Best WordPress Security Plugins to Your Site (2021)
Do I Need a WordPress Security Plugin?
If you’re asking yourself are WordPress security plugins necessary? Know this stat — The average website is attacked 44 times every day.
Now you must have started wondering how to secure a website. In this blog, we are going to discuss the best security practices that you can use for WordPress and make your website secure. These security tips will definitely help you to protect your website against hackers and malware.
And if any of those attacks are successful, it could seriously hurt your business online.
That’s why your WordPress site security and online security measures should be at the top of your priorities.
Your WordPress hosting provider alone can’t protect you from all threats.
Some of the negative things that can happen with a security breach include:
Online criminals can steal the data belonging to you and your customers
Private data from your business and your customers could be exposed
Your website content can be completely deleted
Your site could distribute malware to your visitors hurting your brand and SEO rankings
Fixing your hacked WordPress site can be a complicated and costly process
All of these reasons make having a WordPress security plugin installed on your site incredibly important.
So now that you know the risks of an unsecured website and the reasons why you need a WordPress security plugin, let’s talk about the top choices.
This list should help you pick which one works best for you and your business.
What Are the Best WordPress Security Plugins?
So which security plugin offers the best WordPress protection and is best for you? Let’s take a peek at the list of popular WordPress security plugins:
1. Sucuri
The best free WordPress security plugin available today is Sucuri. The all-in-one security platform is wildly popular for good reason.
Although Sucuri is a great free WordPress security plugin for websites, the pro version is actually the real must-have for every website owner.
Features:
They’ll clean up your WordPress site at no additional cost if it gets malware
Easy setup in your WordPress dashboard
Firewall protection helps you block brute force and malicious attacks from accessing your WordPress site
Lets you conduct malware scanning (and of course malware removal)
Effective security hardening
Keeps track of everything that happens on your site, including file changes, last logins, and failed login attempts
Some plans offer advanced DDoS protection
Can reduce server load time and improve your site’s performance by blocking malicious traffic
Serves static content from their own CDN servers
Protects your WordPress website against SQL Injections, XSS, and all known attacks
2. iThemes Security Pro
If you’re a WordPress user, you might be familiar with the team that created iThemes Security Pro since they also built the popular BackupBuddy plugin and other great themes and plugins. All of their tools offer an easy-to-use interface for brute force security protection and more.
Features:
Two-factor authentication for an extra layer of security
Powerful password enforcement
404 detection and plugin scans
Scheduled WordPress backups
Locks out any suspicious IP that scans for vulnerabilities on your site so they can’t gain access
Sends email alerts to notify you of any recent file updates on your site that may be malicious
Ability to limit login attempts
Although there’s no website firewall or malware scan, they do use Sucuri‘s Sitecheck malware scanner
3. Jetpack
Another popular all-in-one solution on our list for the best WordPress protection plugins is Jetpack. This well-known plugin lets you easily scan your website for security vulnerabilities and has over 5 million active installs.
Features:
Real-time backups save every change you make to your website
1-click restore to get your site back online quickly
Activity log tells you exactly which action (or person) broke your site
Decentralized malware scanning keeps your site safe from security threats
Offers spam protection by automatically blocks spam in blog post comments
Alerts you via email the moment it detects that your WordPress site is down
Protects your site against brute force login attacks and harmful malware
Includes website design features and automated marketing tools
Keeps your WordPress plugins automatically updated and lets you know if you’re using the latest version of WordPress
4. WPScan
Another great solution for WordPress website security is WPScan. This user-friendly tool has been around since 2012 and can keep your website safe and secure on the backend. It works by cataloging tons of different known threats and reports the important ones to you, so you can avoid unwanted security issues.
Features:
Open-source tool with unique functionality that can be used to scan remote WordPress installations to pinpoint security issues
Their database of vulnerabilities is updated daily by community members and dedicated WordPress security specialists
Daily automated scans to look for malicious code
Email notifications
Helps by auditing a database of known issues with things that will impact you like WordPress plugins, WordPress core, and WordPress themes.
5. Wordfence
Wordfence is a WordPress security plugin that has some amazing features to protect your WordPress site. You can use the basic version without spending a cent.
Features:
Basic version is 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 by limiting failed login attempts
Has customizable email alerts
Pro version lets you monitor all sites from a central dashboard
Cost:
Wordfence is available as a free or paid plugin. The paid version is priced from $99/yr.
6. BulletProof Security
BulletProof Security is a WordPress security plugin that doesn’t look all that cool, but gets you some basic security features for free, so it’s worth being on the list.
Features:
A somewhat easy-to-use setup wizard
Malware scanning and firewalls
Database backups
Login protection
Email notifications with security logs when a user gets locked out from failed login attempts
Idle session logouts
7. All In One WP Security & Firewall
It’s easy (and free) to use All In One WP Security & Firewall to apply most WordPress best practices for security to your small business website. But the tool is pretty basic and not as beginner-friendly as the more well-known solutions.
Features:
Scanning for malicious patterns
IP filtering to block specific people and geographical locations
Login lockdowns after failed login attempts
View a list of locked out users to unlock individuals in just a few clicks
A password strength tool to allow you to generate appropriately strong passwords
User account monitoring
A website-level firewall (but does lack a DNS-level firewall)
Lets you manually blacklist suspicious IP addresses
8. Google Authenticator
Setting up two-factor authentication for extra security is a really good idea to keep your website secure. Google Authenticator lets you do just that. And it’s on our list since most security plugins don’t include this.
Features:
Adds an extra layer of security to your login
Has a simple interface and is moderately easy-to-use
Lets you pick which type of two-factor authentication you want to use
Offers shortcodes so you can do things like use it on custom login pages
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