These days, many people install many different scripts and services on their web hosting account.

Here is what I want you to do.  Make a list of scripts you have installed, and put them in two categories – the ones that you use on your web site and those you just installed to see what they look like.  You should remove any scripts that are not fundamental to your web site’s operation.

Choose, Update or Delete? - Keeping out of date scripts that you do not use on your web site is probably the number one way people can gain access to your hosting account.  Once you are sure the script you don’t use are gone, then you need to make sure you are using the latest version of and scripts you do use and that are a part of your web site.  Go to that script’s official web site to make sure you are running the latest version of the script.

Update Your Installed Script’s Plugins - Also, with some content management systems like Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal, you will want update any plugins you might have in place too.  Think of those as little installed scripts that can also be compromised.  The same thing could be said for any forum software, e-commerce script or more.  Many scripts out there use plugins to extend the original script, however each of these are security risks that you need to make sure you keep up to date and patched with the most recent version.

General rule of thumb time here, you shouldn’t keep any script installed on your web hosting account if you are not using it.  For scripts that are a part of your web site’s operation, be sure to keep the main script and the plugins that are apart of the script up to date.