Background
Security is arguably the most important reason why you should keep your Magento website up to date. Magento currently powers 18% of all e-commerce websites in the world, with an estimated 250,000 stores built on the platform. Due to its immense popularity, Magento, like most leading platforms, is a popular target for hackers, malicious code distributors and data thieves.
Every time a security vulnerability is reported, Magento releases an update that fixes the issue. This means that if you are not using the latest version of Magento, then you are using software with known security vulnerabilities. Hackers can search for websites running the older version, and you may become a victim of a sophisticated attack.
It is not just Magento itself that can be vulnerable, plugins can also be exploited by hackers. You need to make sure that all your Magento plugins, themes, and the core itself is always up to date.
In 2018 alone, there were 11 major releases by Magento relating to security and performance functionality and with more than 4,000 Magento 1 plugins now available and already over 2,400 for Magento 2, it is a full time job to manage the update process.
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