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More than two third websites from the top ten million sites are backed by WordPress hosting. The sheer volume of WP powered website exposes these to special attention of hackers. Obviously, WordPress is always on its toes by offering regular patches and by ensuring stringent monitoring of risks and vulnerabilities.
Tips to harden your WP website against hacking
However presence of large number of third party themes and plugins does have its own downside and these may expose your site to unwarranted intrusions or malware attacks.
Instances of hacking attempts cannot be prevented and therefore the best policy would be to build robust defenses by following best practices to reduce probability of security breach.
Ideally, you should select dedicated server hosting or Linux VPS hosting for your WordPress sites. If at all you need to go for shared hosting due to certain constraints, then make sure that your sites remain isolated.
As far as WP site’s user management is concerned it is better to limit access to the optimum level and make sure that the user list is regularly reviewed with an aim to delete defunct users and to downgrade roles as far as possible.
Auto updates must be enabled if these are practical and possible. A weekly schedule for checking for fresh updates is usually sufficient and in case of availability of new updates you need to install them without losing any time.
Never ever download themes and plugins from questionable sources that cannot be trusted. Always make it a habit to get rid of unused or old WP installations, themes, and plugins. Following are the most noteworthy security plugins for WP sites to make sure that these are effectively safeguarded against hacking attempts.
All in One WP Security and Firewall
Technologically advanced security features and functionalities are loaded in ‘All in One Security and Firewall’ plugin that enable you to secure your assets with help of Lockdown Login facilities. This facilitates you to define number of login attempts that should be allowed before a particular user is locked out.
The plugin is also capable of determining IP addresses that need to be blocked along with period for IP address blockage. All in One Security and Firewall plugin also offers an overview of your site’s security with help of a security grading tool. What’s more, the tool is also able to offer tips for enhancing your defenses.
In addition to these features, the plugin is also capable of detecting logins that have identical display names as well as login. Such doubled up credentials increase ease of penetrating your data by hackers by almost fifty percent.
No wonder, the comprehensive plugin is highly rated 4.8 out of 5 by WP users.
iThemes Security
iThemes Security empowers your WordPress enabled site with tons of security features. You can find more than thirty ways to power security of your website to ensure that the potential intruders are not able o breach the robust defenses of your site. It enables automated malware scanning everyday and offers two-factor authentication feature for advanced protection.
The dashboard widget offered by iThemes Security facilitates management of blocking users and implementation of system scans right from your WordPress hosting dashboard. User friendly iThemes Security plugin is a budget friendly security option that offers syncing of first ten sites for free.
iThemes Security enjoys 4.7 points out of 5 by its users.
WordFence
With more than ten thousand attempts of attacks every minute on websites that are backed by WordPress, you are perpetually exposed to threats irrespective of whichever version of WordPress you choose.
WordFence plugin is the most preferred option for managing such risks as well as vulnerabilities. Unique functionalities of this plugin facilitate you with real time view of crawlers and ability to scan plugin files, theme and core. You will also be able to customize the blocking protocol and so forth.
Rated as one the best WP plugins, 4.9 out of 5 by WP users
Block Bad Queries
BBQ or Block Bad Query empowers WP site users with a simplistic functionality of plug-and-play. The user friendly package does not need to be configured and offers a robust protection against potentially dangerous URL requests by monitoring for malicious codes and by blocking bad requests. It can seamlessly work with PHP- powered sites as well.
BBQ has been rated a whopping 5 out of 5 WP users.
WordPress File Monitor Plus
This is designed to help you monitor everything that goes on in your file by alerting you about each and every change made to the file. If you happen to experience hundreds of changes to the files, then the sheer volume of alerts can be intimidating. The best way to use this plugin is to have a differentiation between normal and potentially hazardous changes.
This plugin has received 4.8 rating out of 5.
Prioritizing security across the enterprise
Plugins can certainly offer the much needed respite against hazardous attempts of hacking and the good news is that you can use a plethora of high performing plugins that offer wonderful functionalities.
In spite of every possible effort to harden your WP website there will always be a possibility of a hacking attempt. To make things safer you must make sure to choose a reputed WordPress hosting provider that in sync with you in terms of securing your website.
