As with any other system, your website needs to be secured against hackers, and other website threats that may impede your website’s stability.
Fortunately, there are numerous wordpress security plugins you can install on your WordPress website to keep attackers at bay.
In yesterday’s post, we looked at the free wordpress.com alternative for creating free websites. This article however focuses on the self-hosted wordpress.org website setup.
WordPress.com also has inbuilt security that is handled by the WordPress team. There’s difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.
We’ll be handling the wordpress.org version here. Basically, wordpress.org is self-hosted website. Meaning you install it on your own server and manage it yourself. The main advantage is that you get more control on how your website behaves.
Top 3 Security Plugins
WordFence
Wordfence is a free plugin that has some amazing security features. I use this on my sites more than any other security plugin. It protects your WordPress site without you having to spend a cent.
Wordfence Features:
- Free to use for as many sites as you need
- Monitors visits and hack attempts in real time including origin, their IP address, the time of day, and time spent on your site
- Tracks and alerts you about breached password usage so you can create a new strong password immediately
- Protects from brute force attacks with limiting failed login attempts
The amazing part is that WordFence is free to use. You can download WordFence from your WordPress dashboard.
Sucuri
Another best free WordPress security plugin is Sucuri. The all-in-one security platform is wildly popular for good reason.
Sucuri is free but offers even more advanced features with their pro version. You can still however benefit from the free version.
Sucuri Features:
- You can use Sucuri to cleanup your WordPress site at no additional cost if it gets malware
- The firewall protection helps you block brute force and malicious attacks from accessing your WordPress site
- Sucuri lets you conduct malware scanning
- The plugin keeps track of everything that happens on your site, including file changes, last logins, and failed login attempts
- It reduce server load time and improve your site’s performance by blocking malicious traffic
- Sucuri protects your website against SQL Injections, XSS, and all known attacks
There’s a free version of Sucuri and the Pro version is $299/year. Download and install the free version from your WordPress dashboard just like how you install any other WordPress plugin. Simply search for Sucuri.
Jetpack Security
Jetpack is a well-known plugin lets you easily scan your website for security vulnerabilities. It has other amazing features like providing you stats on your website and alerting you if your website ever goes down. Jetpack is developed and maintained by the guys who developed WordPress.
Jetpack Features:
- As mentioned before, it can alert you via email the moment it detects that your WordPress site is down
- It protects your site against brute force login attacks, spam, and harmful malware
- The premium version has site backups available for you, with 1-click restore
- Organized site activity (stats) and events dashboard
- Provides secure authentication via WordPress accounts. Meaning you can login to your site using your wordpress.com credentials
- Jetpack keeps your WordPress plugins automatically updated. This feature is now natively available in WordPress 5.5
There’s a free version with very little functionality, so you’ll want the Premium version which starts at $9/month. But you should be fine with the free version for starters.
In Conclusion
Security is important. You should take every opportunity to make sure your website is secure for both yourself and your website visitors. Do you use any other security plugin? Let us hear it in the comments below.
