Protect Your Online Business With These 5 WordPress Security Tools
If you are an entrepreneurs and small business owners like myself you don’t want to forget the imporantance of protecting your online presence. That for me would be my WordPress website since I use it the most and have more than one website. But it could also mean your Facebook Page, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, MailChimp or anywhere else you have built a following. In this post I’m focusing specifically on tools or plugins for WordPress that will help you protect your investment in case of trouble. Don’t get caught by an attack by a hacker and risk losing it all and having to start again from scratch.
WP Limit Login Attempts Plugin
This plugin helps protect your WordPress site from a Brute Force Attack, which is a method to gain access to your site through multiple login attempts with username and passwords. By installing the plugin the attackers have just a few attempts and will be locked out of your site if they fail to enter the correct username and password. It will block the IP address for a certain amount of time before they can attempt to login again therefore it is effective blocking these kind of attacks.
BackWPup Free – WordPress Backup Plugin
Backing up your WordPress site is critical for the protection of your online business. Most hosting companies plans do not include the type of backup service you need for WordPress sites. That’s because WordPress is different than your average website. WordPress is a system of themes, plugins and the core files that work together to bring you beautiful websites. The best way to protect your site is through regular backups that store a copy of your website on a service like Dropbox or Amazon S3. Keep in mind that those services might cost a little but worth the investment.
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BackWPup Free does a single backup using a .ZIP file to store all the files needed to restore your site in the event of a problem. There are many options out there both paid and free to help you backup your site. But a plugin like this will do the job for most and you can schedule the plugin to automatically do the backup for you or you can do it manully on your own.
Wordfence Security
WordFence is what I consider the best WordPress security plugins. I recommend you install it right after installing WordPress before you go any further. It is always checking your site for malware infection which can do damage to your site. If scans all the files of your WordPress core, theme and plugins to keep the code clean. If it finds any kind of infection, it will notify you so you can take action. It claims to make your WordPress website 50 times faster and secure which is an added benefit. The Wordfence Security plugin for WordPress is free, but a few advanced features are available for premium users. If you can afford it I recommend you consider going with premium but this free version works well for most WordPress users.
iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security)
I’m including iThemes Security because it’s also one of the top plugins for WordPress Security and it’s both free and paid. iThemes Security has over 30 ways to prevent your site from being one of he 30,000 webites that are hacked daily. It too helps prevent Brute Force attacts by preventing those bad login attempts. iThemes Security looks at your site for areas of vunerbility and warns you so you can take action to fix it. I recommend that you look at the Pro version for more feature and support to keep your investment protected.
Keep WordPress Fresh
Remember to always make sure that your plugins, themes and WordPress are up-to-date. However you might want to wait a few days after a new update is released to make sure it’s stable. I recommend that you do a backup of your site and then do the updates. Doing this will give you a way to restore your site if something doesn’t go right with the updates and you don’t get hosed. Most hacked sites are those sites that aren’t maintained and thus make it easier for hackers to do harm.
Need someone to do this for you? There are services out there that will backup your WordPress site for you for a small montly fee and make sure that the plugins, themes and WordPress itself is kept up-to-date and secure.
WordPress Updates and Maintenance Packages
Do you have questions? Post a comment below and I’ll be happy to answer your WordPress Security related questions below. Thanks for reading!
2 Responses
I have looked at several “best wordpress plugins” lists and this one is pretty good because it narrows things down to a few best plugins for every type of functionality.
I really love the security plugin called Wordfence. It allow me to auto block any IP trying to hack my site, it notifies me of out-of-date plugins, and if you do get hacked it will show you which files have been changed, then show you a comparison of before and after, and easily allow you to go back to the previous version of any file. The basic model is also free with the option of a more advanced paid model. Very slick and super easy to set up and use.