Among all other CMS, WordPress is one of the most prominent CMS used for developing websites and blogs. On that note, WordPress security is one of the essential aspects every website owner should know. Since developers cannot build all the functionalities from scratch in WordPress, it is necessary to keep various security measures and best practices in mind. This article is a quick walkthrough of the different security tips & best practices site owners should follow.

About WordPress Security

More than 43.2 per cent of all websites run on WordPress. WordPress security is the methodology to secure the WordPress CMS website from malicious threats and attack vectors. Various attacks like Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), SQL injection (SQLi), Local file inclusion (LFI), etc., are what attackers use to access the data and backend of a WordPress website. Thus, various tools, plugins, and security best practices work together to provide WordPress security.

Why do WordPress Sites Get Hacked?

Before diving deep into WordPress security techniques and best practices, it is essential to understand how these websites are hacked. From a general perspective, cybercriminals target websites for different reasons:

• Stealing personally identifiable information (PII)
• Taking user emails to deliver spam
• Trick users into installing malware on their machines
• Stop customers and users from accessing the website by flooding it with unsolicited requests

Here are some WordPress attacks:

• Cross-site request forgery (CSRF): It compels the user to execute unwanted actions on a trusted WordPress site.
• DDoS: It floods any online service or application with unsolicited data packets. Hence the WordPress site becomes inaccessible to genuine visitors.
• Bypassing authentication: Cybercriminals can bypass authentication to access and admin account or other visitors’ accounts. Attackers can also use tricks to extract passwords from you.
• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): Attackers can inject unwanted code into WordPress sites, making the site/app a malware carrier. It often damages brand reputation.
• SQL Injection: Cybercriminals can execute malicious SQL queries to view & manipulate the data in a database as unauthorized individuals.
• Local file inclusion: Attackers often use this technique to force a website to process malicious files by placing them on the web server.

Common cyber attacks on WordPress sites are listed below.

WordPress Security Tips and Best Practices

Here are some well-known WordPress security tips and best practices website and WordPress site owners must ponder while developing WordPress-based sites.

1. Keep all WordPress elements up-to-date: Web developers and WordPress CMS owners often use various WordPress Elements. These are plugins, themes, etc. To boost your WordPress website’s security, owners must keep them updated. Plugin and theme creators often patch these elements to prevent vulnerabilities. Revamping these plugins can be tedious, especially if you manage multiple WordPress sites. Website owners and admins can install Smart Plugin Manager to check for updates automatically.

2. App security tools: Application load balancers or DDoS detection & mitigation tools are other essential WordPress security tips and best practices WordPress website owners should consider. Load balancers detect unbidden SYN floods or UDP packets by absorbing fake traffic or separating them for handling to other associated servers. Load balancers detect unnecessary data packets & separate them for handling to other associated servers. Modern DDoS mitigation tools use ML algorithms to prevent bot-based DDoS attacks. It can intelligently identify spoofed data packets through IP addresses, patterns, & geolocations. 

3. Secure the Website with HTTPS

Your website must have HTTPS in its URL and a padlock sign to win the trust of customers as well as to secure the data shared by online website visitors. All these indicators will be there in your website URL if you buy SSL Certificate and install it on your website. SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate is nothing but a certificate that will help to encrypt the data shared through your website. 

4. WAF is also necessary: Web Application Firewalls are powerful security tools that monitor, filter, and block HTTP traffic from unauthorized systems. It can also identify attacks and malware exploits and prevent WordPress sites from getting hacked. WAF inspects each data packet & uses a rule to filter out malicious data packets. WAF can prevent WordPress sites and server data from malware infections, zero-day exploits, impersonation, etc.

5. Use password best practices: Unique passwords or paraphrases with symbols, upper and lower caps, numbers, etc., play a significant role in providing WordPress security. Do not keep any password that is a dictionary word or something easy to guess. Also, it is a good practice to update the password frequently.

6. Limit Login attempts: Another best practice and WordPress security tip that helps protect accounts from password guessing, credential stuffing, and brute force attacks are to limit login attempts. WordPress is rich with plugins. Website owners can use “Limit Login Attempts” plugins to limit the number of providing login credentials (3 or 5 times). Then it will block the account for 20 minutes or so. That way, attackers cannot use automated scripts or brute force tools to break the password.

7. Use CAPTCHA before filling Forms and Text Boxes: Attackers often use forms and text boxes in web applications to perform local file inclusion, SQL injection, and other web attacks. Modern attack vectors have become automated through scripts. The script fetches data from a database and tries different ways to exploit a system. That is where CAPTCHA comes in for preventing websites from automatically submitting forms and other requests. Website owners can use Google Captcha (reCAPTCHA) plugins to enable CAPTCHA on WordPress forms, logins, and registration pages.

8. Backup your site: Often attackers try to infect your WordPress website data with malware. If they can execute any script or inject malware on the server side, chances are such malware might erase all your website data. It can pause your business work and pose losses to revenue. Therefore, backing up your WordPress site is another best practice owners can follow.

Conclusion

We Hope the Above security tips will help you to secure your WordPress website. Other than all these WordPress security tips and practices, website owners can disable the file editing option from the WordPress dashboard, log user activities, change database file prefixes, etc. to make a more secure website. For the latest gadget and tech news, and gadget reviews, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For the newest tech & gadget videos subscribe to our YouTube Channel. You can also stay up to date using the Gadget Bridge Android App. You can find the latest car and bike news here.