16 Top WordPress Security Plugins

While you might have a great website that brings a lot of traffic and clients to your business, your website is only as good as the foundation it runs on. If your website was to become infected with malware or go down, even for a short period, how would this impact your organization? This is why it’s important to use a reputable web hosting company to house your website plus have trustworthy security plugins installed.

Security plugins provide a lot of functionality, including the following:

• Malware scanning: This process scans computers to prevent malware infections. There are usually several tools and techniques utilized as a part of the scanning process.
• Blacklist monitoring: A blacklist is a list of IP addresses and domains that are thought to be sending spam through email. Blacklist monitoring reviews blacklists from various sources to make sure your IPs and domains are not listed on any blacklist.
• File scanning: File scanning is an automated process that regularly scans all your website files to make sure they do not contain any malicious code or other security vulnerabilities.
• Firewalls: A web application firewall (WAF) is used to filter, monitor, and block HTTP traffic to and from a web application. This type of firewall is different from a standard firewall in that a standard firewall acts as a safety gate between servers.
• Active security monitoring: Active security monitoring involves the use of scanning machines to continuously monitor your website files to check for malware, hacks, and blacklist status, and notifies you of any issues. 
• Security hardening: Also known as system hardening, the purpose of this process is to eliminate as many security risks from your network as possible. This is typically done by removing non-essential software applications and other tools from your systems. 

There are numerous plugins available to add security to your WordPress website, in addition to the services your web hosting company provides. Following are some of the most popular security plugins that WordPress users utilize with their websites:

• Sucuri Security – Auditing, Malware Scanner and Security Hardening
• iThemes Security
• Wordfence Security
• WP fail2ban
• All In One WP Security & Firewall
• Jetpack
• SecuPress
• BulletProof Security
• VaultPress
• Google Authenticator – Two Factor Authentication
• Security Ninja
• Defender
• Astra Web Security
• Shield Security
• Hide my WP
• WebARX

Tactical Web Media can assist your organization with website hosting services and security plugins for your WordPress website. Please contact us to learn more about our free consultation.