Website security is important, especially in an age where hacking has become more frequent. A WordPress site doesn’t need to be difficult for intruders to break into. WordPress is a popular content management system that’s used by millions of users around the world. However, it’s also a popular target for hackers because it’s so widely used and easy to hack. If you want to ensure your website isn’t vulnerable to intruders, then you need to find the best WordPress plugin for website security.
There are many different ways that hackers can break into your website. One of the most common ways that hackers gain access is through vulnerabilities in the code of your theme or plugin. This is why so many people use free or premium WordPress plugins for their websites. It’s also why there are so many different security plugins on the market today. However, not all plugins are created equal. Some are better than others at protecting your website from intrusion and hackers.
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Best WordPress Plugin For Website Security
Let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress security plugins, and how they help you protect your website.
Note: You only need to use one plugin from this list. Having multiple plugins active from this list can lead to bugs.
1. Sucuri
Sucuri is the industry leader in WordPress security. It is one of the best WordPress security plugins on the market. They offer a basic free Sucuri Security plugin which helps you harden WordPress security and scan your website for common threats.
But the real value is in the paid plans, which come with the best WordPress firewall protection. A firewall helps you block brute force and malicious attacks from accessing WordPress.
Sucuri website firewall filters out bad traffic even before it reaches your server. They also serve static content from their own CDN servers.
Apart from security, their DNS level firewall with CDN gives you a tremendous performance boost and speeds up your website.
Most importantly, they offer to clean up your WordPress site if it gets affected by malware at no additional cost. You can even take a website already affected by a malware, and they will clean it up for you.
We use Sucuri on all our websites. For more information, see our complete Sucuri review to learn how it helped us protect our websites.
2. Wordfence
Wordfence is another popular WordPress security plugin. They offer a free version of their plugin which comes complete with a powerful malware scanner, exploit detection, and threat assessment features.
The plugin will automatically scan your website for common threats, but you can also launch a full scan at any time. You will be alerted if any signs of a security breach are detected with the instructions to fix them.
Wordfence also comes with a built-in WordPress firewall. However, this firewall runs on your server just before loading WordPress. This makes it a little less effective than a DNS level firewall like Sucuri.
For complete instructions, see our guide on how to install and setup Wordfence Security in WordPress.
3. iThemes Security
iThemes Security is a WordPress security plugin from the folks behind the popular BackupBuddy plugin. Like all their products, iThemes Security offers a nice clean user interface with tons of options.
It comes with file integrity checks, security hardening, limit login attempts, strong password enforcement, 404 detections, brute force protection, and more.
iThemes Security does not include a website firewall. It also does not include its own malware scanner and uses Sucuri’s Sitecheck malware scanner.
4. All In One WP Security
All in One WordPress Security plugin is a powerful WordPress security auditing, monitoring, and firewall plugin. It enables you to easily apply basic WordPress security best practices on your website.
It comes with features like login lockdown to prevent brute force attacks, IP filtering, file integrity monitoring, user account monitoring, scan for suspicious patterns of database injection, and more.
It also comes with a basic website level firewall which can detect some common patterns and block them for you. However, it is not very efficient and often you will be required to manually blacklist suspicious IPs.
5. Anti-Malware Security
Anti-Malware Security is another useful WordPress anti-malware and security plugin. The plugin comes with actively maintained definitions which help it find the most common threats.
It’s malware scanner allows you to easily scan all files and folders on your WordPress site for malicious code, backdoors, malware, and other known patterns of malicious attacks.
The plugin requires you to create a free account on plugin’s website to access the latest definitions and also get some premium features like brute force prevention. The plugin also makes call to developers website to look for the updated definitions.
While the plugin runs thorough tests, it often shows a large number of false positives. Matching each one of them with the source file is quite a lot of work.
6. WPScan Security
WPScan is a unique WordPress security plugin because it uses their own manually curated WordPress vulnerability database that is updated daily by dedicated WordPress security specialists and community members.
They scan your site for over 21,000 known security vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins, themes, and core software.
You can schedule automated daily scans and get email notification of the results. They have a free security API which is suitable for most websites, but you can upgrade to the paid plan if you have a larger site and use a lot of plugins.
best free security plugin for wordpress 2021
1. WordFence WordPress Security plugin
WordFence is the most downloaded WordPress security plugin with 1+ million active installs to date. It is a full-featured, powerful, and constantly updated security plugin for WordPress.
This plugin provides protection from hacking, malware, malicious traffic, and more features that make WordFence one of the most powerful free WordPress security plugins.
Here are some WF features that add extra WordPress Security layer
- WordPress Firewall.
- Blocking Features.
- Security Scanning.
- Login Security.
- Monitoring Features.
- Multi-Site Security.
- Major Theme and Plugins Supported.
- IPv6 Compatible.
WordFence also has a premium API key that adds extra features like country blocking, scheduled scans, premium support, and 2-factor authentication that allows you to sign in to WordPress using a password and your cellphone.
The premium plan also checks if your website IP is being used for spamming.
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2. iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security)
iThemes Security is a WordPress security plugin developed by the known WordPress theme and plugin developer iThemes. This free security plugin for WordPress gives the user more than 30 ways to protect his WordPress site.
Both beginners and experienced WP users can use this plugin. On one hand, it comes with 1-click installation for easy setup of the plugin, on the other hand, its advanced security options can be easily configured from the dashboard.
iThemes Security protects WordPress sites by fixing common security vulnerabilities, helps users choose strong passwords, stop automated attacks, and more security features. There is also a security checklist in the plugin dashboard for easier maintenance.
iThemes Security is a freemium WordPress security plugin, which means it has a premium version that includes extra features that are not shipped with the free iThemes version.
3. Sucuri Security WordPress plugin
Sucuri is a well-known authority in the industry of WordPress and Website Security, their WordPress Security plugin is a scanning and monitoring tool for WordPress.
This free WordPress Security plugin has 4 main features: Security activity auditing, Remote Malware Scanner, File integrity monitoring, and Overall WordPress Security Hardening.
This free security plugin is meant for experienced users and developers as it requires an understanding of codes and files within WordPress.
Also, remember to use this plugin with another WP security plugin like WordFence or iThemes Security in order to have the best security level.
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4. MalCare Security and Firewall
Another interesting free security plugin for WordPress is MalCare Security and Firewall. As the name suggests, the plugin is both a security plugin and a firewall. It also comes with a built-in login protection system that protects WordPress admin dashboard from Block brute force login attempts.
The plugin’s malware scanner scans your site’s code against 100 signals of malicious code. These malware scans are performed automatically on a daily basis.
You can also perform a manual scan anytime easily with a click of a button. Moreover, the plugin keeps track of file modifications to detect the malicious activity of malware and viruses early.
MalCare free WordPress plugin also includes an intelligent, rule-based firewall. The firewall monitors all traffic including visits, login attempts, and errors, and stores them in the database.
MalCare servers collect the data on regular intervals from all websites, analyze it, and use it to prevent attacks on the websites on their network.
The good thing is, most of the work is done on MalCare’s end, not your end. By performing security processes on MalCare servers, the plugin will not affect your website’s performance and speed.
Moreover, if you need more features you can use MalCare’s premium security service that comes with automatic malware removals, integrated offsite backups, and more.
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5. All In One WP Security & Firewall
All In One WordPress Security & Firewall plugin is one of the most preferred WordPress Security plugins for beginners. Thanks to its user-friendly interface that makes configuring its security options easy.
This free security plugin for WordPress will improve your site security a lot by adding a powerful firewall that prevents malicious scripts from changing your WordPress code.
The firewall will also block fake Google bots from crawling your website and can prevent hot-linking of your website images.
In addition to the firewall, the plugin has powerful security features like login lockdown to prevent an IP address from guessing your password by continuously making failed login attempts “Brute Force Attack”.
It also has a very useful tool that helps you create a strong password for your account.
Conclusion
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