Why Should You Update Your Website? Don't Get Hacked!

If you already have a website, you know how valuable of a tool it can be in finding and communicating with your potential customers or clients. When setting up their website, most businesses are smart in investing a chunk of their time and effort into building a strong online presence. They know the value in having a well-designed website. However, many people don’t realize that creating and developing their website is just half of the battle. A website is a part of your marketing strategy that should be tended to, and maintained, quite often.
The internet is a constantly evolving entity and you have to be able to update your website frequently to keep up with the changes. Not only will updating your website keep your content fresh, engaging and timely, but you will be improving the security of your website as well.
If you don't know yet why should you update your website, you are probably already putting your website in danger. If you are not continually updating your website, hackers and cyber criminals will see you as an easy target. If your third party applications are outdated, your anti-virus software isn’t up to date and you are still using a weak password, you are making your website extremely vulnerable to attacks. It’s crucial to update your website often to create a strong defense against cyber criminals. You should put just as much effort into maintaining your website as you did into its initial development. Unfortunately, once a website has been hacked, it’s going to take a lot of work to nurse it back to optimal health. The damage that hackers could potentially cause could be highly expensive and difficult to repair.

Updating your website can involve several different tactics, including, but not limited to: updating your software, creating tough passwords, and creating backups regularly. These practices should aid in creating a barrier against hackers. Creating a strong, hard to guess password and changing it often is a vital step in defending your website. A good, strong password should be lengthy, void of common dictionary terms or personal information, and should always include a good mix of characters, numbers and upper and lower case letters.
A business would be smart to hire an experienced technician to better perform these defensive strategies to ensure a fool-proof security for your website. If you are a business that is using a WordPress platform, it is even more important to continually upgrade your blog for security purposes and here’s why: 83% of hacked WordPress blogs are not upgraded!

Updating your Website Powered by WordPress

When you refuse to install those updates (you know what I’m talking about) you are leaving yourself vulnerable to hackers. It’s so easy for hackers to tell if your site is not up to date and when they see that it’s not, they will target you. Not only do updates create a stronger defense, but the majority of updates are created to fix a previous problem in an earlier version. Most of the time, this means correcting a hole they found in security. When an update is released, sometimes those security loopholes that they are fixing are mentioned in its release. So, when a hacker sees that you are using an older version of a plugin, they already know of the holes in your security and can easily figure out how to break your site. Those updates may seem pesky at times, but they really are important to keeping your site safe and secure.

If your WordPress powered website needs updating, but you are not entirely sure where to begin, let us help you! Click on Paveya to get started.