Wednesday 04th December 2013 The Importance of Keeping PHP Up to Date
PHP is a robust and flexible language, used almost everywhere on the web in one form or another - and, increasingly, it's being used in many non-standard environments. As we grow into the so-called Internet of Things - the holy grail of web connectivity where every device we own is integrated into a network - the places PHP can be found are often extremely surprising to the unexpecting user. Never before has this been more highlighted than by a new piece of malware that was identified in the last two weeks by security firm Symantec.
It doesn't take much time to ensure that your current development environments are running the latest version of PHP - a quick version check and an update to your binaries is all it takes. It's possible that you may have to make some updates to any projects that are currently in the works, and if you've got any deployed projects they should be updated to patch any security flaws, but the benefits of the added stability and security far outweigh the hassles involved in staying updated. Even if you're not ready to adopt the latest bleeding edge version, at least try to stay with a version that was released in the current year.
