When the phone rang after 5pm on a Thursday evening a couple years ago, I hesitated to take the call.
I don’t usually answer phone calls after hours, but I recognized the phone number was from one of my clients. A client I rarely hear from.
I answered the phone, and quickly learned my client’s site had been hacked. It was their busiest time of the year, and they couldn’t afford to have the site down. Could I fix it?
Uh oh. What happened? After a short talk with my client, I set to work.
A review of the site files quickly revealed the cause: injected code in a PHP file.
With help from Sucuri Security, I was able to bring my client’s site back online in less than two hours. And made sure the client was set up with security monitoring and regular backups.
I’ve been a fan of Sucuri’s services ever since.
Now, whenever I work with a new client, I emphasize the need to maintain their site after launch, with maintenance services to keep the site secure, updated, and backed up.
I do my best to stay current on security news and how to keep sites safe from hackers. Thankfully, companies like Sucuri Security regularly publish posts and information about keeping sites secure.
First Quarter 2016 Web Hacked Trends Report
When Sucuri’s quarterly Websites Hacked Trends report was released last week, sharing the results of over 11,000 infected sites in first quarter 2016, I couldn’t wait to read the latest news on hacked sites.
I learned over a third of the websites online are powered by four systems: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla! and Magento. And of the 11,000+ hacked websites analyzed:
- Over 75 percent were using WordPress
- Over 50 percent of the infected WordPress sites were out-of-date
- Most compromises across all systems were not due to issues with the system, rather with the deployment and configuration
- Magento has become a bigger target for hackers
Conclusion
Keeping your site secure and free from hacks is critical to your business or organization. You don’t want potential customers visiting your site only to discover it’s been defaced, or worse.
Based on my own experience, hacks seem to be on the rise. I’ve spent more time this year fielding questions from website owners whose sites were hacked, as well as fixing hacked sites, than in any prior year.
