WordPress dominates the content management system landscape, commanding over 60% market share among the most popular platforms. Given this prevalence, it has become a prime target for malware attacks alongside Joomla!, Drupal, and Magento.
What the Data Reveals
According to Sucuri's quarterly Website Hacked Report for Q1 2016, a comprehensive analysis of over 11,000 infected websites revealed a critical insight:
"In most instances, the compromises analyzed had little, if anything, to do with the core of the CMS application itself, but more with improper deployment, configuration, and overall maintenance."
Outdated Installations Are the Biggest Risk
The data demonstrates significant differences in version currency across platforms. WordPress installations showed relatively better maintenance practices, with 56% running outdated versions. By comparison, the numbers for other platforms were far worse:
- Joomla! — 84% running outdated versions
- Magento — 96% running outdated versions
- Drupal — 81% running outdated versions
Plugins Are the Weak Link
Vulnerabilities in outdated plugins and extensions pose the greatest risk. The report highlighted that 25% of WordPress compromises resulted from outdated plugins — specifically RevSlider, Gravity Forms, and TimThumb — despite security patches being available for over a year.
This means that many of these compromises were entirely preventable. A simple plugin update would have closed the security hole long before attackers could exploit it.
The Core Takeaway
Website security depends primarily on consistent maintenance practices rather than platform choice. Regular updates and ongoing monitoring significantly reduce compromise risks across all CMS platforms.
If you're running a WordPress website, make sure you or your developer are keeping everything up to date — core files, themes, and especially plugins. Prevention is always easier and less costly than recovery.