Keeping your WordPress site secure is always a great idea, since WordPress is the most popular platform, malicious hackers and spammers often target it.
Sadly, many website owners fall into the trap of thinking hackers only target big companies or popular blogs, so they underrate the importance of keeping their site secure. But, in reality, hackers attack sites not only for the usual things like stealing personal data and building backlinks, but they’re also doing it fun.
So in other words, having a small website doesn’t guarantee that your site is safe from attacks. The best way to keep your site secure is by installing a WordPress security plugin onto your site.
Ensuring security for your WordPress site can be tricky, especially if you are not an expert in WordPress. But with the right WordPress security plugin, you don’t need to get into technicalities of keeping your site secure.
In this WordPress Wednesday article, I present to you 5 WordPress security plugins to help you find the best WordPress security plugins for your site.
1. Wordfence Security
Wordfence is one of the most popular WordPress security plugins available. A free version of the plugin is available through the official WordPress plugins repository. The free plugin comes with essential features like web application firewall, malware scanner, and protection from brute attacks.
Wordfence monitors brute force attacks and locks out any attempts after you select on how many is too many login attempts. You can lock out anyone who uses an invalid username and even enable 2-factor authentication for better security.
The plugin also has a country blocking feature, where you can stop attacks and content theft originating from a specific geographic region. Based on pattern matching and IP ranges, you can prevent entire malicious networks and human activity that looks suspicious.
It lets you check your IP address reputation so you can ensure your customer emails are not marked as spam.
Price: Free
2. All In One WP Security & Firewall
All In One WP Security & Firewall is a free security plugin that takes your security for your website to a whole new level. The best thing about this plugin is that all of its features are categorised as basic, intermediate, or advanced, which makes it easy for anyone to enable a group of features without breaking your site.
With this plugin, you can find a security strength meter right on your WordPress dashboard. It informs you on how secure your website that bee based on the security points scoring system. The plugin also adds a dashboard widget that recommends you enable specific features on your site to achieve a minimally acceptable level of security.
Price: Free
3. Shield Security
Shield is another excellent WordPress security plugin that has two types of plugin, a free and pro version. This plugin is probably one of the easiest security plugin to setup where you activate it. Then a beautiful, step-by-step wizard will walk you through the basic configuration.
With this plugin, you can find limited login attempts, block automatic brute force bots, Shield also automatically detects malicious file changes and hacks you’d never see within the core files of WordPress. You’ll find 2-Factor Authentication – including Google Authenticator and Email, block 100% automated comments.
So basically Shield Security does what it needs to do, and alerts you if and when you need to inform.
Price: Free
4. iThemes Security
iThemes Security gives you over 30 ways to secure and protect your WordPress site. iThemes Security works to lock down WordPress, fix common holes, stop automated attacks and strengthen user credentials. With advanced features for experienced users, this security plugin can help harden WordPress.
You can get email alerts to be notified of any recent file updates so you know whether if your site has been hacked. Plus it’s locks out any suspicious IP that scans for vulnerabilities on your site.
You can even set an away mode for your site to make your WordPress dashboard inaccessible based on your settings. Additionally, you can schedule database backup to your preferred off-site storage destinations.
Price: Free
5. BulletProof Security
BulletProof Security is another WordPress security plugin that allows you to scan your site for malware, you can set up firewalls, back up your database, and more.
It comes with a one click automatic setup wizard that makes it easy to run the plugin without slow manual setup or configuration. The plugin automatically detects and fixes security threats in real time.
With BulletProof Security IP-based Firewall, you can secure all your plugins from being publicly accessed and exploited.
Price: Free