WordPress Security Explained

Learn why WordPress is a secure web platform for building and running your business online …

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

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

WordPress powers millions of websites worldwide, which makes it a natural target for hacker attacks

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

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

Thousands of websites are attacked every year! Will yours be one of them?

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

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

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

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

WordPress Security Explained

Let’s start with some facts …

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

The sheer number of attacks on websites and blogs worldwide is massive, and this is only going to get worse.

You can safely assume that if you haven’t been hacked yet, then it’s only a matter of time … 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 try 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 is not a secure platform for building and running websites or blogs because it is a freely available open source software program.

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

The argument, then, goes something like this: If anyone can access the Open Source software code for WordPress, then hackers can easily download the code and study it, looking for security holes in the code that could be exploited …

It's not a matter of if, but when before a malicious user will try to hack your website ... WordPress or no WordPress!

(It’s not a matter of if, but when before a malicious user attempts 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 security vulnerabilities and weaknesses that can be exploited (hackers can do the same with any software), the fact that WordPress is a free, open-source application actually makes it a lot more secure in several ways.

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

A huge volunteer community build and maintain.

(A huge volunteer community of hundreds of developers around the world maintain and update. Screenshot: make.wordpress.org)

WordPress evolves because of the effort of hundreds of committed individuals working around the clock to fix issues. Everyone benefits from hundreds of web developers, designers and users dedicated to improving the software and making the WordPress platform safer for every user …

WordPress is built and maintained by a global community of users

(WordPress is built and maintained by an open community of contributors. Image source: WordPress.org)

As soon as any security issue is identified by developers or users, these are normally recorded in user forums and addressed by the WordPress core development team …

WordPress is continually being improved by a huge community community of web developers and users

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

The WordPress community support system, therefore, is solid and formidable and anybody can help contribute to improving the software.

For example:

  • If you find bugs or security issues, you can report these by sending an email to security@wordpress.org.
  • If you find any issues in a WordPress plugin, you can report these by emailing plugins@wordpress.org.

This is one of the reasons why the WordPress team is constantly releasing new version updates, and why you need to keep your sites and blogs regularly updated …

WordPress continually releases new version updates to address security holes

(WordPress continually releases new version updates to address security weaknesses)

WordPress CMS Vs Proprietary Platforms

Compare what we have just discussed above with proprietary CMS platforms where often a small team with limited resources is responsible for monitoring and maintaining software security, fixing bugs, etc., and you will very quickly understand the value and advantages of using WordPress to run your websites and blogs on a secure platform.

WordPress is free to download, use and modify, and thousands of volunteers and expert developers work on improving the technology. Can a proprietary CMS 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 Platforms

CMS Platforms include WordPress, Joomla and Drupal

(CMS Platforms)

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

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

National Vulnerability Database - Security Vulnerabilities IN CMS Applications

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

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

WordPress is safer to use than other CMS applications

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

Don’t Blame WordPress

Whenever WordPress sites get attacked en masse, users shouldn’t be quick to place the blame on the WordPress CMS platform.

According to a report called “Compromised Websites: An Owner’s Perspective,” published by security organizations Commtouch and StopBadware, a large number of website owners have no idea about the threats their websites are exposed to, how to properly secure a website, or deal with security compromises.

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

Most webmasters don't even know how their websites got hacked.

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

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

Many WordPress sites are running on outdated versions.

(Many WordPress users have not updated their WP sites. Image source: Sucuri.net)

When WordPress security issues were looked at in more detail, it was found that only between 25% – 30% percent of vulnerabilities discovered in 3rd-party code are actually found in the WordPress CMS core, while 70% – 75% percent of all security issues are found in plug-ins and extensions created by third-party developers …

WordPress Security Issues

(WP Security Issues. Screenshot: WebDesign.org)

Like all robust web platforms, WordPress is regularly updated to deal with new security threats that can arise. Improving software security is an ongoing concern, and to that end, you should always keep your WordPress site, themes, and plugins up-to-date.

WordPress Is Secure – Even Banks Use It!

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

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 use WordPress to build their presence online, including banks, large organizations, and e-commerce sites, not just bloggers.

Other Areas Affecting Website Security

Other issues that can affect site security include things such as:

  • No platform is protected from hacking. As many as 90% of all websites across all platforms are vulnerable to attack, mostly due to using outdated software.
  • The biggest threat of all CMS platforms seems to be the users themselves. An example of this is users ignoring good password security practices.
  • Lack of constant monitoring. Security systems need frequent monitoring, testing, updating and improvement.
  • Hosting server setup. For example, sites on shared webhosting are only as safe as the least secure website on the grid, so if another user on your shared server gets their site broken into, then all sites on the 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 as secure as most other leading web platforms being used by businesses to build their presence online. As long as you commit to implementing basic security measures and keep your WordPress software (and plugins, themes, etc.) regularly up-to-date, there’s no reason to avoid using WordPress.

Tip

WordPress Security – Useful Tips

To learn about ways to protect your WordPress site from brute force attacks see this article:  Ten Ways To Prevent Brute Force Attacks On Your WordPress Website

A vulnerable web site offers hackers with a valuable resource to launch denial of service attacks, spread malware and engage in information theft. Blog Defender Security Plugin for WordPress Websites makes your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots. Learn more about this plugin here:

If you are currently using an outdated WordPress version make sure to make a backup 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 perform manual backups, 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, Duplicate & Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator WP Plugin

Useful Info

Article References

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

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using the WP software please see our related posts section or subscribe to receive updates and notifications whenever new content is published.

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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group

Originally published as WordPress Security Explained.