Is my Website Impacted By The log4j Vulnerability?

You may have seen news about the recent log4j vulnerability issue that is currently circulating. We’re hoping to provide some short insight, and help you ensure that your website is safe and secure.

log4j is a component for Java servlets. If your website is using WordPress, it is using PHP as its server side language (not Java). Most smaller WordPress websites themselves will not be affected by this vulnerability, however websites with third party integrations and plugins may be using software that relies on Java programming.

The best way to protect your website from any vulnerabilities is to ensure that your website software and all plugins are up-to-date. If you are concerned about this vulnerability, or future potential ones, our recommendation is to update your website software to the most recent, stable versions.

At Iceberg, we take security vulnerabilities very seriously, and have maintenance plans in place to ensure our customers websites remain secure.

If you need website help, or have questions about your website’s security, you can always contact our team online or give us a call at 763-350-8762.

The post Answering log4j Vulnerability Questions appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

•         Improve Security
•         Fix Bugs
•         Adding Features and Functionality

Improve Security

The best way to improve your WordPress site’s security is to update your WordPress themes and plugins. While you are at it, remove any plugins that you don’t use to minimize the risk of a hacker exploiting them. There has an uptick in attacks on WordPress sites lately, so it’s a good idea to make it as challenging as possible for hackers to get into yours.

One Customer’s Story of Getting Hacked

We recently worked with a customer whose site got hacked. Thankfully, we found the issue the day it happened and removed all the malicious code. We then had to restore the site, update all security keys and reset all the account passwords, which was time-consuming and expensive for the customer. The plugins were all out of date, the WordPress core was two full versions behind current, so while it is impossible to know precisely how the breach happened, the most likely culprit was the WordPress core being so out of date.

Fix Bugs

Updating WordPress plugins and themes also fixes bugs and general conflicts between plugins. While some people become annoyed when they see it is time to update, again, they should feel good about the fact that the developer of the plugin or theme is doing their due diligence to release an update when they have found something that can adversely affect your website either now or in the future.

One Customer’s Story of a Buggy Plugin

A recent story Recently, a customer’s form stopped working because the ReCaptcha wouldn’t validate. The issue turned out to be a conflict with the Autoptimize plugin – which is used to make your site faster by optimizing CSS, JS, Images, Google fonts, and more. – Seems unrelated, right? But updating the plugin solved the ReCaptcha issue.

Adding Features and Functionality

Updating your WordPress Plugins isn’t just about security and squashing bugs. It’s also done to ensure you have the most up-to-date features and functionality available for your website. Developers work hard to create plugins. So reputable developers will release updates when they learn that there is an issue with the plugin they need to fix or improve. Sometimes they even make special requests.

WP Docs

We had used WP Docs on websites to organize forms for customers in the past and liked how it worked. It did lack one thing, however. It didn’t let you sort the documents by date. This was a feature that one of our customers wanted for their website, so our developer contacted the plugin author to see if they could help. They agreed it was a great idea and said they would include it with the next update. Sure enough, when version 1.7.3 was released, sorting the documents by date was part of the premium features.

Updating Your Plugins Is Easy

Why Should You Keep Your WordPress Plugins Updated? Because it can be made super easy! Iceberg Web Design customers can purchase quarterly or monthly maintenance packages and get all their plugins updated and their forms tested regularly by our website professionals. Contact us today to learn more!

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