PHP is the most popular language widely used for website design and development. It is almost a quarter-century old but is largely in use in various web applications proving to be a compelling language which developers can widely use to deliver interesting products and services.

The language uses HTML and a range of platforms to integrate and create functional applications, which include the CMS system. Still, since December, the support for versions 5.6 and 7.0 will be dropped, and the deadline has not been extended, which means that to continue upgrading the version of the security support, the website should have the newer version, 7.2. 

Version 7 introduced a change in the internal structure, which helped improve the pages' download speed. The major advantage is that it comes with every Linux system and can run on Windows.

Its use is widely spread between the Nginx web server, Apache and Microsoft. PHP is easier to program and use than complex ASP.NET code, which requires a lot of learning. 

Almost 78.9 per cent of the sites use PHP, and 62 per cent are still running on version 5, even though version 5.6 is no more backed by security. As per recent studies by the Web Technology survey, almost 61.8 per cent of the server-side programming languages use it, and 41.5 per cent use version 5.6.  

Several content management systems are working on it, where updates may cost time and money. For example, Drupal is the CMS that has posted that an upgrade will be needed to PHP 7 or higher versions starting March 2019 to retain the security aspects of websites.

Many risks are associated with the latest version, including bug fixes and updating features. This can be excessively time-consuming, but the website must implement security to avoid cyber hacks.  

The prior versions were highly vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and most security researchers had warned website owners to improve their security to avoid loss or exploitation of databases. 

PHP accounts for 68 per cent of exploits (as published in the Exploit data repository). The attacks are alarming as the page provides some of the weakest links and some of the broadest attack surfaces.

One of the common data MySQL is used by PHP web applications, and the hackers can attain the keys to the entire website online system by getting access to the Admin phpMyAdmin file. F5 Labs recently found

that 42 per cent of the 1.5 million events targeted 100,000 URLs aimed at PMA access. In comparison, 87 per cent of the traffic came from IPs belonging to the university campus in North America. 

We at Mont Digital can provide simple methods to migrate to the latest PHP versions and provide superior security to websites to avert any such risks or loss of data or cyber-attacks.

To find out more about our web development and website design plans, contact Mont Digital on www.montdigital.com or email info (@) Montdigital.com