How to improve the security of My Wordpress?

There are several security plugins that can help you reduce attacks on your websites, here are some:

All in One WP Security & Firewall

I recently discovered this plugin in one of the English blogs linked to WordPress that I usually read daily. The main advantage of an All in One, as its name suggests, is that it includes several security services in a single plugin: antivirus, firewall, security auditor, firewall and some other functionalities that are very interesting for securing WordPress.

wordpress security

One of the things I like most about All in One WP Security & Firewall is the management of the .htaccess file and the management of the wp-config.php file, two of the most important files in the operation of WordPress and in its security (although the .htaccess can be replaced if you do not use Apache or LiteSpeed).

In All In One WP Security & Firewall I have found tools to control all types of parameters: account security, database security, access and login security, security against malicious code injections in files, permissions security file and folder protection, protection against brute force attacks, protection against iframes and pop-ups, text copy protection and many other features.

Wordfence Security

WordFence is one of the most used plugins to strengthen and improve WordPress security, and although it has been around for quite some time, it is one of the most effective since it allows us to protect WordPress from several fronts at the same time.

One of the strong points of WordFence is that it has a good analysis engine for files that have changed or that have been injected with code, the bad thing is that sometimes it can give too many false positives in the analysis, it will also allow us see visitor analysis in real time, although this significantly increases resource consumption if the website has traffic.

wordpress security

Wordfence tries to have a minimal impact on the performance of the website, for this reason it has implemented a small caching system that can be used to the maximum on web servers compatible with .htaccess such as Apache.

On the other hand, WordFence has a very powerful firewall that allows us to block visitors by country, area of the world or even by provider and user-agent.

As in the case of All in One WP Security & Firewall, to take full advantage of the potential of WordFence we must configure the entire plugin, something that requires advanced knowledge to avoid problems.

iThemes Security

iThemes Security was previously called Better WP Security and for a couple of months (more than half a year) it has become a very complete solution to protect WordPress, since it allows us to make some parameter changes that will help us maintain WordPress out of the reach of intruders and hackers.

Although many of our clients use iThemes Security in their WordPress installations, we personally do not like it due to the number of configuration parameters it has and how difficult it can make using WordPress as administrators in exchange for a lot of more security.

wordpress security

Although it seems that iThemes Security takes you by the hand during the entire process of securing the site, the reality is not like that and if you want to take advantage of the full potential of the plugin you must configure quite a few parameters, if you do not know very well how to configure them, it is recommended is not to do it, since one wrong step can leave your WordPress inaccessible.

iThemes Security does not have any module that allows you to clean viruses or malware, but it does have a very powerful and customizable firewall with blocking and a system that allows us to customize many parts of WordPress in order to improve its security and prevent possible future infections.

Centrora Security

Centrora Security is a quite powerful security suite for WordPress and therefore requires a very deep installation within WordPress, integrating with all parts of the CMS and protecting the installation in its entirety.

Unfortunately not everything can be so pretty, and the complete protection that Centrora offers directly impacts the performance of the WordPress website or blog.

On the other hand, Centrora offers some features for free, but many others are paid, as is the case of the “antivirus” module. In the free part, Centrora offers us a fairly powerful and highly configurable firewall following a normal rules scheme, and a fairly good tool that will allow us to audit the security of our website to reinforce those most defenseless parts.

wordpress security

Another strong point of Centrora is that it protects us against possible attacks or injection attempts using GET parameters in the URL, that is, using variables.

Antivirus for WordPress

Perhaps this plugin is the “weakest” of the list of five, since it only has one functionality: antivirus and antimalware for WordPress.

wordpress security

The operation of the plugin is simple and it simply has a configuration screen where we can perform an on-demand analysis of the theme files to detect malicious code.

The plugin itself is responsible for analyzing the theme files once a day to detect malware and if so, it notifies us through a previously configured email.

Unfortunately the plugin, in its attempt to analyze the code as thoroughly as possible, usually detects quite a few erroneous patterns that cause false positives, which is why it is not a recommended plugin for beginner WordPress users.


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