WordPress is a well-known website building platform, almost 30 million people around the world use it daily. All those who use WordPress daily consider it as one of the best content management solution. In recent times WordPress has been facing the question mark of security. WordPress Security is a topic of huge importance for every website owner. Also, Google blacklists 10,000+ websites every day for malware and even more websites for phishing. In this Ultimate WordPress Security Guide you will learn everything there is to learn about WordPress security.
If you want to save your websites from hackers and malware then you need to pay attention to common WordPress Security Issues and how to secure WordPress Site from hackers. There are best practices you can follow for WordPress Security. In this guide, we will share all the WordPress Security Tips to help you secure your website against hackers and malware.
All You Need To Know About WordPress Security
The first thing you need to know about WordPress Security is that its core software is very secure and it is audited by hundreds of developers, still, if you are a little conspicuous there is a lot that can be done to increase the security of your website.
As a website owner, there’s a lot of things you can do to keep your website super secure. Follow the simple WordPress Security Tips listed below and you’ll be good to go!
Keeping WordPress Updated
WordPress is open-source software but that doesn’t mean it’s unsecured. The WordPress Security Audit is a serious thing where multiple developers try to increase the security of WordPress. The first thing you should do is to keep your WordPress updated at all times.
WordPress automatically updates some minor updates, for major updates you have to initiate the update manually. WordPress comes with literal thousands of Plugins and themes, all of them which are maintained by third-party developers who regularly release updates for themes and plugins as well.
These WordPress updates are of great importance for securing and stabilizing your website. You need to make sure that all the Plugins, Themes, and Core Software are up to date at all times.
Strong Passwords and User Permissions
Most WordPress hacking attempts are made by using stolen passwords. You can make that difficult for the hackers by using stronger and unique passwords only you can remember or guess. Not just the WordPress admin area, but also for FTP accounts, WordPress hosting accounts and your primary email addresses which use your site’s domain name need to be secured with strong passwords.
Most people don’t like using hard passwords as they are difficult to remember. If you are out of those people then what you should do in order to keep your WordPress site secured is not share your login and password with anyone else unless you absolutely have to! And if you have to share your password then remember to change it afterward.
Install a WordPress Backup Solution
Backups are your best friend when it comes to WordPress security. Backups are your first defense against any WordPress hacker attack. Keep in mind that hackers can hack anything. Most of the government websites also get hacked now and then. With Backups, you can quickly reinstall your website if it comes under an attack at any time.
There are a lot of free Backup Plugins available on WordPress but the trick is to frequently take a full backup of your website to a local server, not on the hosting server. You can use tools like “VaultPress” & “UpdaraftPlus”. They are both very easy to use and highly reliable.
Setting Up and Auditing & Monitoring System
The next step in line is to install an Auditing and Monitoring System that keep a track of everything that happens on your website. This includes everything like File integrity, Failed login attempts, Malware scanning, etc. You can accomplish all this by using a simple plugin named as Sucuri Scanner. After installation and activation go to the Sucuri menu in your WP admin. It will ask you to generate you a free API Key. This enables Audit Logging, integrity checking, email alerts, and all the other security features.
Enable Web Application Firewall
The easiest way to get rid of common WordPress security issues and be confident about the security of your Websites is by using a Web Application Firewall (WAF). just like a normal firewall a website firewall blocks all the malware and security threats on your website. There are different types of website Firewall applications.
- DNS Level Firewall: These firewall route your website traffic through their cloud proxy server. This allows them to only send genuine traffic to your website. This firewall automatically filters out any malicious traffic coming towards your website.
- Application Level Firewall: These firewall plugins examine the traffic once it reaches your server. It filters out the traffic and only sends it further if it poses harm to your website. This method isn’t as efficient as the DNS Firewall in reducing server load.
- Sucuri Firewall: The best part about Sucuri Firewall is that it comes with a malware cleanup and blacklist removal. In simple words, Sucuri claims that if your website gets hacked under their watch then they will fix your website irrespective of the no. of pages you have. This is why most SEO experts consider Sucuri as one of the Best WordPress Security Plugins.
This is a very strong claim because repairing websites that have been hacked is an expensive task. Most security experts charge you over $250 for fixing your hacked website. Whereas you get the entire Sucuri security stack for $199 for a year.
Convert Your WordPress Site to SSL/HTTPS
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol that encrypts the data transfer between your website and user browser. This two side encryption makes it very difficult for hackers to steal your information. Once you enable SSL your website will use an HTTPS certificate instead of HTTP. You will also see a padlock on the side of your website address in the browser.
SSL certificates were issued by certificate authorities, and their prices start from $80 a year. To save money on these certificates most of the website owners kept working on unsecured websites which resulted in hacking.
To fix this problem an NPO called Let’s Encrypt decided to offer free SSL certificates to website owners. All major online platforms such as Chrome, Mozilla, Facebook, and many other companies support their project. Now it is much easier to use SSL for all your WordPress Websites. And now most of the hosting companies offer free SSL certificates for your WordPress websites.
Ultimate WordPress Security Guide
We hope that you have learned a lot from our ultimate WordPress security guide. The WordPress Security checklist above should be a perfect answer to your question of how to secure WordPress site? If you are still not satisfied with a few of the best WordPress Security Plugins then you should move onto securing your Coding. For that, you’d need an expert Developer but it’s worth it if you wish to save your WordPress Website from hackers.