13 Powerful Security Plugins For WordPress (That Works)

You put a lot of time and effort into building a blog but some prying eyes with malicious intents are always ready to attack you. We can all agree – the Internet isn’t a very safe place. So, it’s crucial to take your blog security seriously. And the fun part? You DON’T REQUIRE TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE to protect your website or blog! 

There are some security plugins for WordPress that can help achieve the same. They are free, paid, and freemium. However, in most cases, you have to pay to use the advanced features of these plugins.

Today we’re going to tell you about 13 powerful security plugins for WordPress that will help you protect your site or blog.

However, WordPress security is not all about just installing plugins. It’s much more than that including steps like using strong & complex passwords, enabling two-factor authentication, enabling captcha, etc. Nonetheless, these plugins act as a fortress wall and prevent your website from unauthorized access.

You maybe wondering, ‘Why I need to secure my WordPress site in the first place? Isn’t WordPress secure enough?‘ Let me tell you.

Why take your WordPress Website Security seriously?

According to a study by Security Magazine, hackers attack every 39 seconds. You can understand the amount of risk you’re putting being carefree about the security of your website. WordPress isn’t fully secure as claimed by security experts.

Here’s what might happen if you don’t protect your WordPress website:

1. Unauthorized Access: If you don’t protect your blog/website, then any unauthorized person can enter your system and harm it.
2. Data Breach: Websites store critical data of users like Email, Name, Password and a lot of other details depend on the functionality of your website. Data Protection laws like GDPR are also there, which can get you legal problems and cause financial as well as brand value damage.
3. Inappropriate Content Posting: Sometimes, less secure websites can result in unauthorized access and as a result, inappropriate content gets posted on your website causing your image to go in vain.
4. Website Shutdown: Insecure websites can turn into your biggest nightmare. An attacker can shut down, takeover, or completely delete your website.
5. Loss of Brand Value: Even if you’re a small business or blog, you should always protect your brand value because that’s how people identify you with. Hackers can damage this value in innumerable ways. Security plugins for WordPress are essential to prevent you from this loss.

List of 13 Best Security Plugins For WordPress Websites

Let’s have a look at the list of the security plugins for WordPress websites that you can install from the plugins directory to make your website secure. These plugins will ensure that you don’t face security issues and keep your website secure from most of the attacks (yes I said most because sorry I can’t sugarcoat that everything’s will be 100% secure...you need to be aware too).

Here you go…

1. Sucuri Security
2. WordFence
3. iThemes Security
4. Loginizer
5. WP Hide & Security Enhancer
6. WC Password Strength Settings
7. Safe SVG
8. Stop User Enumeration
9. Prevent XSS Vulnerability
10. WordPress Social Login by miniOrange
11. Forget Spam Comment
12. UpdraftPlus
13. Security Ninja

Now, let me brief about these security plugins for WordPress and how it saves your from bad guys.

1. Sucuri Security

Sucuri is a leading name in the cybersecurity industry, trusted by famous names like CrossFit, WPbeginner, and WPEngine. Sucuri offers a wide range of protection tools and solutions to keep your website safe. Their WordPress security plugin is called Sucuri Security.

It helps to protect your website from malware attacks as well as unauthorized access. Read features below to know more.

Features of Sucuri Security WordPress plugin:

• Security Activity Auditing: Sucuri will scan your whole website and provide you an audit report showing all the vulnerabilities and security issues present on your website.
• File Integrity Monitoring: Sucuri Security plugin scans the core files of WordPress, and if there are any changes in those files, then it detects whether your website was hacked and notifies you.
• Remote Malware Scanning: Sucuri Security plugin lets you scan all your files remotely for malware and virus to protect your website against attacks.
• Blacklist Monitoring: All the popular security firms prepare a blacklist of their own. Sucuri security plugins try to scan your files and checks with all those blacklists to find any possible security issue on your website. Blacklist is provided by companies like Sucuri Labs, Google Safe Browsing, Norton, AVG, Phish Tank, ESET, McAfee, Site Advisor Yandex, SpamHaus, and Bitdefender.
• Post-Hack Security Actions: No matter how hard you try to secure the website, sometimes we can’t, so if your website gets hacked, Sucuri Security will help you with the tips and guidance to recover from it.
• Security Notifications: Sucuri Security plugin will notify you immediately when it finds any security issue on your website.
• Website Firewall (premium): Sucuri provides you enterprise-level security by adding the power of their website firewall to your WordPress website. This firewall will protect you against Denial of Service Attacks, Exploitation of Software Vulnerabilities, Zero Day Disclosure Patches, Brute Force Attacks against your ACM, etc. It also helps you with performance optimization.

The legacy Sucuri holds in the cybersecurity industry and their plugin’s powerful features made me to list them #1 security plugin for WordPress.

2. WordFence

WordFence is a widely popular WordPress plugin focused solely on WordPress security. It provides enterprise-level security features for free. It comes with endpoint firewall protection and malware scanning capability. It protects your website from attacks and blocks the visits from malicious IPs, and updates the blocklist in real-time. WordFence offers free 100% focused on WordPress security.

Features of WordFence WordPress security plugin:

• WordPress Endpoint Firewall: Firewall protection by WordFence identifies and blocks visits from malicious IPs and also stops them from accessing the WordPress login page. It helps to improve WordPress security by scanning the whole website with the malware scanner. WordFence also protects your website from Brute-Force attacks by limiting the login attempts by one particular IP. It comes with a real-time IP blacklist, which is sourced from different security companies.
• WordPress Security Scanner: Wordfence comes with a security scanner that scans all the files of your WordPress website for malware and backdoors. It compares the WordPress core code with the original one, and if there’s any modification found, it alerts and asks to fix it automatically. It also scans for the known vulnerabilities, alerts you about them, and tells you how to fix them.
• Login Security: Wordfence secures the login interface of your, which is the most crucial security aspect to prevent unauthorized access. Wordfence security plugin lets you set up two-factor authentication on your WordPress website. It disables XML-RPC or adds 2FA to it and monitors data breaches to check if the admin password is breached or not. Wordfence also protects your website from bot logins by adding CAPTCHAs to the login form.
• Wordfence Central: WC or Wordfence Central is a centralized dashboard of your Wordfence account where you can view, manage, and modify the security settings of all your WordPress websites in one place.
• Security Tools: Wordfence also comes with some additional security tools like country block and IP blocker, which helps you to block a particular IP or a whole country from visiting your website. It can help businesses who want to do business in some specific countries and don’t want an outsider to visit their website.

WordFence’s features and reviews from genuine people are enough to say that this is one of the best security plugins for WordPress ever.

3. iThemes Security

iThemes Security is another powerful security plugin for WordPress websites that comes with a suite of very powerful tools and features. It was formerly known as Better WP Security.

This plugin comes with features like two-factor authentication, malware scan, and one of the unique features of iThemes is password expiration. It asks every user with admin privileges to reset their password after a certain time to keep the website secure.

Managed by iThemes, a very popular name in the industry that develops awesome themes, iThemes Security is worth-checking security plugins for WordPress.

Features:

• WordPress Salts: It helps you to easily update the default salt values from your dashboard. Kinsta defines WordPress salts as “kind of like ‘extra‘ passwords for your site that are almost impossible for a malicious actor to guess.”
• Password Generator: It comes with a password generator that generates unique and secure passwords to let you choose passwords while creating a new profile on the website.
• Google ReCaptcha: You can set up reCAPTCHA to protect your website against spammers.
• Assign Privileges Temporarily: You can assign privileges to a particular user for a time, and then it automatically reset the privileges.
• File Origin Comparison: It scans for all the files in the WordPress core and compares them with the original files.

4. Loginizer

Loginizer is a WordPress security plugin that automatically blocks an IP for 24 hours if they fail to login three times. It is very helpful to protect your website against brute-force attacks or dictionary attacks.

It is developed by the very popular one-click installation suite Softaculous. Loginizer is a freemium plugin where you get some very powerful features in the premium plans.

Features like two-factor authentication (via app and email), login challenge questions, change usernames, etc, are few which made me include it in the list of the best security plugins for WordPress.

Features:

• Brute-Force Protection: It protects your website against a brute-force attack by blocking IP addresses if they fail to login three times.
• Two-Factor Authentication(App): You can set up 2FA and use the Google Authenticator app for login
• Two-Factor Authentication(Email): You can set up Email 2FA that let you log in to WordPress with a temporary link
• Passwordless Login: You can every remove the password authentication and use passwordless login from Loginizer
• Change Admin Username: Loginizer even lets your change your admin username, which is very difficult in a regular WordPress install.
• Disable XML-RPC: It will let you disable XML-RPC, which is most likely used by attackers to perform a brute-force attack.

5. WP Hide & Security Enhancer

WP Hide & Security Enhancer is a very popular WordPress Security plugin which helps you to hide your default admin login URL. You can use this plugin to change the admin login URL to something else. This helps to keep the predator away from your website. 

Some more features of this plugin are XML-RPC block, wp-signup block, custom wp-include path, and many more. It also comes with a minifier that minifies the HTML, CSS, and Java scripts of your WordPress website.

When I came to know that this plugin can change the default admin login URL, I knew I had to include this plugin in this list of the best security plugins for WordPress.

6. WC Password Strength Settings

WC Password Strength Settings plugin lets you set a custom password strength for your users. So, when they try to sign up on your website, they will need to follow the Password Strength instructions to create a profile or account and start using your website as a registered user. It enhances your users’ account security.

Whenever your user tries to signup for an account like forum or Woocommerce, then it will show an error message if the user won’t follow the password strength guidelines.

This plugin is specially helpful if you have built an e-com website or runs a forum. Its gonna save you a ton – surely one of the go-to security plugins for WordPress.

7. Safe SVG

SVG files are widely used by developers to add lossless graphics in the websites, but WordPress, by default, blocks upload and use of SVG graphics. But you can override this block and use SVG graphics on your WordPress website through this plugin.

Safe SVG protects your website against dangerous scripts embedded in SVG by sanitizing the SVG code before uploading it to the website, which protects the website against attacks and makes it more secure.

SVGs are incredibly low in size and hence makes the website load faster. For enabling SVG upload and making them safe to use, Safe SVG is definitely one of the best security plugins for WordPress in this whole list.

8. Stop User Enumeration

Penetration Testing tools like WPScan use the “user enumeration” technique to brute force WordPress websites and get access to the Website Admin dashboard. It let the attacker access the information about the registered users, like their name and username. However, you can protect your users from being enumerated and identity disclosure by using this plugin named Stop User Enumeration.

It let your website block or stop any enumeration query and block access to the JSON file that discloses this data.

Certainly one of the best security plugins for WordPress. Quick, simple and easy.

9. Prevent XSS Vulnerability

XSS, which stands for Cross-Site Scripting, lets the attacker send or inject malicious code into your website’s server. It let them use your website traffic as a referral for other websites and bypass access controls such as the same-origin policy.

It can result in a completely deleted website or anything else more severe because the attacker can access the backend of your website. So, it is important to block or patch this vulnerability. 

For WordPress users, this plugin called Prevent XSS Vulnerability makes the process much easier. You need to install and set up the plugin to stop XSS or code injection attacks on your website and make your website secure.

WordFence can also patch XSS vulnerability but if you’re into quick and lightweight solution, this plugin is one of the best security plugins for WordPress.

10. WordPress Social Login by miniOrange

WordPress Social Login is a plugin developed by the miniOrange team that lets you add social login functionality to your WordPress website. You can authorize your social accounts like Google, Facebook, etc. and enable logging in with them.

It replaced the traditional method to login to your WordPress dashboard without a password that makes brute-force attacks useless (but I will still recommend you to use a secure password for your WordPress Admin login).

You can use tools like LastPass Password Generator to generate a very secure password for your WordPress dashboard.

For using this plugin with Google or Facebook, you will need to create properties for your website in their system and then get API keys to use the oAuth function and integrate social login to the website. The plugin’s documentation might help you if you haven’t done this before.

The plugin’s simplicity to secure website made us include it in the list of the best security plugins for WordPress.

11. Forget Spam Comment

Forget Spam Comment is a very simple, lightweight, yet powerful plugin that stops all the spam comments on your blog.

The reason it made to the list of best security plugins for WordPress is because it uses very simple yet effective mechanisms. It blocks the comment form and hides it until a user visits the blog post and scrolls down. If a user doesn’t scroll, the comment form won’t accept any comments from the users.

Most of the spammers and bots use scripts to just visit a blog and then just insert and submit their comment without scrolling down to the comment section. However, a real user reads your blog post and then writes comments about your blog.

The best part about this plugin is that it’s completely free, and there are no false positives.

12. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is not a security plugin but for securing your website. Read that again.

Updraft is one of the best security plugins for WordPress, if you think carefully. It helps to keep your website safe by automatically taking complete backups of your website and saving it on any cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. You can set up the time intervals for taking the backups and then retain those backups post any mishappening.

UpdraftPlus is a popular freemium plugin and lets you do a lot more with the premium plan like they provide their storage to store your data in their servers and serve backups directly to restore on your website.

13. Security Ninja

Security Ninja is one of the oldest security plugins for WordPress websites. It was the first security plugin ever sold on CodeCanyon. It comes with a powerful suite of tools. It is mainly focused on malware scanning and other scan related tasks. 

It scans your plugins and themes for malicious codes that can harm your website. It also compares your website files with WordPress core files to check for any suspicious changes in the code.

It will alert you if there will be any changes in the WordPress core files by an attacker. If you’re not a developer or even tech-savvy, this plugin will file the errors or change the files to the original ones and keep you safe from such attacks.

Conclusion

Now, it’s your turn. Identify the loopholes and fill them asap. Securing your WordPress website is a very crucial task as it can ruin your years of hard work in a few seconds by attackers. However, taking a few simple yet effective steps can save you from damages.

Taking regular backups is also very important, so in case your website is hijacked or deleted by an attacker, you can go back to the restore point to restore your website.

Our recommendation is that instead of installing different plugins to patch different vulnerabilities, simply go with the premium or pro version Sucuri Security or WordFence and save your site from bloating.

All in all, I hope this post on 13 powerful security plugins for WordPress has been helpful. If there’s any question leave them in the comment. I reply to each and every comment.