PHP Vulnerability: A Wake-Up Call For Your Security Approach?

Worldwide issues with PHP highlight that nobody is truly safe online.

So what’s hiding in your system that hackers could exploit?

Last week’s public exposure of the vulnerability within PHP was very surprising - mainly because of just how many organisations found it so surprising.

In the wake of the news emerging, some of the biggest companies and public bodies on the planet laid bare the extent of the chaos - and the scale of the risk that it posed:

• Thirty-six UK government services either totally or partially unavailable

• Tens of thousands of attempts to exploit the vulnerability within Cloudflare’s systems in the space of a few hours

• Amazon detecting hacking attempts targeting PHP

Of course, much of the issue relating to PHP was unforeseen. But if some of the biggest businesses and public bodies in the world, with all their financial resources and extensive IT teams, are feeling the heat - what must it be like for smaller organisations?

If there’s anything that SMEs can take from this whole affair, it’s a reminder that security really is a never-ending fight. Regular patching, updates, backups and security reviews might not be particularly sexy to bring up in a board meeting, but it’s the bread-and-butter stuff that will keep your business out of the headlines rather than them.

So whether your security is taken care of in-house by your IT team, or it’s outsourced to a third-party provider - don’t you think now is a timely reminder to check everything is running OK?