How to Achieve Strong WordPress Security in 2020: Expert Tips

05-02-2020 | 10 MIN READ

As WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems, people have lots of expectations from it. And security is one of these expectations. Considering the increasing rate of cyber attacks and hackers, website owners are getting more concerned about the safety of their websites. No doubt, WordPress team has been doing a great job to boost its security standards. Hundreds of developers audit the WordPress core software to make it more secure. However, if you care for your WordPress website, then you need to go the extra mile. To reinforce the security of your website and avoid imminent cyber attacks, you must work on several aspects. Here we have brought some most useful WordPress security tips to help you a bit. Even if you opt for WordPress outsourcing, these tips will be very handy to you. 

Before diving deep into this, let us first understand why website security is essential in 2020. 

WordPress Website Security: Why it Matters in 2020?  

Also, as per the prediction of Cybersecurity Ventures, by 2021, the cybercrime will cost the globe around $6 trillion yearly. 

These stats clear that the cybersecurity is of utmost importance, be it now or in the upcoming years. 

Moreover, coming to WordPress, it powers more than 25% of the websites and about 31% of the Internet. Hence, millions of hackers or cyber-thieves must be looking for vulnerabilities and backdoors in this popular CMS. Consequently, security becomes the foremost concern and responsibility of WordPress developers and website owners. If you own a WordPress website or want to build one, then try not to ignore the security aspect. You should strive to prevent future cybercrime damage that can severely affect your business (if it depends on website).

So, let us now look at some expert tips and tricks for building strong security for your WordPress site. 

Tips for Achieving Robust WordPress Website Security

Opt For a Reliable Hosting Provider

WordPress hosting is a very pivotal thing when it comes to website security. If shared hosting is your preference, then think twice. If you choose a shared hosting plan, the server resources will be shared with multiple customers, which may result in cross-site contamination. Thus hackers can access the next-door site to attack your website. For robust website security, say goodbye to cheap and shared hosting options.  

The majority of cyber-attacks comes from hosting platforms. According to a survey report, 41% of WordPress websites get hacked due to vulnerabilities in the hosting platform. Considering this scenario, you must be careful while choosing your hosting plan and service provider. 

Following are the vital points you must check before finalizing a hosting provider: 

  • Ready to deploy plans for disaster recovery and accidents 
  • Hosting optimization service for WordPress 
  • Support for the latest versions of web technologies like MySQL and PHP
  • Intrusion detection and malware scanning solution
  • Availability of CDN(Content Delivery Network) to resolve spam and attacks before reaching to your website
  • Firewall installation for WordPress

Reliable and good hosting providers closely monitor their network to identify and prevent suspicious activities. Also, most of the best hosting providers use advanced tools to avert large scale DDOS attacks. 

Kinsta and WP Engine are the most reliable and finest hosting provider you can go for. 

Enure Up-to-date Software and Components 

Keeping up with the WordPress update cycle is indispensable from the security perspective. This is because the latest WordPress versions are likely to resolve security loop-holes detected in previous versions. WordPress offers auto-installation for minor updates, but for major ones you need to start update installation manually. 

Updating WordPress doesn’t only limit to its core software, but you should also keep the themes and plugins up-to-date. There are myriads of WordPress plugins and themes maintained by third-party developers, who also provide regular updates. 

For better stability and strong security of your website, you must update the core software and other WordPress components regularly. 

Get the Finest WordPress Security Plugin 

It is hardly possible to regularly monitor your WordPress website security for malware. Moreover, without up-to-the-date knowledge of WordPress coding practices, you won’t be able to recognize the security threat or malware in the code. WordPress security plugins act as a definite solution to this problem. Such security plugins regularly audit and monitor your site, scan for malware and take care of the security aspects. 

Now the question is which security plugin you should install? As there is an abundance of security plugins, choosing the best one might get complicated. You need to pick the most powerful plugin that can effectively handle and enhance the security of your site. 

A best WordPress security plugin should be capable of:

  • Preventing brute force attack
  • Scanning malware
  • Offering firewalls
  • Scanning the files
  • Notifying on the security threat detection 
  • Monitoring backlist
  • Performing post-hack actions
  • Hardening security 
  • and lots more 

WordFence and Sucuri Security are the two best WordPress security plugins having excellent features and great capabilities. 

Modify the Login URL

“yoursite.com/wp-admin” is the default login address for WordPress. Keeping this address default can invite brute force attack to breach your password combination. Moreover, if you allow users to register, you may receive many spam registrations. The best way to avoid this scenario is to rename the login URL. It will get tricky for a hacker to guess the custom login URL and breach the site security. You can also choose to add a security question to the login and registration page. 

Integrate the WordPress Backup Solution 

We can’t ignore the fact that anything linked to the Internet is at risk to some extent. Knowing this fact, you must be ready to face something bad in the future. In terms of your WordPress website, you must be prepared with a backup. It is of the highest importance to take a regular backup of your WordPress site. With the help of this backup, you can quickly restore your website if it experiences something bad. To simplify the task, you can install one of the most efficient backup solutions. You will come across a plethora of free and paid WordPress plugins, thus choosing the right one is a confusing task.

There are several types of backup plugins to choose from:

  • Complete Backup: Plugins that lets you backup the entire site, including database and WordPress files.
  • Database Backup: Plugins that let you the backup only database of your site
  • Scheduled Backup: Plugins that allow you to schedule backup. The backup starts automatically and thereby saves your effort and time.

Based on your backup requirement, you can pick a suitable plugin. Furthermore, try to select the plugin or solution that enables you to save the data to remote locations or cloud services like Dropbox, Amazon, Stash, etc.

UpdraftPlus, BackWPUp, Duplicator, and BackUpWordPress are some of the popular WordPress backup plugins you can take into account. 

Prefer SSL/HTTPS

If your website comprises essential information like customer information, payment details, passwords etc. then better, you should use SSL encryption. It encrypts the sensitive information and data being transferred between your website and users browser. SSL encryption makes it arduous for cyber-thieves to steal the information or sniff around. Basically, on the installation of an SSL certificate, your site will use HTTPS instead of HTTP. 

Though SSL certificate seems costly, it can offer you a superior level of security for your WordPress site. If you own an eCommerce site, then SSL is a must for you. 

Install Web Application Firewall (WAF)

By installing WAF, you can easily protect your site while ensuring robust security. WAF successfully blocks all malicious traffic before it arrives to your website. Again you have multiple options for choosing a firewall plugins. Here are two types of firewall plugins, which are mostly preferred. 

  • Application Level Firewall: These plugins check the traffic after reaching your server but ahead of loading WordPress scripts. 
  • DNS Level Website Firewall: These plugins direct the traffic through their cloud proxy servers. With this approach, only authentic traffic is sent to your server. 

Fortify Login Information

Weak password and login details are responsible for most of the successful website hacks. To avoid brute force attacks and other threats, you must strengthen the login information. 

Look at these useful WordPress login tips to achieve improved security:

  • Avoid using Admin as username
  • Consider frequently changing the password 
  • Ot for a stronger password
  • Have different accounts for content publishing and administration 
  • Limit the login attempts
  • Hide login page 
  • Use two-step authentication

Ensure Security of Local PC and Network 

Not all security threats will depend on WordPress or WordPress development. Instead, your PC and network can be responsible for several cyber attacks. Thus it is also essential to keep your computer system or laptop and network secure. 

Here are a few tips you can follow:

  • Install computer firewall or use the default one 
  • Install virus scanner software on your PC and ensure regular scanning
  • Use FTPS instead of FTP when accessing your server
  • Don’t attempt to login to your site through an unsecured Internet connection or public Wifi. 

Why should you Trust Experts to Build Highly Secure WordPress Website? 

Though WordPress offer a DIY option, you can’t build a highly secure website by yourself until having a thorough knowledge. Thus, it is better to hire a team of experts who can make a robust and secure WordPress website with best security practices. You can consider outsourcing WordPress development to a reliable and experienced WordPress development agency. By doing this, you can get a correctly built website that can prevent and withstand any cyberattack, malicious activity and other threats. WordPress experts know which plugins, themes and practices are capable of offering superior security. They can efficiently work on the vital security aspects that require profound programming knowledge.

Conclusion

By implementing these expert tips, you can achieve better security for your website. If your website matters to you or your business depend on it, then security should be your topmost concern. You must put the best possible efforts to make it highly secure. If you want to build a website, then hire WordPress developer or WordPress development agency who will also work on the security aspects in an optimum way. For any of your WordPress development requirements, we are here to assist you with result-driven solutions.

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