WordPress Security – Going Beyond Plugins

When it comes to security — more and more website owners rely almost entirely on a handful of established security plugins to fend off threats against their digital assets. That being said, as useful security plugins can be on their own, they also tend to leave a site open. A strong defence requires a combination of strategies such as safe hosting, identity verification, server hardening and restricting access to name just a few. In this article, we look at some other actionable steps you can take to make WordPress just a touch more secure than simply relying on plugins alone.

1. Secure Hosting and Server-Level Protection

A Secure WordPress Website Starts with a Great Host.
The very first step — one of the base components to protect your website is having hosting that also takes security seriously. These include firewall protection, regular automatic updates for your website, daily backups of your site that can be restored with the click of a button and malware scanning done by the hosting just to mention but few you get from WPEngine, Kinsta, SiteGround etc WordPress hosting services. 

• Built-In Firewalls: These hosting providers come with server-level firewalls that can stop malicious traffic before reaching your WordPress site. Plugin-based firewalls, work within WordPress itself to keep threats from reaching your application servers. 
• Automatic Backups and Recovery: Good hosting plans will back up your website on a daily basis, plus provide easy restore options to give you confidence in knowing that if something does go wrong you can be back up very quickly. 
• DDoS Protection: Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can overload servers, making your sites unreachable. Hosting providers that provide DDoS protection may be able to sense the unwanted traffic and block it away for you. 

Opting for a secure hosting vendor means that the most sensitive security jobs can be managed by professionals, offering your site access to proactive defences.

2. Encryption using SSL Certificate

This is a Secure Sockets Layer certificate that protects the data flowing between users and the site, adding a vital level of security. Data would be encrypted to prevent interceptions in data transmission and man-in-the-middle attacks. All this could compromise user details.

HTTPS Protocol In return, installing an SSL certificate will give your website a protocol over HTTP such that it can now carry the HTTPS version. For the visitor, this has a signal implication of knowing whether the website is credible because most modern web browsers penalize websites with no SSL certificate installed. It shows errors on the URL address at the top bar.

Improved Search Engine Optimization Rankings: Google favours sites with HTTPS, which gives them a slight ranking advantage over non-secure sites. This is an added value to the investment in SSL.

Most hosting providers free SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt or include SSL as part of their premium. For high-traffic or sites that handle sensitive data, consider an Extended Validation EV SSL certificate for added security.

3. Secure login practices and user authentication

A large proportion of the attacks on WordPress sites involved brute force where criminals tried different username and password combinations to get into them. Secure login practices therefore are a key area to work on to avoid unauthorized entry.

Even the wrong guessing of the password with a second form of authentication will block access. If using two-factor authentication, it can enable you to set up two-factor authentication without sacrificing much in security.

Restrict login attempts. This would ensure that the wrong password input is not attempted so many times before access is blocked. It blocks the IPs that have made attempts greater than the allowed to automatically try bots on your website.

Strong passwords: Add letters, numbers, and symbols to your password so that it’s as robust as possible. The same policy must be extended across all users. In any case, this especially goes for administrators and contributors with high permissions.

Securing login practices can reduce attempts at unauthorized access by more than 90%, a must for any WordPress site.

4. Permissions for File and Directory

File permissions on your server determine who can read, write, or execute. Poorly configured file permissions leave an open door for the attacker, particularly if an attacker gains access to sensitive files such as wp-config.php.

Set the Right Permissions. Set your WordPress files to 644 and your directories to 755. WP-config.php holds all data relating to your database information. Its permission has to be set at 400 or 440 to inhibit its unauthorized access.

Disable File Editing WordPress allows administrators to edit files directly from the dashboard using theme and plugin files; this is a very hazardous feature. You can disallow file editing by inserting define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true); within your wp-config.php. This ensures that even though hackers manage to access your dashboard, they cannot make any changes to your codes.

A very basic measure is secure file permissions so that not too many changes are allowed without intervention.

5. Database Security Practices

• This is where all the contents of a site, along with all of its configurations and settings, are stored. In fact, it makes for one prime target for hackers. More than simple passwords, securing the database requires figuring out how to minimize exposure as much as possible.
• Change Default Database Prefix WordPress by default uses the prefix wp_ which may ease the process of hackers targeting specific tables. Thus, change it to a unique prefix, such as xyz_, adding obscurity.
• Use strong database passwords: The database password must be unique, long, and complex to prevent unauthorized access. Avoid using the same password on different platforms.
• Limit the permissions given to your database user account. Only essential permissions for the database such as a SELECT, INSERT, or UPDATE should be granted while minimizing the risks of a leaked database.

6. Site Monitoring and regular recording of activities

It keeps track of all activities that take place on your site. This helps one detect potential threats before they cause harm to your system and also gives the opportunity to respond quickly to threats before they wreak havoc on your site. Activity logs and monitoring tools provide records of user activities, along with different site performance indicators.

Enable Activity Logs: This will log all the activities done by a user such as login attempts, page modification, and installation of a plugin. These logs will help you know suspicious patterns that may eventually help in detecting threats even before they gain momentum.

Notify for abnormal login patterns or unauthorized modifications. Real-time alerts provide the chance to act immediately, possibly removing the access further.

It keeps an eye on your site actively, making you aware of any security events and maintaining control over who has access to your site.

7. Customize login URL and IP whitelisting

The default login URL, /wp-login.php, is the most targeted URL by bots. Such custom-made URLs would avoid letting bots find the login page, thus limiting attempts from automated attacks.

You can easily hide your default login page or customize your default login URL as you desire-for example, to /mylogin-with a tool such as WPS Hide Login.

Limit IP Access to Admin Area: If your team only accesses WordPress from specific fixed locations, you may limit access to the site only from those IP addresses. You can do this through your hosting dashboard or through your .htaccess file.

Change the login URL so that unauthorized users cannot reach it and block IP access to the login page.

8. Deactivate XML-RPC

XML-RPC is one of the protocols that allows access to WordPress from a distance. It is often used for third-party apps and mobile access. Meanwhile, however, it is widely used in DDoS attacks and brute-force attacks.

Disable XML-RPC: If you’re never going to use XML-RPC, then disable it. You do this by adding a line add_filter(‘xmlrpc_enabled’, ‘__return_false’); to your functions.php file.

Monitor XML-RPC Activity: If your site utilizes XML-RPC then you will want to monitor it closely using security plugins that enable you to selectively block their requests.

This would definitely lessen remote attacks, particularly for sites that do not need it.

9. Contingency and Disaster Recovery Plans

Disaster recovery should also accompany the most advanced security practices because even then, it can be breached. Regular backups enable restoring your site back to a previous state if any breach has occurred.

One would therefore consider a daily backup of their WordPress site, and schedule regularly with a reputable service the WordPress databases and files.

Store Backups Off-Site: Use an off-site, safe space, such as Google Drive or Amazon S3 cloud storage, to back up your site so that backups are safe even if the site is compromised.

Regular backups are the second line of defence in case the site gets hacked so as not to avoid any downtime and data loss.

Conclusion

While security plugins are the real deal, they can not secure a WordPress site independently. Adding on to them, a secure host with SSL encryption, proper login practices, file management, secure database, monitoring, non-standard login URLs, and regular backups adds a significant number of layers above this. By being proactive towards each of these, you improve your site’s chances considerably against attacks and your site becomes more reliable and secure.