Do you want to keep your WordPress site secure?
Since WordPress is the most popular website platform, it often targets malicious hackers and spammers.
Unfortunately, many website owners think that hackers only target large companies or popular blogs. But reality is bigger than this. Yes, larger websites tend to be attacked more often because they have more information stored and accessible, but smaller websites aren’t spared from hacker attacks. Why? Not only do hackers attack popular sites to steal personal information and create backlinks, they also attack smaller sites with the intent of vandalizing websites for fun or because these sites are notoriously easy to break into.
When it comes to cyber security breaches, size doesn’t matter! Having a small business website does not prevent you from being attacked online and having the damage “spread” to your other businesses. You may want to consider taking action immediately in order to safeguard yourself or risk being hit even harder.
The best way to keep your website secure is to install a WordPress security plugin on your site.
In this article, we will compare the most popular WordPress security plugins to help you find the best WordPress security plugins for your site.
Why Use a WordPress Security Plugin?
Securing your WordPress site can be difficult, especially if you are not a WordPress expert. However, with the right WordPress security plugin, you don’t need to delve into techniques to keep your website safe.
A good WordPress security plugin should come with the following features:
- Firewall : Firewalls monitor all traffic on your website and filter out vulnerable bots before they reach your website’s server.
- Scanning : It is recommended to scan your website periodically to find malware or other potential threats .
- Fixes : A good security plugin should guarantee malware removal, and fixes on the site should be available in case you get hacked.
1. All In One WP Security & Firewall
All-in-One WP Security & Firewall is a free WordPress security plugin that takes your website security to a whole new level. The great thing about this plugin is that all its features are categorized as basic, intermediate or advanced, which makes it easy for anyone to enable a bunch of features without breaking the website.
You can find a security strength meter in your WordPress dashboard. It informs you about how secure it is for your website to rely on the security scoring system. The plugin also ships with another dashboard that advises you to ensure that certain features on your site have a minimally acceptable level of security.
2. Wordfence Security
Wordfence is one of the most comprehensive WordPress security plugins available. A free lite version of the plugin is available in the official WordPress plugins repository. The free plugin comes with important features such as web application firewall, malware scanner and protection against brute attacks. The most popular security plugin for WordPress with over 2 million active installs.
Wordfence monitors for brute force attacks and locks attempts after too many login attempts. You can lock out anyone using an invalid username and even enable 2-factor authentication for better security.
With the country blocking feature, you can stop attacks and content theft originating from a specific geographical area. Based on pattern matching and IP ranges, you can block all malicious networks and suspicious-looking human activity.
It allows you to check the reputation of your IP address so you can make sure your client emails are not marked as spam.
The downside of Wordfence is that it runs on your own server rather than being a cloud-based provider.
3. Sucuri
Sucuri is a complete website security solution and one of the best WordPress plugins. It protects your site against malware, brute force attacks and other potential vulnerabilities.
When you enable Sucuri, all your website traffic goes through CloudProxy servers and every request is scanned to filter out malicious requests. Therefore, Sucuri can reduce server load and improve your site’s performance by not allowing malicious traffic to reach your server.
It protects your website against SQL Injections, XSS and all known attacks. In addition, they proactively report potential security threats to WordPress core team and third-party plugins.
Besides blocking all attacks, here are other ways Sucuri can protect your website:
- The antivirus suite monitors your website every 4 hours, ensuring your website is free of potential vulnerabilities and malware.
- It monitors everything that happens on your site, including file changes, last login, failed login attempts, and more.
- It allows you to perform server-side scanning to keep your website secure and safe from server-level virus infection.
4. StackPath
StackPath is known as a CDN (content delivery network) that allows you to deliver your website from anywhere in the world at lightning speeds. But StackPath also offers complete security for your site, in fact it is the world’s first secure edge platform.
StackPath offers platform-wide DDoS protection. Their advanced architectures detect and redirect DDoS attacks to strategic sinks, all StackPath offerings have Layer 3 and 4 DDoS protection, and protection is geographically distributed.
StackPath’s network is also designed to defend against emerging new threats by providing network-level encryption, network scanning, and malware defense. But security is not a second thought to StackPath, it is a top priority.
The StackPath plugin not only keeps your website safe and secure from attacks, but also greatly speeds up your site.
5. SiteLock
SiteLock is another popular website security solution that offers DDoS protection, malware scans, and more. It comes with all the features needed to secure your website.
It’s one of the fastest website scanning solutions in existence that automatically finds, fixes and prevents security vulnerabilities, giving you the peace of mind you deserve.
SiteLock daily scans your WordPress themes, plugins and files for potential vulnerabilities that could lead to website blacklisting or poor visitor experience.
If malware is found on your website, SiteLock will automatically fix it and notify you about it. Based on the detailed crawl report, you can take immediate action to secure your site.
With web application firewalls, you can distinguish human traffic from bot traffic and protect your website from blocks and attacks by blocking them before they reach your site.
6. Jetpack Security
Jetpack is a popular all-in-one plugin for security, performance and site management with over 5 million active installs. Well known by Automattic, this plugin also includes website design features as well as automated marketing tools.
Still focused on security, Jetpack monitors the WordPress site and alerts you as soon as it detects that your site is down, protecting your site from brute-force login attacks, spam, and malicious malware injections.
Other security features include:
- Secure Authentication : Provides secure authentication with WordPress accounts.
- Updated Plugins : Automatically keeps all your plugins updated and allows for bulk management.
- Site Activity : Easily see your website activities in an organized, chronological list of events.
With the premium version of the plugin you also get site backups, 1-click restore, malware scanning, automatic comment filtering and spam feedback etc.
But because Jetpack is bloated with so many features, from security to marketing, many people think the plugin will slow down your site.
7. BulletProof Security
BulletProof Security is a popular WordPress security plugin that lets you scan your website for malware, set up firewalls, backup your database, and more.
It comes with a 1-click automatic setup wizard that makes it easy to run the plugin without tedious manual setup or configuration. After installation, the plugin automatically detects and fixes security threats in real time.
That being said, it is recommended to scan your website for any pre-existing hacker files or code after installation. Plugins or themes installed in the future will be checked in real time.
With an IP-based Firewall, you can prevent all your plugins from being publicly accessed and used.
If you’re on a tight budget, BulletProof Security may be the best option for you. For a one-time fee of $69.95, you can install the plugin on unlimited websites. After purchase, you can get free updates and support for the lifetime of the product.
8. iThemes Security
Formerly known as Better WP Security, iThemes Security offers many ways to secure your WordPress website.
It protects your website from brute force attacks by limiting the number of failed login attempts. You can receive email alerts to stay up to date with the latest file updates so you can know if your site has been hacked.
Based on the limits you set, iThemes Security scans for vulnerabilities on your site and locks out suspicious IPs. You can even set an external mode for your site to make your WordPress dashboard inaccessible according to your settings.
Additionally, you can schedule database backups to your preferred offsite storage destinations.
Some other features you will find useful include:
- 2-factor authentication that gives your website an extra layer of protection.
- User security check to examine individual user activities.
- Notify you if there are outdated themes or plugins and critical issues that need to be fixed.
Which is the best WordPress Security Plugin?
After our comparison of top WordPress security plugins, we found All In One WP Security & Firewall to be the best WordPress security solution for your website. It comes with all the features you would ever need from a website security solution, including website scanning, DNS-level firewalls, and a content delivery network (CDN).
You should read the latest WordPress security guide for more details.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress security plugins for your site.
If you liked this article, you may also want to read the best WordPress backup plugins for your site.
