It was great to have a conversation with Robert Abela at Melapress recently about a past experience with a compromised website and website security as a contribution to their newly launched “Wall of Security Stories”:
https://melapress.com/security-stories/the-hidden-compromise-behind-a-wordpress-website-defacement
The incident we discussed happened a few years ago, but it really brought home the importance of keeping on top of software updates and monitoring whether plugins are still being actively maintained.
When your website launched it (hopefully!) had fully up-to-date plugins with (hopefully!) no known vulnerabilities, but now that a few years have past since launch are these same plugins still being actively developed?
Over time the underlying software on your server can change, the versions of PHP, MySQL / MariaDB database server can become obsolete, even the underlying linux OS can become outdated. Do you know if all of these aspects of the server your site is hosted on are up to date?
If you’re not sure about that how up-to-date your website / plugins or your server then an audit of your website infrastructure might be overdue. Please get in touch using my “Request a WordPress website audit form” if you would like me to undertake an audit of your site and help ensure your website infrastructure is up to date.