Ingenious Tips To Augment Your WordPress Security

Steps to increase WordPress security have been detailed

WordPress is a highly designed and curated content management system that serves as a platform to run online businesses for innumerable companies. However, the high design and development of WordPress in the web world still don’t immune the platform from security attacks from unauthorized users or hackers.

No matter how well organized is your WordPress security system, there is always a chance of breach of security that might affect your business affairs on the site.

Don’t stress already. There are several WordPress security measures that can be applied to ensure that the hackers trying to break into and take over your website are having a hard time doing it. Most chances are that after applying these methods, your WordPress site will be safe from unauthorized use.

Before we have a look at the ingenious tips to augment your WordPress security, let us discuss what is the importance of applying these methods.

The most common way through which hackers attack your website is via your login system. Although WordPress has good login security system, there are ways through which hackers can get into your admin dashboard and do damage to your website that has irreparable consequences.

You might lose customers, goodwill, and brand image. Not just that, you might also lose private and confidential information that might not only cost you but also your trusting customers some damages.

Hackers mostly log in to your website using two ways:

● Brute force attack
● Stealing login credentials

Brute force attack is the repeated and logical guessing of login id and password combinations to pass through your website until the hacker gets it right. Which the other way is by simply stealing your login credentials by other means.

It is thus, extremely important to protect your business by ensuring precautions with your WordPress site by exercising the following WordPress security tips.

1. Change of default username and password

There is one set of default username and password assigned to admins by WordPress when you launch your website on WordPress. The most common mistake that people do is keep using this default username and password for their login credentials.

This is the easiest way for a hacker to get into your system and create havoc. Use of these default credentials is exposure of your website to danger constantly, at all times. Brute force Technique is what hackers use in such cases to break in. The simple solution to this problem is to simply change your username and password.

You can go two ways for this process. You can either create a new admin username and password and delete the old default ID and password, or, you can change the username using PHPMyadmin.

To do this, you just have to go and login to cPanel and navigate to PHPMyadmin. There you have to select your WordPress database and look for WP_users. There you have to press edit and start changing your user login details. It’s that simple.

2. Limit the number of login attempts

Letting your settings be the way where a hacker can try brute force attack by trying to login innumerable times on your WordPress website, is not a smart way to go. the logical way is to limit the number of login attempts one can have while logging into your WordPress website.

A plugin like Limit Login Attempt can help you block login attempts that is more than the authorized number of time. This plugin also lets you know how many times a hacker has tried to log in to your WordPress website.

Brute force attacks are stopped through this method, as well as you get the information to analyze unauthorized activities on your website.

3. Whitelist IP addresses

You can also ensure that only some specific IP addresses can access log in to your WordPress website. IP addresses are unique and thus it is easy to stay protected with whitelisting some IP addresses, only those which you want to have authority to login.

IP addresses are almost impossible to replicate. So it will become a huge task for your hacker to ever be able to attempt a login to your WordPress system. This process is extremely simple. All you have to do is add a few lines of code to. htaccess file in your WordPress system and you are ready to go.

4. Disable theme and plugin editors

Black hat coders can take advantage of the fact that WordPress allows people to change themes and plugin files directly through the administration area. Taking advantage of this fact, hackers can get access to your WordPress dashboard and create havoc of damages and loss to your precious business WordPress website.

A very simple and easy trick to avoid this phenomenon from occurrence is to keep your WordPress theme and plugin editor turned off unless you want to use it yourself. To do this, you just have to add this code- define( ‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true ); to your wp_config.php file and you are good to go.

5. Add two-factor authentication to log in – A simple technique to ensure no unauthorized user gets into your WordPress website is to enable two-factor authentication to your WordPress website login system.

It is much safer than using just a password to get through your website. Physical access to get to your device will be required by any hacker to ever be successful in his endeavor. There are a variety of tools available to enable two-factor authentication to your WordPress website.

Conclusion

It is not very difficult to harness WordPress security tips to protect your business website. The method is pretty simple once you know the tools and tricks to save your site from unauthorized access. What makes it tricky is knowing what exactly you have to focus on while applying these tricks and apply them with accuracy.

You need to know what kind of security attack is your website prone to and defend it accordingly. Focusing efficiently on your login screen for security can help you escape major security breach incidents. Having a stronghold and understanding of your website and what it needs as well as well versed knowledge of these tricks can help you keep your website safe and sound.

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