It’s well documented that keeping WordPress core, plugins and themes up to date is one of the best ways to keep your WordPress website secure against hacks and malware. This is why WordPress updates are a core part of our services in all our WordPress Maintenance Plans.
The importance of WordPress updates has been reinforced with a new report by WordPress security experts at Sucuri and the report has found some interesting stuff that we can learn from.
The results point to three plugins being responsible for 25% of all WordPress hacks in the first quarter fo 2016. According to the report, outdated versions of RevSlider, GravityForms plugins, and TimThumb Script caused the majority of WordPress hacks and exploits.
It is important to emphasize that this data doesn’t illustrate a problem with the plugins or the plugin developers themselves, but instead highlights the need for website owners to keep their sites and plugins up to date.
It’s easy to talk about keeping a website up to date but it’s a different thing to actually do it and do it in a way that is timely, safe and secure. As well, it’s wise to have a fallback plan in place just in case a plugin or theme update causes issues on your site, or brings down your site completely. There’s much more to WordPress updates than just clicking that Update button in WordPress admin. What happens when something goes wrong? How often should you do updates? Should you enable auto update?
Total WP Support takes the stress out of all these questions and more. We handle all the WordPress Updates on your behalf and make decisions based on what and when to update based on the current recommendations from WordPress, any current security issues and the needs of your particular website.
The report from Sucuri highlights security issues due to out-of-date software, but it also notes that WordPress fares much better than its competition when it comes to security. So that’s great news for all WordPress website owners out there!
