Is WordPress secure? It can be said that WordPress is secure as long as the people using it take care of security to the best of their ability. Only if they follow all the security steps properly, like including secure themes and plugins, updating the website when needed, etc., they can be sure that their website is secure.

Why is website security important?

Website security is one of the most important things on the Internet because there are many risks if someone hacks your website. Someone can steal your payment information and even your identity. On the other hand, as a business, you can lose your customers, revenue, etc. Also, recovering a hacked website is expensive, so website security should be a priority for every online user.

Who’s responsible for WordPress’s security?

It is your WordPress security team’s (or your own) responsibility to keep your WordPress website secure. In this team, different people with different responsibilities ensure that your WP site is constantly safe and protected despite the many attacks.

They use various tools to detect potential problems, bugs and vulnerabilities and in this way try to solve the potential risks in advance.

Your hosting is NOT responsible for the security of your website, it is only responsible for the security of your server.

If you follow best practices, is WordPress secure?

If you keep the WordPress Core, plugins and also themes updated, and you use strong passwords, choose themes and plugins carefully, use different certificates, clean your computer regularly from viruses, etc., then WordPress and your website should be safe from any potential attacks.

How do WordPress sites get hacked?

First of all, you should understand that no matter how big or small your website is, there is always a risk that it can be hacked.

This is because hackers write scripts that can automatically analyze the entire website. Thanks to these scripts, hackers can find vulnerabilities on a particular website and use them to their advantage.

Therefore, it doesn’t matter if you have 100, 1,000 or 10,000 visitors per month, your website will still get hacked if there is an opportunity.

Outdated WordPress core software

Outdated WordPress core software is one of the things that can lead to the risk of being hacked. There are several things you can do to prevent this. First, it’s important to back up your entire website with all the themes, plugins, etc.

If you have a backup, you can easily download it and be sure you have something as a plan B in case something goes wrong.

Outdated plugins or themes

This is the second thing that usually leaves your website vulnerable. If you are using an old version of WordPress, the website is a good opportunity for hackers to exploit it. It doesn’t matter if you can code or not, but you should still update your website regularly. If you think you can’t do everything on your own, you can always use different WordPress agencies.

Compromised login credentials for WordPress website, FTP, hosting

A certain percentage of malicious attacks go back to users having weak credentials for their website or FTP. Once a hacker finds a way to break into the site via the login, it doesn’t matter how strong other things on the site are secured.

Although WordPress creates strong passwords, it is still the site owner’s responsibility to protect the site from being attacked by having strong passwords on each account.

Supply chain attacks

Namely, a supply chain attack involves gaining access to the system by targeting a third party used by that very system. This, of course, can happen at any point in the supply chain.

In other words, this is where hackers gain access to the keys or servers used to sign updates. But again, this can be prevented through various management and control measures.

Bad hosting environment and out of date technology

Like all the other things mentioned, both the hosting environment and the technology are important to ensure the security of your website. For example, although WordPress offers PHP ver. 7.x.x or higher, many users are still using PHP ver. 5.6, which leaves room for attacks.

You have to use the latest technologies as well as automatic backups, automatic security updates, two-step authentication, etc.

DDoS

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a type of malicious attack where compromised devices are used to request or send information/data from a WP hosting server. This slows down your website, eventually leading to the loss of your own website as you can no longer access it.

Of course, there are some things you can do to prevent this, such as disabling APIs and XML RPC, both of which allow third-party apps to interact with your website. You can also enable website application firewall and generally keep its website secure.

 

WordPress security in a few simple steps:

 

1. Strong passwords and user permissions

Passwords are one of the most important things when it comes to different accounts. By using weak and easy to guess passwords, one provides an opportunity to hackers to easily break into one’s website and steal valuable information etc.

One should avoid weak passwords like “123456” or names, birthdays, etc. Another option is two-step authentication, which makes it difficult for hackers to break into the website.

2. Install a WordPress backup solution

As mentioned earlier, backup solution (e.g. like the free All in one WP migration plugin) is one of the steps that can make everything easier for users.

After all, if something happens to go wrong, if you have a backup of the entire site, then at least you have something to go on from.

If you don’t have a backup and your hosting doesn’t have regular backups either, then all your information would be lost unfortunately.

3. Delete default “admin” account

This is a basic thing to do, but still very important. Namely, you shouldn’t use the default administrator account or the default admin name, because everyone knows it.

Basically, you should delete the old “admin” account and create a new one. Once you have done this + if you use a strong password and backup solution, your website will be pretty safe/protected.

4. Use high quality WP security tools

By using high quality security WP tools, you ensure that your website is protected from various types of malicious attacks and viruses. Some of the great premium security tools you can use to secure your CMSs is our Virusdie, especially when you combine it with some great Intrusion Detection System.

Make sure that you only use one type of security tool for your WP website so that the functions do not overlap, which could cause problems with the proper functioning and stability of your website.

5. Spam filtering

This spam protection provides various types of security related to logins, registrations, content, etc. It simply finds, i.e. identifies potential risks or malicious attacks that can happen through content or registrations, and then deletes them, preventing the same thing from happening in the future.

Avoid nulled (pirated) software at all costs

A nulled or pirated software is basically a modified version of the legitimate version. You should avoid it on your websites because of the risk of getting hacked. This can also cause various types of bugs and security vulnerabilities.

In addition, when using nulled software, if something happens, you will not get support from the developer and in addition, you will probably have some compatibility issues and no new features (no automatic updates).

Using an SSL certificate

As an additional measure to protect your website, we strongly recommend encrypting your data. This removes risk and potential problems and ensures that your website is up to date and secure, which is already standard these days.

Final thoughts on securing your WordPress website:

In conclusion, all the protective measures you can take to secure your website are the only right approach to prevent potential risks and attacks. All the steps and all the security hardening (mentioned earlier) must be implemented simultaneously and properly, as everything related to the security of your websites is interconnected.

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Article by Ivica Delic
founder of FreelancersTools,
exclusively for Virusdie.

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