Top 7 Security WordPress Plugins to Turn Your Website into a Fortress

A lot of webmasters favor WordPress because it’s a free content management system featuring highly intuitive controls and remarkable flexibility. Unfortunately, most of its aficionados don’t take the security of their websites seriously enough and thus run the risk of falling victim to surreptitious attacks. For bloggers who neglect things like hacking countermeasures and damage mitigation,the aftermath of a compromise tends to be devastating.
Top 7 Security WordPress Plugins to Turn Your Website into a Fortress
The prevalent WordPress vulnerabilities include poor theme security, server vulnerabilities, plugin security, file permissions, database security, FTP vulnerabilities, and specific file components such as wp-admin, wp-config and wp-includes. These are most heavily targeted by attackers.

Some of the recent hack incidents have shown how easily offenders can exploit weak links in WordPress security to their advantage. A single zero-day vulnerability can expose thousands of sites to attacks. In early February, for instance, cybercriminals deployed a large-scale ransomware serving campaign, where compromised WordPress websites redirected visitors to domains hosting an exploit kit. In another series of attacks, perpetrators leveraged a vulnerability in XML-RPC file to deploy a password brute forcing assault.

To prevent WordPress sites from being hacked or otherwise exploited, webmasters should consider adding an extra layer of protection. One of the following security plugins should to the trick.

All In One WP Security & Firewall



This plugin accommodates advanced WordPress security features, including an intuitive defense strength grading system, extensive firewall protection options and rules, enhanced user registration and login security, blacklisting by IP addresses and user agents, protection against comment spam, and quite a few more sought-after instruments. It uses a unique illustrative grading system based on how many security features you have activated on your website. All the features are divided into three groups by the level of invasion into website functionality: basic, intermediate and advanced.

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iThemes Security



Previously known as Better WP Security, this plugin allows webmasters to scan their websites for vulnerabilities and malware and easily fix what’s detected. iThemes Security also enforces strong authentication for all user account levels, thwarts brute force attacks and efficiently bans bots. While the basic version is completely free, iThemes Security Pro offers such additional security options as user action logging, two-factor authentication, malware scan scheduling, password expiration, Google reCAPTCHA integration and what’s important, support.

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Wordfence



This is another popular WordPress security plugin. Wordfence puts you in full control of login security, malware and vulnerability scanning, as well as real-time traffic and disk space monitoring. To its credit, this plugin also features a WordPress firewall functionality and extensive options to block attackers. Wordfence is also popular for its complementary caching feature. Unfortunately, this plugin is prohibited by most of the managed WordPress hosting providers, but is extremely popular in any other case, having been downloaded more than 1 million times.

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Sucuri Security



This plugin does a great job improving webmasters’ security posture. It delivers remote malware scanning features, security activity auditing, file integrity monitoring, and robust blacklisting options. Furthermore, the Post-Hack Security Actions feature facilitates site remediation in the unfortunate event it gets compromised.

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BulletProof Security



The name speaks for itself. This remarkable plugin allows WordPress website admins to steer clear of hacks and password brute forcing. Some of the noteworthy features include database backup scheduling, dependable .htaccess file protection, security and error logging, as well as frontend and backend maintenance mode.

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Acunetix WP Security



This plugin’s main pros are easy WordPress database backups,version hiding, and recommendations based on thorough security assessments. Webmasters can as well use it to secure their file permissions, disable PHP error reporting, monitor traffic in real time and prevent directory listings. Acunetix WP Security is multisite-ready, so you can secure an entire network of WordPress blogs with one plugin.

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Google Authenticator



With “Don’t let hackers in” being its motto, the plugin in question is all about two-factor authentication. It adds a one-time password requirement to regular WordPress login instances. The administrator can configure the amount of time that the secret code is valid and revoke the code if necessary.

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Additional WordPress security measures

Aside from using security plugins, be sure to keep your WordPress installation up to date. Stick with reputable online resources when downloading themes and plugins.Take authentication seriously: say no to“admin” as the username, use a strong password for your WordPress account, and consider setting up multi-factor authentication.