Security counts to be a serious business especially if you are running an online venture. Sad but true, site owners often overlook the most important security aspects, welcoming downsides along. If you are running an online business website empowering WordPress, security is something you should give importance to. The more secure your data will remain to be, the more quickly and reliably your business will run. In this blog, I have put in some quick and improved ways using which site owners can maximize the chances of keeping WordPress sites secure and safe. Let’s give a closer look-
Enabling 2FA (Factor Authentication) On All Your Accounts
Passwords are relatively easy to break; though you have a new and updated password, it becomes important to store it from wherever you are logging in. A two-step authentication approach adopted by WordPress developers sounds super high-tech in this context. When you login to your website, you will be presented with another authentication screen wherein you will be given the option to login either through an app installed on your phone or by entering a numeric code sent to your cellphone. This plugin can easily be integrated into your WordPress site and takes advantage of smartphones to validate the logins.
Using The Best WordPress Security Plugins
Although you can find a wide array of WordPress plugins available in the market, but it is very important to choose the best that can prevent hackers from inflicting malicious codes. To help you with this concern, the top three WordPress Security plugins you can use are-
Locker WordPress Security: This plugin enables you to modify areas of WordPress which are normally too difficult to manipulate. Some of its key features are- enable HTTP authentication, enable re-CAPTCHA on the login page, email notification of failed login attempts and so on.
Better WP Security: This plugin works by reducing the vulnerabilities of your site as bad username, bad database table prefix, thus providing the roadblock to hackers trying to get sensitive information from your site as login details or admin passwords.
It is highly recommended for site owners to upgrade their security plugins on a constant basis. This will prevent hackers deciphering your WP site’s vulnerabilities.
Limit The Number of Login Attempts
Another interesting brute-force prevention plugin designed by WordPress community of developers is known as “Limit Login Attempts”. Going with the name, this plugin works to prevent illegal attempts by blocking multiple failed login attempts for the identical or matching IP address. Only authentic users will be able to login this way. This plugin adds the failed users to a blacklist and bans their IP address from login page for a certain period of time which can even be specified by the developer.
Change Prefixes of Database Tables
By default, WordPress Database Table Prefix is wp_. Being an open source CMS, the database information and source code are easily accessible to even hackers. If you keep database table prefixes same, all of them will be easily able to make SQL queries. In order to avoid this cumbersome situation, you can change prefix during the installation process by extending it to 2-3 characters length. WP Secure Scan is another available plugin using which you can change the prefix post installation.
Stay Updated With Latest Coding
With the fresh release of WordPress, you need to ensure that all the files are updated instantly. In general, site owners do get notified by the message in the top of the dashboard as well as update menu with the launch of latest WordPress version. Try updating it from the dashboard itself.
Backup Your Data
Depending on how you update your website, do not forget to maintain a regular backup of WordPress site and database.
Password Protect WP-Admin Directory
One of the preferred ways to keep your login page secure is to encrypt wp-admin folder because not a single temperamental or sensitive folder from this directory is used by visitors browsing the website. It is done through the hosting. For doing the same, follow the steps given below-
1. Browse file manager and then right click on the WP-admin folder. Proceed ahead by clicking on the password protect option.
2. Next, a page will get displayed which will prompt you for a password and username
3. Here, you need to perform a 2-step verification process to go to the WP admin dashboard.
Conclusion
The list given above is far-reaching with monitoring and protecting your site as a top priority. Being an ongoing and never ending process, website owners continuously need to keep their websites secure by following the advanced hardening techniques discussed so far. Remember, while prevention is better than cure, it only takes a small mistake to diminish your entire valuable data through a hacked WordPress site.
