The security of WordPress is a topic of great importance for all users of the platform. Each week, Google blacklists about 20,000 malware-infected sites and about 50,000 with phishing. So if you’re interested in keeping your site secure, you should be aware of WordPress’s security best practices. Today, we’ll share the top tips for doing a security checklist and improving your in WordPress. Keep up with us!
Why keep my WordPress safe?
Well, a hacked WordPress site can cause serious damage to your business.
Hackers can steal user information, passwords, install malicious software, and even distribute malware to their users.
Although the main WordPress platform is very secure and regularly audited by hundreds of developers, a lot can be done to strengthen your site. We believe that safety is not only a risk elimination, but also a reduction of risks. For this, we have several practical steps, and one of them is a security checklist, which will assist you in the fight against bad intentions. Come on?
Keep WordPress Updated
WordPress is an open source platform that is regularly maintained and updated. By default, WordPress automatically installs small updates, but for large releases, you need to manually start the upgrade. Keeping WordPress up to date is key to an effective security checklist.
WordPress also comes with thousands of plugins and themes that you can install on your site. These plug-ins and themes are maintained by third-party developers who also release updates regularly, and these WordPress updates are crucial to the security and stability of your site. So it’s critical that you make sure that the core, plug-ins, and WordPress theme are up to date.
Passwords and user permissions
Most of the time, attempts to hack into WordPress are through stolen passwords. To avoid, put in your security checklist the development of stronger passwords, unique to your site. Not only for the WordPress admin area, but also for FTP accounts, database, WordPress hosting account and your email address.
Another way to reduce risk is by carefully managing user permissions. If you have a large team or invited authors, make sure you understand the user’s functions and features in WordPress before adding new people to the management system.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Your Fully Managed WordPress hosting service plays one of the most important roles when it comes to security checklist. A good hosting provider offers extra measures to protect your servers against common threats. So, research well before choosing this service.
Backup
Are you backing up your WordPress website up to date? Backup is an indispensable item for a security checklist. Backups are your first defense against any WordPress attack. They allow you to quickly restore your website in case something bad happens, so they are so important.
There are many free and paid WordPress backup plugins but, the bottom line is: Regularly save full site backups to a remote location (not your hosting account). Based on how often you update your website, the ideal frequency can be once a day or real-time backups.
Security Plugins
After backups, the next step we need to do is set up an auditing and tracking system that tracks everything that happens on the site. This includes file integrity monitoring, failed login attempts, malware checking, and so on. Fortunately, all of this can be done with a free WordPress security plugin, called Scanner Sucuri.
Change the default user name
Previously, the default WordPress username was “admin”. Because user names are half the login credentials, this makes malicious attacks easier. For this reason, WordPress has since changed and now requires you to select a custom username at the time of installing WordPress.
However, some WordPress installers still set the default admin username to “admin”. Because WordPress does not allow you to change users’ names by default, there are three alternative methods that allow you to change:
- Create a new administrator user name and delete the old one.
- Use the Username Changer plugin
- Update phpMyAdmin username
Limit login attempts
By default, WordPress allows users to try to log in as often as they like. This leaves WordPress vulnerable to brute-force attacks as hackers try to break passwords by trying to sign in with different combinations.
This can easily be fixed by limiting the failed login attempts a user can make. If you are using Web application firewall, this will be done automatically. However, if you do not have the firewall configuration, follow the steps below:
First, you need to install and activate the LockDown Login plugin. After activation, visit the Settings page and then LockDown login to configure the plug-in.
Well, you can see that there are many options available to make your WordPress more secure, right? If you want to go deeper, here is a more detailed security checklist. This gives you access to a very extensive list of actions to increase the security of your WordPress installation.
