Joomla is free and there are more 8,600 extensions that allows it to do almost anything you want a CMS to do. Add to that a robust developer community and you've got a compelling product. Being so popular it's no surprise that malicious hackers continue to find new and innovative ways to gain access to your data. With that in mind, here are ways you can prevent these attacks and strengthen the walls of your CMS.

There are all kinds of hacks and attacks that the bad guys can use to infiltrate or bring down your site. These range from remote file inclusion to cross site scripting to the ever-popular SQL injection. Making your site more secure and resilient is a full-time job. For the most part a properly configured instance of Joomla on a properly configured server is about as secure as any other off-the-shelf solution. So why is it that Joomla gets the rap that it's among the most vulnerable open source CMS projects? To answer that question you need only to look in the mirror.

An infrastructure is only as secure as its weakest link and as it turns out a vast majority of security issues related to Joomla are not caused by Joomla's core code. Most security issues stem from old unpatched versions of Joomla or insecure, out-of-date and poorly written third-party extensions.

As the admin you have the daunting task of ensuring your CMS is properly patched, updated and secure. To help you achieve this goal, we've compiled this list of things you can do to improve your Joomla security.