The importance of upgrades

We all find it painful and time consuming to upgrade our server software every few weeks. After all, we want to spend time writing articles rather than upgrading the software.

I fell prey to an SQL injection hack yesterday on my YPOPs! website which runs on a combination of PostNuke and PNphpBB. My hosting provider, ICDSoft, was quick to detect this and shut down the site for a few hours to prevent further attacks. I spent a good 4 hours yesterday upgrading to the latest releases and applying all the security patches released after that.

I’ve learnt a few good lessons from this now:

• Subscribe to new release alerts for the software you’re using on your server.
• Ensure you upgrade your server software for each and every security patch/upgrade that is released. After all, having your site up and running is more valuable to you and your business than it being shut down for a few hours after an attack.