We all want to have a secure WordPress website, and it’s probably one common thing amongst all the WordPress websites owners.

Cleaning and restoring a hacked or messed website is really a nightmare. I know that I have passed through it!

Based on Sucuri reports, there were roughly 73% WordPress websites were affected or hacked in the first quarter of the year 2016.

Has your website ever been under attack? Have you ever experience the pain clearing malware infected files and restoring your site to back to the normal working state?

You know they say it right, prevention is always better than cure! How about securing your site against the most common hack attacks? It will save you from much of frustration.

This article is about the top three security plugins you can install on your WordPress website to make it more secure.

It will be like adding an extra layer of security to your WordPress website.

WordPress as a framework is secure. Additionally, you get timely security updates to make it more securely against the known bugs and vulnerability.

There is a little thing you need to know about the WordPress updates:

WordPress offers updates in two ways. One is the major update and the second is the minor update.

Your WordPress framework automatically update itself for the minor updates to make your website secure online.

The major updates come with some cool new features along with major bug fixes and patches to security. You may need to take manual action for the major updates.

WordPress core framework is pretty secure. In the majority of cases, there is a plugin or a theme behind the website hack. Let’s make your website secure with some proven and all time hit security plugins.

The plugins I’ve listed are not in any order. I advise you to visit each of them and go through their functionality and security features before installation.

1 Wordfence:

With more than 1 million active installs and over 4.8-star ratings, this plugin comes in the first place of our preferred security plugin list.

It’s one of the best free security plugins you can install on your WordPress right now. It creates firewall before your website to keep it secure from hackers and other attacks.

Some of the cool security features include firewall, malware scan, country blocking, traffic overview, login security and more.

It utilizes their every updating security threat defense feed to keep your site safe from hackers, scan your files for malware and keep them clean.

The plugin is 100% free to use. If you need premium support, scheduled malware scanning and password auditing like added features you can opt for the premium subscription.

Despite offering the premium subscription for some addon features the core security features are free. You just need to install the plugin and you are good to go.

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2 All in one WordPress security and firewall:

This is another popular and easy to use WordPress security plugin. It has more than 400k active installs with over 4.8-star rating.

It helps you make your website secure by checking the files for vulnerability, implementing and enforcing the latest WordPress security practices.

A cool layout to show you the security strength of your website based on how many security features are activated.

The plugin offers three easy firewall configurations “easy”, “intermediate” and “advanced”. You can pick the level of security without breaking your website’s functionality.

The plugin claims that it doesn’t slow down your website while adding an extra layer of security.

User account security, login security, registration security, database security, and file system security are some of the security features this plugin has to offers.

The plugin is absolutely free. It is one of the worth trying security plugin for WordPress.

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3 iThemes:

This is also a very good WordPress security plugin with more than 800k active installs and over 4.7-star rating.

iThemes security which some of you may know as Better WP Security claims to offer more than 30 ways to secure your website.

The plugin helps your website stay secure from brute force attacks. Bans the users and IPs for a brief period of time who made multiple false login attempts on your and other websites.

It offers strong protection by lowering the brute force attacks, reporting-fixing the vulnerabilities, banning bad bots, and enforcing the stronger password on all user accounts.

A strong detection engine to block the code vulnerabilities searches, monitor file system to check unauthorized access, runs a scan for malware on the site, and email notification when someone tried false login for too many times.

Some of the other advantages are it allows you to change the wp-admin URL, detecting hidden 404 errors that would affect your SEO score, Obscure the common vulnerability, and help you recover your site.

The basic security functionality is free with this plugin. You can opt for the premium subscription if you need some added features like automated malware scanning and others.

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4 Sucuri: [Additional resource]

This is one of the best security plugin available for WordPress. It has more than 300k and over 4.6-star rating.

Security is a renowned name when it comes to website firewall and security. They are offering the solution for popular cms like WordPress and Joomla.

The plugin offers Security activity logging meaning the plugin logs all major activities within your website. The activities like who log into the system, what files and data are being modified and other things.

It stores these logs on your database server as well as on their cloud server. This is to make sure that you still get the log data once a hacker gets unauthorized access to your system and tries to wipe the forensic data.

The file integrity monitor checks all the files under WordPress core setup, plugins and themes directories against the know good clean files.

Remote malware scanning would be one of the best services the plugin can offer, it checks the file for malware. When you install the plugin it has access to all the files to check against their known malware codes.

They also have a free malware checking utility hosted on their website. It scans any website you provide for malware and report positive if your site is under attack.

Avg, norton, McAfee, Phish tank, Eset, and Yedex are negatively flagging your website for some security reasons.

It also performs the blacklist monitoring for your domain. Meaning they are able to tell whether any of the Google safe browsing, Avg, Norton, McAfee, phish tank, Eset, and Yedex are negatively flagging your website for some security reasons.

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Conclusion:

Security precautions are a must when you are using the WordPress based website. There are plenty of ways to make your website secure. I have provided you the four best security plugin you can use anytime to add an extra layer of security.