Get Even More Visitors To Your Blog, Upgrade To A Business Listing >>

Keeping Your Website Updated to Avoid Being a News Story

Last week we celebrated Safer Internet Day. For many people it was just a hashtag holiday, but for us website professionals it was a reminder of just what our jobs entail: keeping websites update to date and keeping up with Security standards to avoid being involved in the latest breach.

Let this sink in, 2 out of 3 people have already had their data stolen in a security breach. It doesn’t matter if they had a secure password or two step authentication on their accounts, somewhere there was a breach. From Yahoo to Home Depot to the latest breach for Arbys patrons, 64% of Americans have had their data stolen through breaches according to WordFence.com.

Stolen credit cards are one thing, their repercussions can be minor or HUGE. But if someone’s debit card number was captured and their bank account was emptied, their entire family could end up homeless in the process of trying to recover.

What about the even bigger side of cyber hacks?

Election 2016 Hack Comes From WordPress

Just days after Safer Internet Day the US Department of Homeland Security released a report that Wordpress was used as a command and control server during the 2016 Election Hack. Yep, WordPress, the same website program used by businesses large and small around the world left a door open because the website owner did not maintain their website.

How did this happen? Simple, a WordPress plugin was never Updated even after the plugin author released the security fix last year. A simple click to update the plugin would have prevented the attack through this avenue.

Website Defacements on the Rise

It seems Safer Internet Day also became a competition to hackers with website defacements on the rise by over 26% in just a 24 hours period, to put that in numbers, that’s over 1 million websites hacked with messages from the hackers toting their signature for having hacked your website. From small mom and pop sites to Glenn Beck to the National American University no website was safe unless it was updated to close the REST-API vulnerability. Not sure if your WordPress website is susceptible to this vulnerability? Get ahold of Appletree MediaWorks we can let you know the status of your website and help you get things updated to be safe.

You Need a Maintenance Package

There’s a reason that good web development firms offer monthly maintenance packages to keep your website update to date and running smoothly, security is the number one reason. The majority of our clients do take advantage of our affordable maintenance packages and trust in our union team to stay up on threats and updates. We’ve had clients that choose to save a couple of bucks each month and maintain their own sites, some of them are diligent about running their updates and stay safe but many of them don’t run the updates leaving themselves open to security holes just like the websites we’re hearing about in the news.

The post Keeping Your Website Updated to Avoid Being a News Story appeared first on Appletree Mediaworks.



This post first appeared on Web Solutions Blog By Appletree MediaWorks, LLC, please read the originial post: here

Share the post

Keeping Your Website Updated to Avoid Being a News Story

×

Subscribe to Web Solutions Blog By Appletree Mediaworks, Llc

Get updates delivered right to your inbox!

Thank you for your subscription

×