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

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other installations with security vulnerabilities).

(WordPress powers millions of websites around the world, making it an obvious target for hacking attempts)

In March 2014, technology sites began reporting that over 160,000+ WordPress-powered websites had been hacked.

(160,000+ WordPress sites were attacked in a massive DDoS attack in early 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)

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

Whenever attacks on WordPress sites happen, it’s natural for website owners to start asking just how safe and secure the WordPress platform is for running an online presence.

Powering millions of sites worldwide makes WordPress an obvious target for hacking attacks. But do you really need to be concerned about WordPress as 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 are concerned about website security.

WordPress Security Explained

Let’s start with the facts …

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

The sheer number of attacks on websites and blogs worldwide is massive, and this 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 your website has been built with!

Since it’s no longer a matter of if, but when before your website will be targeted by hackers, are there any advantages that WordPress can offer you in terms of security?

Is An “Open Source” Software Secure?

Many people argue that WordPress cannot be a safe platform for building and running websites because it’s a freely available open source software.

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

The argument against WordPress, then, goes something like this: If anyone can view the Open Source software code for WordPress, then hackers can also easily download all of the code and go through every line in detail, searching for holes and weaknesses in the code that can be exploited …

(It’s no longer a matter of if, but when before someone tries to hack your website … WordPress or no WordPress!)

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

This is because WordPress has the support of a huge community of hundreds of software programmers, plugin developers and theme designers who constantly help improve the platform and make WordPress more secure …

(A global community of developers maintain and update. Screenshot: WordPress.org)

WordPress evolves largely through the effort of thousands of committed individuals working around the clock to fix issues. Everyone benefits from hundreds of minds who are dedicated to improving the software and making WordPress safer for every user …

(The WordPress core software is built and maintained by an open community of volunteer members. Screenshot image: make.wordpress.org)

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

(WordPress is continually being improved upon by a huge community community of users and web developers. Screenshot source: make.wordpress.org)

The WordPress community support system, therefore, 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 exploit, you can report these by emailing security@wordpress.org.
• If you find any issues in a WordPress plugin, you can also report these by sending an email to plugins@wordpress.org.

This is one of the reasons why the core development team releases new version updates so often, and why you need to keep your site updated …

(WordPress frequently releases new version updates to plug any security weaknesses found)

WordPress CMS Vs Proprietary CMS Platforms

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

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

WordPress CMS Vs Other Open Source CMS Applications

(CMS Platforms)

Whilst on the topic of Open Source content management applications, research shows that WordPress is actually safer than other leading Open Source CMS platforms like Drupal and Joomla.

For example, here is one study showing how many security vulnerabilities were found in popular open source CMS platforms …

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

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

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

WordPress Is Not To Blame

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

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 are not fully aware of the threats their websites are exposed to, how to properly secure a website, or how to deal with security compromises.

In fact, 63% of webmasters surveyed in this report didn’t know how their sites had been hacked after an attack …

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

Of immediate concern for WordPress users, however, is the fact that most security issues seem to be related to site owners forgetting to update their WordPress software to a newer version …

(Many WordPress sites are running on outdated versions. Source: 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 actually found in the WordPress core software, while most security issues are found in plug-ins and extensions created by 3rd-party developers …

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

Like many web applications, WordPress is regularly updated in order to deal with new security threats that may arise. Improving 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 Businesses!

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

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 choose WordPress to build their web presence, not just bloggers.

Other Factors Affecting Security

Other research on issues that play a role in WordPress security point to things such as:

• No platform is completely protected from 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 main risk in all CMS platforms seems to be the users themselves. For example, many users ignore good password security recommendations.
• Lack of constant monitoring. Security processes need to be regularly monitored, tested, updated and improved.
• Webhosting server setup. For example, websites on shared hosting servers are only as secure as the least safe website on the grid, so if someone else has a weak FTP password on your shared server, then every site on that shared server becomes vulnerable to hacking also.

There’s No Reason Not To Choose WordPress

As this article has hopefully shown, WordPress is a secure web platform. As long as you continue to implement basic web security measures and keep your WordPress software (and plugins, themes, etc.) regularly updated, there is no reason not to use WordPress to power your web site or blog.

WordPress Security – Tips

To learn about ways to protect your WordPress site from brute force attacks see this article:  WordPress Brute Force Attack Prevention Measures

A vulnerable blog provides hackers with a valuable platform to launch distributed attacks, spread malware and engage in information theft. Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin makes your WordPress site invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets. Learn more about it here:

• How To Prevent Hackers & Botnets From Attacking Your Web Sites With Blog Defender Security Plugin

If you are using older versions of WordPress remember to back up your WordPress site fully before updating your software to protect your site from the latest security threats. This way, if something goes wrong, you can always restore.

If you don’t want to back up your site manually, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Clone & Protect Your WordPress Websites With Backup Creator WP Plugin

References Used In This Article

For more information on the above, see the following sources:

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

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better business results online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site or subscribe to receive updates and notifications whenever new articles are published.

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