Better WordPress website security is one of those things many people don't think about until after their site has been hacked.
No matter what platform you use, your site needs to be secured from day one and every day after. It's an ongoing process as cyberhacking becomes increasingly more sophisticated. Laws protecting personal information are now stricter, making website owners responsible for data breaches.
Setting up a new site, ensure that you are using a theme that is up-to-date and updated regularly. The same goes for plugins. Both plugins and themes that are well-written and maintained are the best protection your site can start with.
Great WordPress hosting comes with great security
It may sound counterintuitive, but the easiest way to improve your WordPress website security is to get someone else to do it.
Use a quality, managed WordPress host, which can improve speed, reliability and many other aspects of your site, including better WordPress security. Managed hosts often include a WAF, a Web Application Firewall. The firewall stops many potential threats before they reach your website, so that you don't have to deal with them. Of course, a good WAF and a good host are just the foundation.
WordPress security optimization is ongoing and threats come from lots of places.
Use Cloudflare.com for better WordPress security
Cloudflare.com is a great way to speed up your website, and it offers security optimization. It stands in front of your hosted website and provides a second level of WAF security. The WAF filters out traffic that's likely to be harmful.
Cloudflare.com also provides mitigation for automated bots that may target your site. A simple mitigation comes with their free service. The paid Cloudflare.com uses more sophisticated anti-bot technology. Either way, it's an easy thing to set up and the free service is a good place to start for better WordPress security.
Update EVERYTHING automatically
You start with a well-coded theme and plugins, but you must keep them up-to-date to strengthen WordPress security. Exploits are discovered daily, so yesterday's secure plugin could be tomorrow's vulnerability to your website.
The best way to ensure everything is kept up-to-date is to automate the process. WordPress now includes automated updating features. Some hosts automatically update the WordPress version and its plugins of sites they host. That's how important updates are. The best part? You can "set and forget" automatic updates.
Not sure if your WordPress site is up-to-date? Contact me here for a free consultation.
Consider a WordPress security plugin
As mentioned above, threats come in many forms and from many places. A WordPress website with WAF and automatic code updates is just the start. There are many plugins that can strengthen WordPress security. The best of these provide ongoing protection by scanning your site for security assessment, and give you recommendations for improvement.
Prevent your site from 'brute force' attacks. A brute force attack is not sophisticated but just keeps trying and trying the most common vulnerabilities until it finds one that works. Like trying the password "PASSWORD" with the admin account on hundreds of sites until it finds one that works.
Brute force can apply to more than passwords, too. Bots will scan your site for common usernames, and pages that are known to have faulty code. A security plugin will scan your site and tell you what needs fixing. It can prevent high traffic attacks from doing harm. It can alert you when your code is compromised, hide the login page, even add 2FA protection to your site. The best thing about a security plugin is that it makes it easy to add these features to your site to make it harder to crack.
Are you looking for a security plugin or want a WordPress security assessment of your website? Contact me here for a free consultation.