WordPress security 2026 best practices
When it comes to WordPress security, most issues don’t start or end with WordPress itself – rather from how it is maintained, accessed and how its overall set up looks like.
This was the central theme of the recent WP Legends panel hosted by Gautam Khorana from Seahawk Media. Experts from Patchstack, Hosting.com and Human Made discussed real-world WordPress security issues and challenges – from vulnerability intelligence to enterprise-grade protection strategies.
In this article, we’ve covered the most relevant insights and practical takeaways from that conversation led between Ben Gabler, Chief Product Officer at hosting.com; Oliver Sild, Founder & CEO at Patchstack and Ryan McCue, Director of Product at Human Made.
What actually breaks WordPress security
One of the first questions raised during the discussion was deceptively simple:
What is the very first thing people should understand about WordPress security?
According to Ben Gabler, the answer is not a tool, plugin, or firewall rule, it’s as simple as:
“Don’t use admin as a username.”
A rather small and often overlooked detail, but one that perfectly illustrates a broader issue: many WordPress security problems start with basic access hygiene and not advanced exploits.
Quick sidenote: at WPBakery, security is one of our top priorities. Because of that, we’ve partnered with Patchstack so that any reported vulnerability is checked and resolved successfully. If you believe you’ve discovered a security issue, feel free to submit the details here. This helps keep WPBakery safe and secure.
The three most common reasons WordPress sites get hacked
When it comes to actual breach causes, Oliver Sild, Founder and CEO of Patchstack, broke it down into three core categories:
1. Compromised accounts
Stolen or weak credentials remain the most common entry point. Once an attacker gains valid access, traditional “perimeter” protections often become irrelevant.
2. Security vulnerabilities
Outdated plugins, themes, or unsupported extensions expose known vulnerabilities that automated bots actively scan for across the web.
3. Human error
Misconfigurations, reused passwords, shared admin accounts, or installing unverified software continue to play a major role – especially on smaller sites.
Adding important context, Ben Gabler emphasized a reality that’s often ignored in technical discussions:
Most customers aren’t tech-savvy.
Security advice that assumes deep technical knowledge often tend to fail not because it’s wrong, but because it’s unrealistic and incomprehensible for the majority of site owners.
Why “secure hosting” isn’t enough
A recurring theme during the panel was misplaced trust in hosting alone as a security guarantee.
Patchstack recently published research that challenges this assumption directly which shows that, while hosting providers do block some attack vectors, the majority of WordPress-specific vulnerabilities still reach the application layer, where hosting protections no longer apply. This reinforces a key takeaway from the panel that – hosting security is necessary – but it is not sufficient and only by clients and hosts working as partners rather than vendors, things like security, reliability and scalability naturally improve.
The first 10 minutes after a hack matter
Another question discussed was what to do immediately after a breach is detected. According to Oliver Sild, the instinct to “clean everything up” right away can actually be harmful.
Instead, the first priority should be:
- Create a backup to preserve evidence
- Avoid overwriting logs or modified files
- Have a predefined cleanup process ready
Without this, teams often lose the ability to understand how the breach happened – making repeat incidents far more likely.
The hard truth about WordPress security
One of the most important and sobering moments came from Ryan McCue, Director of Product at Human Made, who said:
“The reality is, everyone will get hacked at some point, no matter how secure you are.”
The difference between a minor incident and a major failure is being ready and prepared for when that happens. And it will happen. That means:
- Having incident response processes
- Testing them before they’re needed
- Knowing exactly who does what when something breaks
Backups: Necessary, but often misunderstood
A final practical warning came from Oliver Sild regarding backups – a topic many teams assume is “solved.”
Knowing that backups are often out of date, restored without patching, reintroduced with the same vulnerabilities that caused the breach, Oliver shared the following takeaway:
Whenever a backup is restored, everything must be updated immediately – otherwise, the site is effectively rolled back into a known-vulnerable state.
Wrapping up
As we said, this episode was packed with practical points and advice and if you’ve missed it, feel free to catch up on Seahawk Media YouTube channel. In the meantime, let us know in our Community how you are taking care of WordPress security and are you following best practices?