Is PLESK *needed* for server to run?
 

Lately I've had a lot of intrusions into my server and vB file through Plesk. First it was an old ajax.php file in vB. We patched that. Then it was through Plesk. We upgraded and patched that. Then it was through plesk again with some "runforestrun" vulnerability. It's been patched again.

Question: Is Plesk NEEDED for the server's day-to-day running? I RARELY use it. Maybe once every couple months for something small like adding an email alias.

If I just renamed the Plesk folder to something else, then re-named it back when I wanted to log into Plesk, would that work? Or are there files in the Plesk folder that are required for the server to do other things?

If your plesk is up to date you want to ask yourself how are they accessing the server? are you on shared hosting? can you vouch for all the php files that are on your server?

You don't need plesk to run a server..If you're managing a dedicated server you should close the port it is running on. If your IP is dynamic but within a range, you should whitelist that range for your server to listen to on that port only.

IMO stop paying for plesk....use webmin (assuming you are using linux)