Google published its State of Website Security in 2016 today, reporting that there was a 32 percent increase in the number of hacked sites in 2016 compared to 2015. Google added that it doesn’t expect the trend to slow down anytime soon.
Google said that these hackers are getting even “more aggressive,” and at the same time more sites are letting their sites and content management systems become out of date, leaving themselves open to more security holes.
As an incentive to verify your site with Google Search Console, one data point that is key is that “84% [of] webmasters who do apply for reconsideration are successful in cleaning their sites.” Of course, those that do take the time to verify their sites with Search Console are also more likely to care about their outdated CMS package.
Google also stated that 61% of webmasters never get notifications about their hacked sites due to the fact the site has not been verified within the search console.
From our experience, any WordPress site that does not update the core files, theme and plugins on a regular basis will have a very high chance of getting hacked. We have clients from other companies coming to us on a weekly basis to deal with their hacked site, and we can confirm with Googles findings, it is definitely a growing problem.
Generally, the cost of fixing a hacked site is far greater than the cost of hosting with us on our dedicated servers where we will handle all the updates for you and monitor the site for security breaches
Contact us today if you would like more information about secure WordPress Hosting
