Are you looking for the best WordPress security plugins to secure your WordPress site from Hackers and Spam attacks?
WordPress is one of the widely used CMS platforms for creating a website. With large websites, there are many possibilities related to site hacks, malware attacks, and brute force attacks.
In recent reports generated by Sucuri, 90% of WordPress Websites were infected with malware in 2018.
If you are creating a site you would be looking for security measures for your site. Therefore, some of the important features that you would be looking for while you install a security plugin is:
- Active security monitoring
- File scanning
- Malware scanning
- Database security
- Theme and Plugin files security
- Blacklist monitoring
- Security Hardening
- Post-hack actions
- Firewalls
- Brute force attack protection
- Notifications for when a security threat is detected
- And Many more
Why use a security plugin?
As mentioned by Sucuri in their reports there are millions of websites that are infected by malware and other security vulnerabilities. A security breach can not only cause serious damage to your WordPress site but also steal data and other valuable information that is stored in your database.
- If you are not using any security plugin then it is quite possible that your site is not secure.
- Intruders can breach into your site and steal important data or corrupt your site.
- Your reputation will get destroyed and also it will affect your SEO rankings on Search Engines.
- You can lose control of your website as the data that gets displayed on your site does not belong to you.
If you are using any security plugin then it should have some of the basic features which should help your website secure against intruders. Therefore, some WordPress security plugins should come with the following features:
- Firewall: Firewalls monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic on your website and filter out vulnerable bots based on the predetermined security rules before they reach your website server.
- Scan: Scanning your website on a regular basis is recommended to find malware or other potential threats.
- Fixes: A good security plugin should guarantee malware removal and fixes on the site should you get attacked.
Finally, when your website gets hacked you get exposed. Your readers will see unwanted data, wrong redirection, loss in SEO page rankings, or loss of your entire site data.
Don’t rely only on Security Plugins.
The security of your website relies on the hosting on which the website is hosted on. Before looking for better security plugins you need to make sure that you are hosted by the best hosting service provider. Relying just on security plugins does not guarantee that your WordPress site would be secured from hackers.
That’s why to choose the best hosting service which guarantees not only hosting on your website but also provide security and a backup feature for your WordPress website and keeping away hackers from accessing your site.
Some of the basic things that you need to make sure:
- We always ignore themes and plugin updates, So always Keep WordPress, plugins, and themes up to date. If your themes and plugins are not regularly getting updates, please get in touch with the theme and plugin providers for an update.
- Since people think of their budget they normally buy cheap hosting companies. I recommend using a good WordPress hosting company like Bluehost.
- Passwords are some of the most secure information that you should never share with any third person. You should use strong passwords so that it is not easily crackable.
- Take WordPress backup regularly.
- Don’t install WordPress plugins or themes from unknown or untrusted sources.
- Take care of the permissions you give to your website users, authors, and editors.
- Sometimes unknowingly you install some software from an untrusted source and they come with viruses and bugs with that, your themes and plugin files also get infected and so as the whole computer. To secure your computer and make sure that you update and protect your computer with Antiviruses and Firewalls.
Which are the Best WordPress Security Plugins?
Below I have mentioned some of the best WordPress security plugins which you can use for your WordPress site. Some of the WordPress plugins can be available for FREE on the WordPress.org website and some of the plugins do have a free and paid version that expands some advanced features for security measures.
Finally, let’s check out some of the best WordPress security plugins which you can use for securing your website.
WordFence Security
WordFence is one of the most popular WordPress security plugins that you can use for securing your website. It has everything that you need for securing your WordPress site.
Right from Firewall security, WordPress Security Scanning, Login security, and many more. It blocks large malicious website traffic which affects the speed and performance of your website.
It limits login attempts from brute force attacks. Malware scanner checks core files of themes and plugins, bad URLs, backdoors, and malicious redirects.
Similarly, with 2-Factor authentication, you can easily block login attempts on your site. Also, you can enable the Captcha feature and block logins if the attempt is found suspicious.
Above all, a WordPress security scanner, will check your website posts, pages, comments, and files that do not include unwanted URLs and suspicious content. You can block specific country IPs who are deliberately engaging and trying to access your site.
Additionally, It repairs files and overwrites the original version that has changed during the course of time. You can also compare your core files and provide a detailed report as to what changes have been made.
WordFence has the feature of site cleaning where the security analyst will check and investigate as to how hackers gained access to your site. They provide an in-depth report and investigation so that you could be careful while uploading any files on your server.
Finally, the WordFence plugin is free but with the premium version, you can unlock many features that help you to secure your website in real-time. At last, once you install the plugin, you will get an update on your email about the version and also the possible threat which you have to deal with in real-time to secure your website.
Sucuri
Hence. this feature is extremely important to know system administrators what type of changes and what’s going on on your site for security measures.
If your site gets blacklisted from Google Search Engine you can use the remote malware scanning feature. Sucuri Website Firewall is a great tool to get rid of DOS attacks, software vulnerabilities, brute force attacks, and many features that you can secure using firewall techniques.
Moreover, with optimized CDN, you can boost your site speed and performance. If you ever need to set a backup for your site then Sucuri Website Backups features help you to easily backup all of your data in minutes and store it on their server cloud.
You should contact the support team if the site gets hacked. As a result, a dedicated group of security experts can fix your site and remove the malware code which causes the site to be hacked.
iThemes Security
iThemes Security formerly known as Better WP Security plugin is a common but most powerful security plugin which you can use for your site. It gives you more than 30+ ways to secure and protect your website.
Any WordPress site can be easy gets targeted with Malicious code and malware vulnerabilities through untrusted plugin downloads. The plugin can be easily available on the WordPress website which is a free version.
For some advanced features, you can purchase and download the plugin from the iThemes security official website.
With the Pro features, you can use 2FA where you can receive a code on your Google Gmail. The plugin will scan your site on a day-to-day basis to search if any malware gets infected on your site or not. If you have added a weak password the plugin will prompt you to add strong password security for your WordPress site.
With Google Captcha, you can stop spam registrations on your site. If multiple login attempts fail it will block the hosts to prevent brute force attacks. One of the coolest features that iThemes provide is that any changes to the file will automatically send an email alert to the admin of the site.
You can change the way of login into your WordPress by changing the default URL of your website. Easily schedule database backups and store them at off-site destinations.
Finally, iThemes provide the complete solution to your WordPress website with malware scanning which uses Sucuri SiteCheck. Other features like protection to your website, login authentication, backups, and email notifications you can use for your site.
Jetpack
Jetpack offers Security, Site Management, and Performance-based plugin for your site. It is one of the popular plugins which comes pre-installed on some of the popular hosts. It is open-source software built by WordPress developers to manage your site performance and security.
Jetpack helps you with any security-related issues like brute-force attacks and unauthorized login attempts which will notify you through emails.
With a premium plan, you can unlock many advanced security tools like spam filtering, downtime monitoring, backups of your site, a 2FA login, and a record of every change or update that you have made on your site.
With Jetpack site performance tools you can easily optimize your site images, be mobile-friendly to reduce bandwidth usage, and have many CSS and JS files optimized from the Jetpack server. Basic protection and services will be provided with the Free version of the plugin but with the premium version, you can explore many features and protect your site.
Real-Time backups that you can easily set the time and it will automatically download backups from time to time. With the downtime monitoring feature, you will get notifications about your site performance.
Automated malware scanning helps you to check if any backdoor or bots are not available on any of your files and moreover, the fixes and detailed reports on threats help you to fix the affected files in real time.
Jetpack has all the features that a basic WordPress site needs for Security, Performance, and Management. From securing your files, Protecting your data, and taking regular backups this plugin with power pack tools that you can use to reach your goals.
In conclusion, the plugin is recommended by one of the best CMS platforms WordPress, and the best WordPress hosting provider Bluehost.
SiteLock
SiteLock is a WordPress security and malware detection plugin that you can use for your WordPress site. To get advanced features, you will be installing many untrusted or invalid license plugins. This will be a gateway for hackers to enter your site through malicious codes and backdoors.
SiteLock has many features that you can use for protecting your site from cyber threats. Website scanning, Malware Removal, Website Firewall, DDOS attacks, Vulnerability patching, and many more.
If your website gets hacked or blacklisted on Google Search Engine you can contact the SiteLock team. They will fix your site with the issues and protect your site from future attacks, increase site speed, and protect website forms.
SiteLock has features like SiteLock Smart for automated malware removal, SiteLock Infinity for continuous site scanning, and SiteLock TrueShield which blocks bots and websites through a firewall.
The plugin works on all open-source website platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, and even if you are using a custom code website or eCommerce platform you can use SiteLock security management tools to secure your website.
Whether you are a beginner or a professional WordPress developer who is building a site or personal blog you will be needing a Security plugin that helps you to manage your site from malware and other cyber threats.
Finally, the plugin not only helps you to secure your website from intruders but also gives you a SiteLock trust seal to boost visitor confidence in your site. Nevertheless, it will also increase the page speed and performance of your site and save bandwidth with CDN.
VaultPress
VaultPress is a real-time backup and security plugin built by WordPress developers. It backs up all the files, media files, comments, posts, and pages. You can use this plugin for protecting your site from hackers and other bots who try to gain access to your site.
In addition to that, the plugin makes it easy with daily backups and ensures that your website is scanned daily and not affected by malware. The plugin helps you to monitor the changes in real-time and informs you what changes have been done on any of your WordPress sites.
With backups being an important feature you can easily download and upload the backups quick time.
ValutPress, partnered with Akismet so not only fixing the sites with bots and hacks. You can get protection from Spam registrations, comments, Goodwill, and SEO. VaultPress helps you with site migration from your current hosting provider.
Backups and restoration of files can be possible with one click button. Additionally, fixing vulnerabilities made easy which notifies the admin of the changes gets done on your site.
Hide My WP
Hide My WP is one of the best security WordPress plugins that you can use for your WordPress site. With this plugin, you can easily hide your WordPress from attackers, hackers, and spammers.
It hides your default WordPress admin URL and renames it so that intruders cannot know the exact URL to access your site’s backend. Above all, you can hide the default WordPress name and files without changing any files or folders. This means nobody knows that you are using WordPress software.
Additionally, you can change WordPress permalinks and redirect any 404 pages to the custom page. With this plugin, you can hide themes and plugins’ directory folders and remove stylesheet info from the page source.
Furthermore, you can disable the category and archive page URLs. Hide all necessary files like readme.txt and license files to hide the theme or plugin information. Change the upload URL from your site folder where all your images get stored. Furthermore, you can provide a dummy URL to the users so that they cannot get easy access.
Remove unnecessary menu classes and clean up from antispam protection. Similarly, remove WordPress feeds and meta info from headers and footer files. This plugin is perfect for any user who needs to hide his WordPress site identity from hackers. Any unanimous user who tries to gain access to your site can hide all the sections.
Anti Malware Security and BruteForce Firewall
Anti Malware Security plugin helps you to secure your site from hackers and brute force attacks on your site. This plugin helps you to block SoakSoak malware from exploiting your WordPress site. Furthermore, it scans your site completely and removes known security threats, backdoor scripts, and database injections.
The plugin will fix the wp-login to block brute-force login attempts to your site. additionally, it will check if any malware gets affected by your WordPress files or not.
It is free so you can use this plugin for small-scale websites like a blog or personal WordPress websites. Finally, you can use this plugin to secure your website from brute force attacks and malware vulnerabilities on your site.
Conclusion
In conclusion, for different sites, there are many security plugins that you can use for your site. If you are a WordPress beginner then it is possible that you will be looking for some of the best plugins to secure your site.
Here, I have listed some of the top WordPress security plugins which are popular and based on usage.
You use the plugin which has multiple features like taking backups, restoring files, and providing the best security from hackers.
Have I missed any of your favorite plugins do let me know which plugin you have used and why?
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