Is WordPress secure?
Is WordPress easily hacked?
How do I ensure security in WordPress?
How to secure WordPress website from hackers?
What are the best WordPress Security tips for 2021?
Could you list WordPress Security best practices?
Which is the best WordPress Security checklist 2021?
If you are looking for answers to the above questions then you have come to the right place.
Congrats and pat your back.
You did an excellent job. Keep it up!
You are a wonderful human being.
Now lets get back to out article.
By default WordPress as a content management system is secure.
But there are things that weaken security like themes and plugins.
WordPress Security can be hardened, simply by increasing the degree of difficulty to hack.
Tips to Hardened WordPress Security
- Host your blog with a reputed hosting company.
- Always Keep WordPress Updated.
- Use secure themes, and make sure you regularly update them.
- Delete unused WordPress themes.
- If not required disable new user registration.
- Make your nickname different than WordPress login username.
- Change WordPress “Display name publicly as” to something different than login username.
- Use long complex password for WordPress login.
- Create new WordPress administrator with login username other than “admin”.
- To avoid brute force attack, protect your WordPress login page or create new one.
- Disable WordPress login hints in login error messages.
- Remove lost password link from WordPress login, if not required.
- Redirect failed WordPress login to homepage.
- Redirect lost password link to homepage.
- Disable XML-RPC completely if you do not connect to external service.
- Plugins are the biggest reason WordPress sites get hacked.
- Make minimum use of WordPress plugins.
- Delete unused WordPress plugins.
- Always keep plugins updated.
- Create WordPress Blog Specific Plugin for code snippets specific to your site.
- Change WordPress database table prefix from the default wp_ to avoid SQL injection attack.
- Change WordPress user ID to hide login username from your-site.com/?author=1 which redirects to author url [your-site.com/author/username/].
- Change WordPress Author URL Base, and Slug (user_nicename).
- Keep a log of WordPress Database and PHP errors.
- Enable HTTPS.
- Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) header.
- Only allow authorized users and applications to access WordPress Rest API.
- Activate web application firewall to filter traffic.
- Always use SFTP or SSH to connect to server.
- Disable directory listing for WordPress files and folders.
- Disable PHP execution in WordPress uploads directory.
- Enable TLS 1.3.
- Disable direct access to your server IP.
- Always keep your server OS and other software’s updated.
- Enable latest security standards like HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 with QUIC.
Do I Need to Install WordPress Security Plugin?
This is not an easy to answer this question.
It depends on where you are hosting your website and what security measures are implemented.
Most important is your risk profile.
Tips for Optimal WordPress Security
- Host you site with secure Managed WordPress Hosting company.
- Powered by LiteSpeed Web Server.
- Add any WordPress Security plugin like Jetpack Plugin or mentioned above.
- Enable Cloudflare Access to protect the backend.
- Enable external firewall and DDoS service.
Firmly believe that above tips will help you minimize loopholes so that your website is not easily hackable.
Moral of the Story
Prevention is better than cure.