Understanding the Risks of Content Management Systems

In today’s fast-paced business world there’s an ever-growing need for quick changes to web content. This used to be the responsibility of webmasters who created HTML code, JavaScript modules and plugins on the fly, but therein lay a fundamental problem: a crucial task depended on a small handful of people. The process had to be decentralized, so a new method was developed: the web content management system, or CMS. Today, the most popular web CMS platforms – WordPress, Joomla and Drupal – account for 75 percent of the market, and it is common for one or more to be included as a standard feature of web hosting services. Their status attests to their popularity and effectiveness, but CMS platforms also have security issues.

This report, researched and written by the IBM Managed Security Services Threat Research group, examines how web content management systems are vulnerable to cyber attack and provides steps that can be taken to mitigate risks.

Read the complete research report: Understanding the risks of content management systems

Dave McMillen

Senior Threat Researcher, IBM X-Force

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