Necessary WordPress Security Plugins every blog should have

Happy new year…

This is my first blog post for the year 2013 and I thought I should base it on WordPress security, so I am going to introduce you to a couple of necessary WordPress security plugins you should have if your blog is to stay safe in this 2013. Recently one of my micro-niche blogs was hacked and then I realized I hadn’t ensured proper security for it.

Every WordPress blog is susceptible to attack if not well secured. Even when you think your password is strong enough and no one else knows it, you can still get hacked. So how do you ensure a maximum security for your WordPress blog? Please indulge me to share some awesome WordPress Security Plugins necessary for every blog if you are to remain safe from attackers and hackers.

WordPress Security plugins:

WP Security Scan: This plugin is my favorite WordPress security plugin, it checks your blog for security vulnerabilities and suggest how to correct them. One mistake most blogger and blog developers make is to use ‘admin’ as their blog’s username and most hackers will easily consider the admin username first while attacking your blog. Another mistake is to use the wp_ prefix for your database and also not protecting your wp-config.php file with a .htaccess file. These mistakes could easily get your blog hacked. WP Security scan plugin can help you ensure a safe blog by helping you rename your wp_ database prefix, hide your WordPress version, remove WP generator META tag from core code and provide you with a strong admin protection/security.

WordPress Exploit Scanner: WordPress Exploit Scanner is yet another wonderful WordPress security plugin that searches the files on your blog, post, comment, and database for anything suspicious. It also scans your plugins for vulnerabilities. Most blogs have been hacked from plugin vulnerabilities, as much as you need to check a plugin for vulnerability before installing it, you need to also scan the old ones to be sure your blog is safe. This plugin is a necessary tool to ensuring proper WordPress security.

Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC): Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) is another WordPress security plugin that searches your themes for malicious codes. Most bloggers don’t use premium themes, and its been proven that hackers who code free WordPress themes do most time hide malicious codes that grant them access to any blog using their free theme. Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) will search the source codes of your WordPress theme and display the path to any suspicious theme file found.

Akismet: Akismet comes with WordPress by default yet not many bloggers or blog developers use it, some even deactivate or delete it entirely just because they don’t know how to get the API key for free. Simply sign up on the Akismet site and choose a personal plan, slide the yearly contribution to the extreme left to $0 and complete your registration and your free Akismet API key will be forwarded to your email, enter it on your blog and validate it.

Akismet WordPress plugin checks your blog for spam comments and blocks anyone found, this keeps your blog spam free and that means less load resource consumption on your server and faster page loads.

Must Read: How to tackle comment spam on WordPress

WordPress Sentinel: Get notified any time your WordPress core, theme or plugins gets changed. WordPress Sentinel is an awesome WordPress security plugin that watches over your core WordPress programs. Hackers will easily install rogue codes in your WordPress core, theme or even plugins and gain access anytime they want into your blog even without your notice. WordPress Sentinel will notify you once any file had been edited in your blog.

Chap Secure Login: It is unsafe to transmit your blog’s login details unencrypted. Chap Secure Login is an excellent WordPress Security Plugin that helps ensure you don’t transmit your password unencrypted.  With Chap Secure Login, the only information transmitted unencrypted is your username, your blog’s password is transmitted in a secure Chap protocol.

WP-DB Backup: We can’t talk of WordPress security without mentioning backup. WP-DB Backup is one of the top backup WordPress Security Plugins that allows you to easily backup your core WordPress database.

Limit Login Attempts: Most blog hacking attempts are done with brute-force and since WordPress by default allows unlimited login attempts, you need to limit the number of login attempts from each IP address. Limit Login Attempts WordPress security plugin is a perfect plugin you can use to limit the number of login attempts to your blog. That way when someone tries a certain number of times without success the plugin will ban the IP and secure your blog from further tries.

AskApache Password Protect: This is one of the most essential WordPress security plugins every blog should have. Securing your ‘wp-admin’ folder with AskApache password protect will ensure a password is required anytime anyone tries to gain access to your ‘wp-admin’ folder.

Wordfence Security: This WordPress security plugin includes a firewall, anti-virus scanning, malicious URL scanning and live traffic including crawlers. Wordfence Security plugin can also verify and repair your core, theme and plugin files.

Must Read: Some important WordPress Plugins for your WordPress blog

The above listed WordPress Security plugins are very necessary for every blog, if you don’t want to get hacked someday I recommend you use the WordPress security plugins mentioned in this article. They will go a long way to ensuring the safety of your blog and make it more difficult for anyone to gain easy access to your blog. Do you know of other WordPress Security Plugins? Share with me using the comment form below. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feeds.