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

These attacks were caused by computers infected with malware and programmed to attack other vulnerable computers (called “botnets”).

(WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers, due to its popularity)

On March 11, 2014, many technology sites reported that over 160,000+ legitimate WordPress-powered web sites had been hacked.

(Over 160,000 WordPress sites were attacked in a massive DDoS attack in early 2014. Screenshot: BlogDefender website)

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 WP web sites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service cyberattack (DDoS) towards another popular website.

When worldwide brute force attacks happen on WordPress sites, it’s natural for people to ask if WordPress really is a secure platform for running their sites.

WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers. But should you be concerned about WordPress as being a secure platform for building your business presence online?

In this article, you will learn some of the main reasons why you should definitely consider using WordPress if you have any concerns about website security.

WordPress Security Explained

Let’s start by looking at some facts …

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

The scale of attacks on websites and blogs around the world is increasing on a daily basis, and it’s only going to get worse.

You can safely assume that if you haven’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 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?

”Isn’t Open Source Software Extremely Vulnerable?”

Some people will often try to argue that WordPress cannot be a secure platform for running a web presence because it’s “open source” and freely available software program.

Open-source CMS platforms 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 examine the Open Source software code for WordPress, then hackers can also easily get hold of all of the code and study it in great detail, looking for vulnerabilities that could be exploited …

(It’s no longer a matter of if, but a matter of when before a malicious user will try 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 looking for holes and weaknesses that can be exploited (hackers can do the same with any program), the fact that WordPress is a free, open-source platform actually makes it more secure in many ways.

This is because WordPress has the support of an open volunteer community of hundreds of software programmers, plugin developers and theme designers who are constantly working to help to improve the program and make WordPress more secure …

(With WordPress, a huge volunteer community of developers is responsible for keeping the platform code updated. Screenshot image: WordPress.org)

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

(WordPress is built and maintained by a global community of WordPress users. Image source: WordPress.org)

The moment any security issues are discovered by developers or users, the WordPress development team are then made aware of it …

(WordPress is continually being improved upon by an open community of users and web developers. Source: WordPress.org)

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

For example:

• If you come across bugs and a security hole, you can report these by sending an email to security@wordpress.org.
• If you find issues in a plugin, you can report these by emailing plugins@wordpress.org.

This is why the WordPress team releases new security updates on a regular basis, and why you need to keep your WordPress site regularly updated …

(WordPress continually releases new updates to plug any security vulnerabilities found)

WordPress CMS Vs Proprietary CMS Applications

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 improve code security. By contrast, proprietary or “closed-source” software applications are developed by a small team of developers with limited time and resources to provide continuous security monitoring, maintenance services, bug fixes and software fixes.

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 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 Vs Other Open Source CMS Platforms

(CMS Platforms - WordPress, Joomla and Drupal)

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 such as Drupal and Joomla.

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

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

Other studies show that, because WordPress is easy to use and update, when sites using different CMS platforms were tested for security exploits, WordPress sites had fewer exposure to risk …

(WordPress is more secure than other CMS applications. Source: BlogDefender.com)

Don’t Blame WordPress When Things Go Wrong

If someone compromises the security of your WordPress site, don’t be too quick to blame 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 website owners have no idea about the security threats their websites are exposed to, how to secure a website, or how to deal with compromises.

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

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

Of more immediate concern, however, is the fact that many security problems seem to be related to site owners not upgrading their WordPress software to the latest version …

(Many WordPress users have not updated their sites. Image: 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 65% – 75% percent of all security issues are found in plug-ins and extensions …

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

Like many modern software applications, WordPress is regularly updated to address new security problems that can arise. Improving software security is always a concern, and to that end, you should always keep your WordPress software, plugins, and themes up-to-date.

WordPress … Good Enough For Banks To Use!

The amount of misinformation online about how secure WordPress is has even caused 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 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 use WordPress to build their web presence, including banks, large organizations, and e-commerce sites, not just bloggers.

Other Areas Affecting Site Security

Other issues that can affect WordPress website security include:

• No platform is completely protected from hacking. As many as 90% of all websites across all platforms are vulnerable to being attacked, mostly due to outdated software.
• The biggest vulnerability of all CMS platforms seems to be the users themselves. For example, many users ignore good 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 hosting are only as safe as the least secure website on the grid, so if someone else has a weak FTP password on your shared server, then every site on that server can potentially become vulnerable to being hacked as well.

There Is No Reason Not To Use WordPress

As this article has hopefully shown, WordPress is quite secure. As long as you commit to implementing basic web security measures and keep your WordPress software (and themes, plugins, etc.) up-to-date, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t choose WordPress.

WordPress Security – Tips

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

A vulnerable site presents hackers with a platform for denial of service attacks, spreading malware and as a source of information theft. Blog Defender Security Plugin for WordPress makes your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots. Learn more about it here:

• Blog Defender Security Plugin – Make Your WordPress Blogs Unseen By Bots And Hackers

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

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

References

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, the above post has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the security benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see other articles published on this site or subscribe to receive updates and notifications when new content is published.

***