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20 ways to secure your WordPress website from hackers

1. The urgency of installing a WordPress security plugin

In terms of securing your WordPress website, Plugin can be a great step to reinforce your security management and to handle unauthorized access. The top 5 WordPress security plugins, recommended for you, are iThemes, Wordfence, Sucuri, All in One WP Security & Firewall, and Shield Security. These plugins can generate strong passwords, scanning malware, giving two-factor authentication, monitoring suspicious activities, keeping a blacklist of IP and users, checking the WordPress firewall, and many more. Eventually, make you out of tension and fear securing your WordPress data.

2. Regular based scan of the website to get rid of malware

A constant scan is much needed to ensure your WordPress security. Sometimes, you may face some unusual strange performance issues, behavior, or a sudden drop in traffic and these strange happenings can be the signs of malware.

Besides, some hacks work in a hidden way without leaving any signs of malware to screen or to work performance and it is too tough to assume the hack. So, to be out of malware and hack, regularly based malware scanning is beyond description and, additionally, you can take help from the trusted online malware checkers like Sucuri SiteCheck.

3. Cautiousness while choosing a hosting provider

To protect your website and WordPress files from hackers and malware, you have to be confirmed your hosting provider must have security protection and they are able enough to get you off these unwanted problems. One should not rely on shared hosting providers or on hosting servers that lack strong account configuration and management.

Furthermore, each account and WordPress site should be isolated on the server with the help of a good server architecture that does cross-site contamination and cloud hosting can be a perfect option to secure your data including WordPress.

4. Use strong credentials

Using too weak admin credentials is the main reason behind brute force attacks, the most common hacking techniques in the present time. The best way for being away from this kind of attack is to make and apply strong credentials such as passwords. CLU framework for coming up with strong credentials to reinforce your data security and follow the steps of generating strong passwords, available on google.

5. Keep WordPress, themes and plugins updated

Protection against malware and hacks is automatically reinforced if you update your WordPress core, plugins, and themes frequently. These updates are strong enough to improve the stability and functionality along with patching up security vulnerabilities for your site. Please, make sure to test each update in a staging environment before running it on your live WordPress sites to avoid any further conflicts.

6. Backup

Backup is the most appropriate way to regain the damaged or hacked data as there is no certain guarantee where hacking will not take place. If you are searching for a 100% effective measure to avoid hacking, the backup will serve the purpose. Take the help from your trusted hosting provider or use third-party backup options like BackupBuddy, BackUpWordpress, VaultPress as WordPress doesn’t come with a built-in backup option.

7. Apply WordPress firewall

WAF, web application firewall, is an effective security measure against hacking, brute force, and DDoS attacks. The available WordPress firewall plugins protect your site at DNS or application level by routing your traffic through proxy servers or by examining traffic while reaching your server before loading WordPress though it doesn’t work in case of an infiltrated site.

8. Security through obscurity

One can get away from less experienced brute force hackers by simply hiding his/ her WordPress login URL. The login page can simply be hidden with changes of URL and he/ she can do so with a free plugin like WPS Hide Login.

9. Using limited login attempts

To be safe from attackers, you should limit the number of times anyone can try to log in with incorrect credentials. It is known to the possible hackers they can try to log in with an unlimited opportunity until they break in with the assumed username and password.

10. Application of two-factor authentication

This celebrated security measure includes a two-step process to log in to your account to hack WordPress data. In this way, the hacker needs to use a username along with a password at the first step and then, the verification code, delivered to your phone, email, etc that would be very troublesome for the possible hackers.

11. Use password to protect login and admin pages

To reinforce the security level, one can use another security layer that protects login opportunity and admin page with an extra password. The limited access of this password works a surefire way to protect your site from bots as well as some DDoS attacks and to set up this server-level protection, you need to create a .htpasswds file and edit your .htaccess. . Disregard this technique if it becomes annoying.

12. Automated logout for inactive users

Inactive users can also be a security question to WordPress data and the possible hackers can hack their sessions and use them to log in your files through modification of them. So, to be out of this potential risk, you can simply enable automatic logout with a plugin like Inactive Logout.

13. SSL Encryption

The connection between your site and visitors’ browsers along with passed data will be encrypted and be private from the possible hackers to steal information like passwords or financial data. Taking an SSL certificate, your site works with a secured connection, namely HTTPS. This dedicated encrypted connection will provide varied advantages that eventually, lessens the possibilities of hacking and malware.

14. Manage WordPress files and server permissions

Limited access to your WordPress files and server are worthy enough to secure your data. Permissions here stands for the meaning of who can read, write, modify, and access the files that at the same time, make your data secure and private from hacking and malware.
Besides, to get the best outcomes, you need to make sure the authorized parties are known about the login and password info. To manage your file permissions use File Manager from your hosting control panel, or through a terminal (connected with SSH) using the “chmod” command.

15. Hide WordPress version

Though hiding the WordPress version may be meant less worthy, it does a great deal to secure your WordPress data by not letting the possible hackers know what your WordPress version is. To get access to your files and server, it would be a troublesome step for them and you can simply apply it using a string of code that you add to your functions.php file

16. Use latest PHP version

Using a PHP version that has security support is a great way to be out of hacking and malware. The use of an updated PHP version usually maximizes the security level for 2 years that efficiently patch up any security vulnerabilities. So, while getting a connection, check with your hosting provider which version is powering your WordPress site.

17. Disable hotlinking options

With the taken image from your site along with the image’s URL, other websites can easily hog your servers’ resources and bandwidth and content scrapers take the best use of it. So, to disable these hotlinking options, you can consider the following ways;

  • Editing your .htaccess file
  • Configuring your CDN

Or you can use WAF plugins to ensure protection from hotlinking images of your site.

18. Protection against DDoS

DDoS are mostly cited with cyber-terrorism and are different from hack attacks and malware. As they don’t damage or steal information from sites, their presence and attack are not simply guessed or assumed. The attackers use hijacked websites (botnet) and other programs to send abnormal amounts of traffic to overload your server and cause it to crash.
To get rid of them, the only solution is to use WAF (web application firewall).

19. Disable XML-RPC

With XML-RPC enabled, a hacker can use something called “system.multicall function” to probe thousands of password combinations with only 20 or 50 requests. That allows hackers to fly under the radar where most security plugins can’t find them. Quality WordPress security plugins such as iThemes can block XML-RPC login attempts to keep your site secure from these types of brute force attacks.

20. Access limitation to a vital part of the site

Vital files are often targeted with malware to get access to your site like index.php, functions.php, and wp-config.php files, and interestingly, these sites are often ignored by integrity monitoring systems. To prevent this malware, do the followings:

  • Hide your wp-config.php file
  • Disallow file editing using wp-config.php file
  • Change your database (wp_) prefix
  • Protect your files with .htaccess rules
  • Restrict access to PHP files
  • Secure your /wp-includes/ directory
  • Disable directory browsing
  • Prevent username enumeration.

 

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