What do security plug-ins do for your website?
Create a firewall – A firewall monitors all traffic attempting to visit your site and filters out known, malicious bots before they even reach your server.
Perform a Scan – Scanning your website on a regular basis, looking for any suspicious malware or other viruses is a necessary function. If google picks up the fact that you have a virus or malware on your site you will be “blacklisted” from their search engine – for good reason as they don’t want you to spread this virus to your visitors – but it is always best to catch this long before your site is blacklisted.
Provide Solutions – Once something nefarious has been found on your site, how do you fix it?
The following is a run-down of the most common security solutions used by websites. There are many more out there, but each of these four are very representative of varying budget levels and functions performed. i.e. there is a solution for everyone.
Popular Plug-Ins
Sucuri
Sucuri is a very comprehensive security solution that protects your site from malware, brute force attacks, and other potential vulnerabilities. The basic protection plan costs roughly $200/year, and it comes highly recommended.
Sucuri, pushes all of your website traffic goes through their CloudProxy servers as they do their security scans, which takes the burden off of your own server. This can be very important for larger websites which engage a lot of traffic and are by definition subject to more attacks.
Aside from blocking all the attacks, some other ways Sucuri protects your website are:
It monitors your website every so many hours to ensure your website is free from potential vulnerabilities and malware.
It keeps track of all activity on your site, including file changes, last login, failed login attempts,
For a site with serious traffic and critical security needs, this could be a serious consideration.
Sitelock
SiteLock is another popular website security solution that is often offered to you when you sign up for hosting services, such as Bluehost. It comes with all the necessary features you need to secure your website, and is a little more cost-effective than Sucuri.
Sitelock is one of the fastest website scanning solutions in existence. It scans your website daily, and finds, fixes, and prevents vulnerabilities.
With their web application firewall, you can differentiate human traffic from bot traffic and secure your website from bots and attacks by blocking them before they reach your site.
Sitelock is a very comprehensive solution, performing all the tasks required, and will provide site owners with that peace of mind.
I-Themes Security
iThemes Security should be a very real consideration, especially if you have already invested in their plug-in Back-up Buddy to perform back-ups on your website. I-Themes offers discounts for buying more than one service from them.
I-Themes security protects your website from brute force attacks, and provides email updates of any suspicious activity. They will also lock out suspicious IP’s, and, if you ever do get attacked, provide offsite backup storage for your website and an incredibly easy-to use plugin that will get your site up and running again in very little time.
Basically, it takes care of you security needs, provides a solution to fix your site when it goes down, and is reasonably priced.
Wordfence
Wordfence is one of the most comprehensive WordPress security plugins available, and is one of the most commonly downloaded security plug-in (2+ million installs), as its most basic version is offered free.
This is a great option for website owners just starting out, as initially, security is not as important and yet some sort of security is mandatory. As your website grows, you can expand to the paid version, or consider alternative paid solutions, but, at the beginning, the free version is a wonderful asset.
The free plugin comes with the three critical features you need in a security plug-in: a firewall, a malware scanner, and protection from brute attacks. .
Wordfence does run on your own server instead of being a cloud-based provider, therefore it can slow your servers down at times, but when you’re first starting out and your website is relatively small, this is a very small price to pay for good protection. As you grow, you may want to explore a cloud-based solution such as Sucuri.