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Are you using WordPress as the platform for your website, and is your WordPress website vulnerable in 2023?
WordPress is a popular and a widely-utilised open source content management system (CMS). It enables users to easily create, manage and publish content on the web. The platform contains a wide range of features that have evolved from its origin as a sophisticated personal blog platform to the modern-day highly flexible website generator. During this evolution its capabilities have grown significantly.
Why Use WordPress?
WordPress has been widely adopted by individual users, small businesses, and large corporations alike. It offers a user-friendly platform which can be used to create a variety of professional websites. The website can be tailored to the needs of businesses of all sizes, ranging from blogs to online retail stores.
WordPress is structured in a modular fashion which allows users to install and activate different themes and plugins to customise the appearance and functionality of their website. The platform provides a broad selection of both free and premium themes and plugins to enhance your website with features like e-commerce, contact forms, and social media integration.
It’s SEO-friendly functionality allows for simple search engine indexing. This can increase visibility and make it easier for customers to find the website. Having an optimised WordPress website can be beneficial to a business’s online presence, resulting in an increase in traffic flow to the website. Ultimately, this can lead to higher sales and increased profits.
How Secure Is Your Website?
However, due to its popularity WordPress is also a popular target for hackers. According to a recent report by Sucuri in 2021, WordPress websites accounted for over 95% of all hacked CMS websites on their database. Hacking and data breaches can pose a significant risk to online businesses.
Major corporations including the retail corporation Target, the internet company Yahoo and Marriott International have all experienced considerable data breaches in recent years. Marriott International was targeted by hackers as recently as June of 2022.
Whilst major companies may not necessarily be using WordPress to operate their businesses, these statistics illustrate the prevalence and potential severity of hacking and data breaches. It is evidence that no one is immune from cyber-attacks.
Therefore, it is crucial for online businesses to take proactive measures to protect themselves from these threats by implementing strong security protocols, and keeping their core software, themes, and plugins updated in order to secure their website.
Maintain A Strong Password.
It is essential for securing your website that you have a strong and secure password and that it is regularly updated, as this minimises the risk of a cyber-attack.
Ensuring that you have a strong and secure password is of utmost importance. It should be intricate and difficult to break. In that way even if someone gets hold of your username, they will still be unable to access your account.
Cyber criminals can use a variety of strategies to try and obtain details of your password. These can range from the use of phishing tactics, to the use of automated tools like dictionary or brute-force attacks.
A dictionary attack will attempt to guess a password by using commonly-used words or phrases from the dictionary. Whereas a brute-force attack will attempt to discover the password through a methodical approach of trying various character combinations using automated programs. Although these methods can be extremely time consuming they are also highly effective in cracking even intricate passwords.
However, ensuring that you have a strong password which is regularly updated is only one strategy that is available for securing your website.
To optimise the security of your WordPress website, we recommend a comprehensive approach. A combination of methods can create an effective defence system and add multiple layers of protection to your website. This will provide you with an enhanced level of protection and greater peace of mind.
What Are The Consequences Of Website Hacking?
Whilst considering the question “Is your WordPress website vulnerable in 2023?”, you may be wondering what the consequences would be if your website gets hacked.
The consequences for an online business can be severe and long-lasting if their website is hacked or they experience a data breach.
A sizable proportion of compromised websites feature vulnerable WordPress plugins and extensions. This can make the websites highly prone to malware infections. In fact, malware infections accounted for more than 61% of infections discovered on a compromised website.
If your website is compromised here are a few of the consequences that you could encounter :
- Loss of sensitive data
- Financial losses due to the cost of investigations, legal fees and compensation to affected customers.
- Loss of customer trust and loyalty resulting in customers going elsewhere.
- Website downtime due to the hacker taking control of the website.
- Compliance violations with regulations such as GDPR, HIPPA & PCI_DSS, which could result in fines or penalties.
However, these are only a brief example of the consequences you can experience if your website is compromised.
Conclusion
As a responsible business owner, it is important to keep your website secure, by maintaining a strong password, backing up your website regularly, and adding multiple layers of protection to your website to ensure that you have the most effective defence system to prevent hackers gaining control of your website.
Is your WordPress website vulnerable in 2023?
Get in touch with us if you are uncertain about how secure your WordPress website is, and would like to receive a free, no obligation analysis of its vulnerability. We would be more than happy to help.
