Keeping WordPress Sites Secure
With close to 100,000 cyber attacks on WordPress sites occurring every minute. It can seem that using WordPress to power a business or personal website puts your data at considerable risk. Not to mention, WordPress is free and open-source software that anyone can modify and share.
Thus, it can be easy for users to insert bad code or deliberate malware into the WordPress core, or any of the many themes and plugins that are constantly being developed by third-party designers.
WordPress developers are constantly working to protect the WordPress source code with ongoing security updates and patches. However, site owners and developers can create a customized security system that meets a site’s unique needs with one or a combination of the many plugins designed to add specialized functionality to any WordPress site.
Every WordPress site is unique, with its own concerns and issues related to security.
As an illustration, an online retailer that is processing transactions with customers’ credit card information might need different protections than a photographer’s portfolio, for example. In any case, a quality plugin for protecting your site against malware and other security threats should include some essential features, including:
Essential Features
- Ongoing site monitoring, including regular file and malware scanning
- Firewall protection
- Blacklist monitoring for protection against dangerous sites
- Authentication protocols for users in different roles
- Password protocols that reject weak passwords
- Immediate email notifications of suspicious activity
- Site and file backups for protection against attacks, outages, and other events
If you’re using a shared hosting provider, putting stiff security in place protects not only your site but also others on the server. In other words, malware that is introduced through one site can infect others in the shared space and can even cause a server to crash, taking down all the sites hosted there.
Every day practice
The best WordPress plugins for security are easy to install and customize, and most are free, with premium options that offer more features that some sites may need. Some options are available in the official WordPress plugin directory, which is accessible from your site’s admin dashboard, and others are available from reputable developers around the world.
Even if a single plugin doesn’t offer all the features you’re looking for, it’s always possible to install multiple compatible ones to get the exact set of protections your site needs to fend off malware, force attacks, and hackers.