In today’s world, where new threats are being developed frequently, it becomes more important to protect your WordPress site. WordPress is one of the most used content management systems, and it runs millions of websites, which is why it is vulnerable to cybercriminals.
This article explores the most crucial measures that need to be taken to protect your WordPress site and keep hackers away. If you follow these measures, you can minimize the probability of security breaches, which may harm your site’s credibility and your visitors’ trust.
1. Choose a Strong Password
In WordPress security, one of the most basic but essential steps in securing the website is to select powerful passwords. WordPress password is the first layer of security that any person would require to breach in entering the site. When choosing the password, it is important to create a strong password with characters that are both in the upper and lower case, numbers, and symbols. This makes it exponentially harder for potential attackers to guess or brute force your password and gain access to your account.
It is also strongly recommended not to use easily identifiable data like your name, birth date or your pet’s name since these data are easy to find by using social engineering techniques. It is recommended to use a passphrase – a sequence of several random words – or a password manager to create and store strong passwords. By adhering to good passwording, you minimize the exposure of your WordPress admin login and, therefore, your overall website to possible security threats.
2. Keep WordPress and Plugins Updated
Update is, therefore an important factor that is used in ensuring that the WordPress environment is secure. The core, as well as the WordPress themes and plugins, are constantly being updated not only for the development of new features and functionalities but also for the purposes of fixing newly discovered security loopholes. Such updates may include crucial security upgrades, which shield your site from recognized vulnerabilities and threats. Failing to update WordPress and its components, you leave your site open to various attacks that exploit these known weaknesses.
For maximum security, there is a need to set up a proper update frequency of the WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Most hosting providers and security plugins provide options for automatic updates, which means that your site will always run the most updated version of all its aspects. However, one must handle automatic updates with a certain amount of care, particularly for sites that cannot afford to go down, as the updates can sometimes be the cause of incompatibilities. In such situations, it is recommended to roll out changes on staging environments rather than apply them to live sites.
3. Use Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is another set of security that can be applied to the WordPress site because it demands a second factor, besides the password, to be entered. This extra measure goes a long way in making it very hard for any intruder to penetrate into your site, even if they have gotten hold of your password. When 2FA is applied, the user is asked for another form of authentication, for instance, code on another device such as a smartphone. This means that even if an attacker has obtained a user’s password through cracking or password theft physically, he/she will need the second factor, which is usually the user’s phone, to gain access to the site.
There are several WordPress plugins that can be used to enable 2FA on your WordPress site. Some of the most preferred ones are Google Authenticator, Duo Two-Factor Authentication, and WP 2FA. These plugins are often likely to provide options for the second factor, including SMS codes, authenticator apps, or hardware tokens. This way, you add an extra layer of check and balance which helps reduce the likelihood of a breach in your WordPress site’s security.
4. Limit Login Attempts
One of the best ways to avoid brute force attacks is by setting up WordPress to limit the number of wrong attempts to log in to the site. In a brute force attack, hackers try to guess a password of your site by trial and error and start using many usernames and passwords hoping that one will be correct. This is because by controlling the number of attempts of login in a given span of time, you can easily block the attacks.
After the failed attempts have equaled the set number, the system can even close the IP address or lock the account to make it impossible to attempt again for a set time. Besides protecting you from automation attacks, this security measure comes in handy to keep you informed of other security risks. There are several WordPress plugins that can be used to implement this feature including Limit Login Attempts Reloaded or WP Limit Login Attempts. Such plugins usually come equipped with extra features like IP access to specific users and they keep records of all the attempts someone makes to try and log into your site.
5. Install a Security Plugin
By installing a popular security plugin, you can improve the protection of your WordPress site against various threats. Such plugins are quite rich in functionality that helps to strengthen the security of the site greatly. Some of the features that a good security plugin should possess are the antivirus scan, firewall, improvements of the login process, and continuous threat identification.
Some of the plugins within the WordPress environment that one can use are Wordfence Security, Sucuri Security, and iThemes Security. These plugins can sweep through your WordPress installation at set intervals, find files or code that are an indication of compromise, and notify you. It can also incorporate options for blocking IP addresses if the IP is marked malicious and real-time traffic analysis, which shows who is accessing the website and what they are doing. Furthermore, while many security plugins are available for WordPress, some of them have features that can help you secure your WordPress installation; for example, you may disable file editing under the WordPress dashboard or shield various files.
6. Implement HTTPS
To secure the data exchanged between your visitors’ browsers and your server, it is necessary to configure the HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) on your WordPress site. This data is encrypted by HTTPS, and it becomes very difficult for hackers to get a hold of and decode it. This is especially so for websites that entail user data such as login credentials, personal information, or financial data. Enabling HTTPS requires obtaining and installing an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate on one’s server.
Most hosting providers, for example, Let’s Encrypt, have enabled free SSL certificates, making it easier to secure websites. When you enable HTTPS, all the connections to and from your site are secure, so your users’ information cannot be intercepted or modified in transit. Furthermore, it has become an important signal to search engines, and websites with HTTPS may benefit from improved search engine rankings. It also increases confidence for your users as with new browsers, the icon like the padlock symbol is used to signify that the site is secure. First of all, HTTPS increases security, and besides, it can also improve credibility and possibly even visibility in search engines.
7. Backup Your Site Regularly
It is vital to back up your WordPress site regularly since it is one of the most effective ways to protect your website against loss of data due to a breach or other mishaps. A complete backup should encompass all your WordPress files as well as the database in order to create a backup that copies your site at a certain point in time. Frequency depends on the frequency of updates to the site, but daily backup is suggested for the active site. The most common ways of creating the backups are the WordPress backup plugins, the backups done manually through the hosting control panel, and the automatic backup services.
Some of the common backup plugins that are available for WordPress are UpdraftPlus, SolidWP (previously BackupBuddy), or VaultPress, which consist of features like scheduling for backup, cloud storage, and simple restore. Remember that your backups must be stored in a protected, extra account that is different from the main hosting account. This way, even if one’s main site is hacked, the backups are well-safeguarded and can be accessed. Also, it is necessary to periodically check the backup and restore function to make sure that the backups are correct or can be restored if necessary. Regular, tested backups establish a secure prop that will allow you to restore your site in case of security breaches, server crashes, or other loss situations.
8. Manage File Permissions
Another important but frequently neglected aspect of WordPress security is the configuration of file permissions. File permissions refer to the rights that users have concerning the files stored in your server; these rights include reading, writing, or executing a file. Improper permission may lead to a situation where your site is accessible to other people or can be easily changed by them. Various types of files and directories in a WordPress installation need to have different permission settings.
For example, directories should be set to 755 (owner has read, write, and execute rights, but other users have only rights to read and execute); files, on the other hand, should be set to 644 (owner has read and write rights, but other users can only read). One must not make permissions too relaxed; for example, setting up permission as 777 would mean that everyone has full access, and this can be manipulated by attackers. Particular focus has to be paid to such files as wp-config since they contain personal information. Php, which stores such important information as database login parameters. This file should be more restricted than the other files and normally should have permission of 600 or 640. Most hosting control panels have options that allow you to view and alter file permissions, or you can use FTP programs or other command line programs for even finer control.
9. Limit Administrative Access
Limiting administrative access to your WordPress site is an important security feature that reduces the chances of someone making unwanted modifications. The concept of security is the principle of least privilege, where users only have the level of access required to do their job. In practice, it means paying a lot of attention to user roles and permission within the WordPress installation. WordPress allows the user roles that vary in their access rights from reading only (Subscribers) to full control of the site (Administrators). The number of administrative accounts should be limited as every new admin account weakens the system in some way. When providing access to other users, it is always best to give them the right level of access required for their tasks.
For instance, the Author or Editor role will be more suitable if a user is only required to write and edit posts. Also, there is the problem of multiple users using the same login details, which should be avoided. Every user should create an account with privileged access as per the user’s role. It also provides for better security as well as control since you are able to tell who made specific changes. Periodic reviews of user accounts and their privileges can also be used to prevent access rights from escalating over time.
Conclusion
Maintaining the security of your WordPress site remains a continuous process, and it is always wise to be on the lookout for any threats. With the help of the measures described in this article, including the use of secure passwords and two-factor authentication, the regular update and backup of the site, you can strengthen the protection of the site and reduce the risks of attacks.
Just like in any security process, it is important to note that security is a process and not a one-time process. It is also important to be updated on new threats and practices and always have a good standard of security for the site and users. With these strategies in mind, you can reap the advantages of WordPress while avoiding the pitfalls of managing a website in the contemporary world.
WP Clerks provides wordpress support services to clients in over 100 countries worldwide. As a provider of WordPress Support & Maintenance, we focus on offering wordpress management services, including chat support, website security, and customisation with suitable themes, CSS styles, and plugins.
