The Best WordPress Security & Firewall Plugins Compared

WordPress has remained one of the most popular CMS platforms available. Due to its popularity and the huge number of sites that run on WordPress, the platform is a constant target for attackers.

If you have a WordPress website, a WordPress plugin with malware protection and firewall can help keep your site secure.

Try the Sucuri WordPress Plugin

How Secure is WordPress?

WordPress is a fairly secure CMS. Whenever a new vulnerability is discovered, WordPress provides patches and updates. Nevertheless, the use of third-party plugins and themes increases your chances of becoming vulnerable by providing additional routes of attack.

Why Use a Security Plugin in WordPress?

Unfortunately, many website owners are not concerned with their website’s security until their site has already been compromised. A website hack can damage your brand reputation, visitor trust, and SEO rankings.

If your WordPress website becomes compromised hackers may steal your sensitive data, distribute malicious code, or deface your website completely. Proactively installing a security plugin on your WordPress site can help prevent serious damage to your site and reputation.

A good WordPress security plugin protects your website from brute force attacks, hack attempts, and malware so that you can focus on building your brand and websites instead of worrying about security threats. Since cleaning a hacked WordPress website can be especially tedious and challenging, it’s better to take a proactive approach and avoid a compromise in the first place.

Adding a WordPress security plugin is a good starting point to securing your website. These all in one WP security plugins include a variety of key features such as malware scanning, web application firewalls and file-system integrity checks.

5 Best WordPress Security Plugins Comparison

Download

Free WP Security Plugin

 Sucuri WordFence iThemes Cerber Security All In One WP Security
Malware Scanning Yes Yes Yes Yes –
Blocklist Monitoring Yes – – – –
Core Integrity Check Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Website Auditing Yes Yes Yes Yes –
Post-Hack Actions Yes – – – –
One-Click Hardening Yes – – – –
Notifications Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
WordPress Compatibility 3.6 or higher 3.9 or higher 4.7 or higher 4.5 or higher 4.7 or higher
Brute Force Protection Premium version Yes Yes Yes Yes
DDoS Mitigation Premium version – Premium version – Premium version
Malware Removal Premium version Premium version – – –
Active Installs 500,000 + 3 million + 900,000 + 100,000 + 800,000 +

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WordPress Security Plugins Compared

To help you choose the best plugin, we’ve compiled a list of the top WordPress security plugins and highlighted their most important features.

1. Sucuri

The Sucuri WordPress plugin is available for free from the WordPress repository. This plugin is bundled with hardening features, malware scanning, core integrity file checking, post-hack hardening features, and email alerts to notify you of any important changes or security issues.

The paid version of the Sucuri WordPress plugin allows you to connect the Sucuri Firewall for advanced protection against brute force, automated attacks, and DDoS along with signficant site speed and performance improvements through caching.

Features include:

  • WordPress hardening features with secure configuration verification
  • Malware scanning to detect malicious injections, iframes, spam and other malware threats
  • Security activity auditing to monitor your website for indicators of compromise
  • Blacklist monitoring to identify if you’re being flagged by Google, Norton, AVG, or other search authorities
  • File integrity monitoring to alert you to any changes to website files including edits, uploads, and removals
  • Premium version includes web application firewall to deter hackers and prevent brute force and DDoS attacks

2. WordFence

The WordFence plugin offers login features and a dashboard to give you important insights into traffic trends and hack attempts to help you secure your WordPress website. It periodically searches for malware to detect threats.

Features include:

  • Monitor live traffic by viewing login activity, bot, human traffic and Google crawl activity
  • Scan website files for malware
  • Password auditing and cell phone sign-in

3. iThemes

The iThemes WordPress plugin, formerly known as Better WP Security, allows users to run basic malware scans to identify issues on their website. The Pro version is more expensive but offers a more robust feature set, including scheduled malware scanning and email alerts.

Features include:

  • Monitor website for suspicious activity and malware
  • Prevents brute force attacks
  • Scans for vulnerable plugins and themes

4. Cerber Security

The Cerber Security plugin includes a number of features to protect WordPress from malware and keep a website secure.

Features include:

  • Limited login attempts and login monitoring to prevent and detect unauthorized access
  • Malware scanning to detect malicious behavior
  • Scheduled scans with file recovery features

5. All in One WP Security

The All in One WP Security plugin offers an easy-to-use interface great for beginner webmasters. Reports are provided with explanations for website security related metrics.

Features include:

  • Blacklisting tool and comment spam security
  • Website vulnerability scanning
  • Highly visual plugin to help beginner website owners understand security landscape
  • Completely free plugin with no upsells

Choosing the Best WordPress Security Plugin

There’s a number of factors to consider when choosing a WordPress plugin to protect your website. Here are some considerations to help you choose the best security plugin.

Security Features

he best plugins pack a punch to keep out the bad guys and are bundled with important security features like malware scanning, security hardening, post-hack instructions, firewalls, and alerts.

Value

Take a look at the price points and compare them to the plugin’s feature sets. Is there a free version of the plugin and does it contain the features you need? What does the premium plugin offer?

Interface

Pick the plugin based on your level of expertise. If you need a graphical interface, consider how easy you can to navigate and find the features you need.

Why Choose Sucuri?

Thought Leaders in Website Security

WordPress is a fairly secure CMS. Whenever a new vulnerability is discovered, WordPress provides patches and updates. Nevertheless, the use of third-party plugins and themes increases your chances of becoming vulnerable by providing additional routes of attack.

Sucuri is the leading website security company for WordPress. The free Sucuri Security – Auditing, Malware Scanner and Security Hardening plugin is a security suite which aims at complementing your WordPress website’s security posture.

The Sucuri free WordPress security plugin offers:

  • Security Activity Auditing
  • File Integrity Monitoring
  • Remote Malware Scanning
  • Website Blocklist Monitoring
  • Effective Security Hardening
  • Post-Hack Security Actions
  • Security Notifications
  • Website Firewall (Premium version)

Sucuri has a dedicated research team to provide you the best WordPress security plugin.

Website Security Plugin vs. Website Firewall

No website security plugin is able to handle distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. A DDoS attack is not only an application-kind-of-attack, it can also target the network itself, which is prior to the execution of a plugin. Even a simple SYN attack is enough to take a website down, even with security plugins installed.

The premium version of the Sucuri plugin is actually not a plugin, but the Sucuri website firewall that blocks malicious traffic before it reaches your website – including DDoS attacks. The Sucuri website firewall blocks around 40 millions attacks per day. It also includes a free CDN and DNS. These features speed up the website, whereas some other security plugins slow down the website as they are dependent upon server resources.

The Sucuri WAF is based on geographically diversified proprietary points of presence (PoPs) which operate and monitor the network 24/7 with redundancy on all levels. The Sucuri firewall helps your website become PCI compliant and updates daily via our team of expert researchers and engineers. Due to the general and platform-specific highly advanced filters, the Sucuri website firewall is able to block all types of exploits before they are even public. As well, it patches the entire network against a new vector in minutes with absolutely no interaction from the customer.

You can add website protection starting at $9.99 per website per month.

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