by hackers. But do you really 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 use WordPress if you have any concerns 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 scale of attacks on websites and blogs around the world is increasing on a daily basis, and this is 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 you use!

Since it’s not 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 Vulnerable Are “Open Source” Software Applications?

Many people argue that WordPress is not a safe platform for running a business online because it is a freely available open source software application.

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

The argument against WordPress, then, goes something like this: If anyone can access the Open Source code for WordPress, then hackers can also easily download the code and study every single line in detail, searching for weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the code that could be exploited …

(It’s no longer a matter of if, but a matter of when before a malicious user will attempt to hack your website … WordPress or no WordPress!)

While it’s true that WordPress is free to download and hackers can easily access it and study the code searching for vulnerabilities or weaknesses they can exploit (hackers can do the same with any software program), the fact that WordPress is a free, open application actually makes it a lot more secure in a number of ways.

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

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

WordPress evolves through the effort of thousands of committed individuals working around the clock to fix issues. It benefits from hundreds of minds committed to improving the application, fixing bugs and making the WordPress platform safer for every user …

(The WordPress core software is built by a large community of experienced web developers. Screenshot: WordPress.org)

The moment any security problems are discovered by developers or users, these are recorded in user forums and addressed by the WordPress core development team …

(WordPress is continually being improved by an open community of developers and users. Image source: WordPress.org)

The WordPress community support system is quite formidable and anybody can help contribute to the process of getting bugs fixed.

For example:

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

This is one of the reasons why WordPress releases new version updates so often, and why you continually need to keep your WordPress sites and blogs regularly updated …

(WordPress continually releases new updates to plug security vulnerabilities)

WordPress Vs Proprietary CMS Platforms

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

WordPress is 100% free to download, modify and use, and thousands of volunteers and expert developers are continually working to improve the software. Can a proprietary CMS company afford to employ as many developers and programmers and still deliver users software that is 100% free to download, use and modify as they wish?

WordPress Vs Other Open Source Platforms

(CMS Platforms)

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

For example, here is one study showing the number of security vulnerabilities found in popular open source platforms during a given period …

(National Vulnerability Database – Security Vulnerabilities IN CMS Applications. Image: National Vulnerability Database)

Other studies indicate that, because WordPress is quite easy to use and to maintain, when sites using different CMS platforms were tested for security issues, sites built with WordPress had a significant degree of less exposure to risk …

(WordPress users are less exposed to vulnerabilities than other CMS platform users. Source: BlogDefender.com)

WordPress Is Not At Fault

When WordPress sites are subjected to brute-force attacks, don’t be too quick to place the blame on the WordPress CMS platform.

According to a nonprofit organization that helps webmasters identify, remediate and prevent website compromises called StopBadware and security vendor Commtouch in a published report entitled “Compromised Websites: An Owner’s Perspective“, many webmasters have no idea about the threats their websites are exposed to, how to properly secure a website, or deal with compromised web security.

In fact, 63% of webmasters surveyed for the report didn’t even know how their websites had been hacked after an attack …

(Many webmasters don’t even know how their sites got hacked. Image: StopBadware.org)

Of immediate concern for WordPress users, however, is the fact that many security issues seem to be related to site owners not updating their CMS software to a newer version …

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

When WordPress security issues were looked at in more detail, it was found that only between 20% – 30% percent of vulnerabilities discovered in 3rd-party code are found in the WordPress CMS core, while 65% – 75% percent of all security issues are found in plug-ins and developed externally for WordPress …

(WP Security Issues. Screenshot: WebDesign.org)

Like many web applications, WordPress is updated regularly in order to address new security risks that may arise. Improving software security is always a concern, and to that end, you should always keep your WordPress site, themes, and plugins up-to-date.

WordPress Is Used By Many Security-Conscious Organizations!

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

In an article entitled “A Bank Website on WordPress” published 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, including banks, global corporations and e-commerce sites use WordPress to build their presence online, not just bloggers.

Other Factors Affecting Security

Other areas that can affect website security include factors like:

• No platform is completely safe from hacking. As many as 90% of all websites across all platforms are vulnerable to being attacked, mostly due to using outdated software.
• The main vulnerability of all web platforms seems to be the users themselves. For example, many users ignore strong password security recommendations.
• Lack of constant monitoring. All security systems require regular monitoring, testing, updating and improvement.
• Webhosting server setup. For example, sites on shared webhosting are only as safe as the least secure site on the hosting grid, so if someone else on your shared server gets their site broken into, then every site on that server is potentially vulnerable.

There’s No Reason To Avoid Using WordPress

As you can see, WordPress is a secure web platform. As long as you commit to implementing basic website security measures and keep your WordPress software (and plugins, themes, etc.) regularly updated, there is really no reason to avoid using WordPress.

WordPress Security – Useful Tips

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

A vulnerable site presents hackers with a platform to launch distributed attacks, spread malware and use your website to defraud online users. Blog Defender Security Plugin makes your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers. Learn more about it here:

• Prevent Botnets And Hackers From Finding Your Blog With Blog Defender Security Plugin

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

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Copy & Keep Your WordPress Web Sites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

References Used In This Article

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 article has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using WordPress please click on links to visit other articles we have published on this site or subscribe to receive updates and notifications whenever new articles are published.

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