In the digital era, every major or minor thing is being handled online through websites and various other online portals. But along with all this ease and convenience, there is always a threat of cybercrimes or data breaches. Due to this reason, it is quite essential to keep your website highly secure so that no one can hack it and leach on the customer/client data.
If you are not keeping your website secure, the customers won’t find the brand reliable or trustworthy, which is not good for the reputation of a business. So how will you make sure that your WordPress website is secure or not?
WordPress platform is considered to be the most popular platform in the entire market when it comes to websites. Almost 40% of websites run on WordPress. When it is having such a big consideration, then the security of the WordPress websites becomes the biggest concern. There are many unethical hackers who are always in the search of loopholes and WordPress platform vulnerabilities that could be used for their benefit. But it is not possible.
There are multiple ways in which the WordPress website can be secured with the use of plugins and even without them. So let’s understand it one by one.
Keeping The WordPress Website Secure Without Plugins:
1. You Must Keep The Website Upgraded:
Although the WordPress websites are free and open-source, which enables the auto-up-gradation of the minor functionality. But for major things, you should get them checked regularly and keep them updated. You must browse through the backend to check whether the regularly used plugins are updated or not. If there are some unused plugins, get them removed. Besides this, you should check the latest version of the themes and keep them updated.
2. Make Use Of Strong Passwords And Have Multiple User Permissions/Authentications:
Usually, the WordPress website hacking takes place due to weak passwords or if there is no user permission. To keep your WordPress websites protected, you should set strong passwords and have 2-factor authentication. This would be helpful not just for the admin but also beneficial in protecting the database.
3. You Should Choose A Secure WordPress Hosting Website:
If you are hosting your WordPress website on the shared hosting services, then there is a threat to your website due to the cross-website connections. This increases the chances of your website being hacked. So you should choose the hosting provider that keeps your WordPress website secure and automatically keep updating the security parameters.
4. You Can Put A Limit On The Number Of Login Attempts:
This might seem very insignificant right now, but it is an effective way of keeping WordPress websites secure from unethical hacking.
Now that you have understood how to keep your website secure without the use of plugins, next you must learn how to keep the website secure with the use of plugins.
Secure Your Website With Plugins:
1. You Should Install A Plugin For Maintaining Data Backup:
With such data backup plugins, you can restore your website even if it gets hacked by malicious activities. You can have the backup of the entire website to a different location where the hackers can’t reach out and not at the hosting server. It will increase the level of security. A few popular data backup plugins are — VaultPress and BackupBuddy.
2. WordPress Sucuri Security Plugin:
Once you are done with the backup process, it is the right time to focus on the actual security parameters. For that, you need to install the Sucuri security plugin. With the installation of this security plugin, you can enable the features like tracking the malicious activities, keeping a tab on the malware scanning, monitoring the failed login attempts, and finally keeping the WordPress website secure. There are various other plugins that can be used for increasing the security of the WordPress website. To name a few such as WordPress website security plugins — File scanning, Security hardening, WordPress Security Alerts, Malware scanning, Firewalls. These plugins are known for increasing the security of your website and keeping it protected from unethical threats and attacks.
Summary:
WordPress is considered the best CMS as compared to other frameworks. Due to these reasons, most of the websites are built on WordPress. When the CMS is in so much demand, it is essential that the security features provided by WordPress should be up to the mark. You can follow the aforementioned points to keep your WordPress website protected.