Our latest WordPress security addition brings us a new plugin scanner added to Shield.

We’ve been talking about our plans to add this new scanner for the past week, when discussing the risk that abandoned WordPress plugins posed to your site.

The is the main change that comes with Shield 7.2, though there are a few other fixes and improvement works that have gone under the hood.

Shield Security 7.2 Release Announcement

New Scanner: Abandoned Plugins

For the full breakdown and explanation of what exactly abandoned plugins are, see the blog post here.

In summary, they’re WordPress.org plugins that haven’t seen updates for over 2 years.

If the scanner detects these on your site, it simply means that you’re running code that is no longer being maintained and will probably not see any updates for a long time, if even at all.

You’ll then have to make the decision – do you continue to run the risk that this plugin presents, or do you take pro-active steps to replace it? As the site admin, this choice is yours to make, but we hope that the scanner will help to make you aware of the potential risks.

Looking ahead to Shield 7.3

As we mentioned before we’ve been looking ahead to what’s to come in 2019 and the features we plan to deliver to protect our WordPress sites.

Depending on how the development goes in the coming weeks, we’ll either release the planned “Mouse Trap” module, or we’ll release a new feature to add protection from idle or abandoned user accounts, that lie dormant on our sites for years.

We’ll announce our plans and further details a little closer to the time.

Comments and Suggestions

As always, please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments below.

We appreciate your ongoing support!