Bekee Gibson, director of CMS at Earthling Interactive, presents on the importance of WordPress as a content management system while discussing its security vulnerabilities and common failures such as insecure hosting and weak passwords. She emphasizes that security is about risk reduction and offers practical advice on enhancing WordPress security, including enforcing strong passwords and regular updates. Gibson reassures small businesses that while they may feel insignificant, they are still potential targets for hackers and suggests proactive measures to improve security.

1. Hi, I’m Bekee Gibson!
🙋 Director of CMS at Earthling Interactive
• Developer, Team Lead, Project Manager for 6y
• Madison WordPress Meetup Organizer for 3y
• Technerd from wayback
Some things I enjoy away from the computer:
🥘 Fooding
🧶 Knitting, a lot
☢ Fallout 4

2. What is WordPress?
WordPress is a Content Management System.
It is much more than a blogging platform.
It’s Open Source, easy to use, and can be customized
to fit your needs, the needs of your staff, and, most
importantly, your customers.

3. Why is WordPress a target? 🎯
All websites on the internet are vulnerable to hacking attempts,
so why does WordPress get a bad rap?
WordPress runs 64% of all CMS sites, or 38% of all websites on the
Internet.
Those odds are pretty good if your goal is to harvest passwords.

4. Why WordPress Fails
No, you’re not at the wrong presentation.
🤓
🤓🤓
🤓🤓🤓
🤓🤓🤓🤓

5. Why WordPress Fails
● Insecure Hosting
● Weak Passwords
● Users and admin access
● Default setup and configuration
● Core out of date
● Plugins & Themes
○ Out of date
○ Out of development
○ Out of service
These all have a common element:
A Human Choice

6. WordPress works when you work with it
Fundamentally, security is not about perfectly secure systems.
Such a thing might well be impractical, or impossible to find
and/or maintain. What security is though is risk reduction, not
risk elimination. It’s about employing all the appropriate
controls available to you, within reason, that allow you to
improve your overall posture reducing the odds of making
yourself a target, subsequently getting hacked. – WordPress
Security Codex

7. Why WordPress Works
Decide about hosting
● 🤓 Shared
● 🤓🤓 Virtual Private Server (VPS)
● 🤓🤓🤓🤓 Dedicated (On Prem)
● 🤓🤓 Managed

8. Enforce a password policy
Why WordPress Works

9. Enforce Two-factor Authorization (2FA)
Why WordPress Works

10. Why WordPress Works
Users and admin access
● 🤓 Make sure ‘admin’ is not a username
● 🤓 Create second admin user, remove the first
● 🤓 Audit users and their roles
SELECT * FROM wp_users WHERE ID=1

11. Why WordPress Works
Setup and configuration
● 🤓 Change database table prefix
● 🤓🤓🤓 Obfuscate, hide, or chmod wp-config.php
○ CHMOD 440 wp-config.php
● 🤓🤓 Disable file editing from the Dashboard
○ define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true);
● 🤓 Serve your site over HTTPS
● 🤓🤓🤓🤓 Use a code repository

12. Why WordPress Works
Keep Core updated
● 🤓 Automatic Background Updates
● Update and test
○ 🤓🤓🤓 Local
○ 🤓🤓 Staging

13. Why WordPress Works
Know your Plugins & Themes
● Keep them updated
● Check on the status
● Get from trusted sources

14. Why WordPress Works
“I’m just a small business with a website, I’m not a target for hackers!”
🏢 vs 🏬
This all sounds like a lot, but you don’t have to do it alone.
🤝

15. Why WordPress Works
Et voilà!
Questions?