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About 75 million WordPress websites have more than 400 million visitors monthly, making WordPress the most used website-building platform. Building WordPress sites requires no technical coding knowledge, and the platform is straightforward.
As a WordPress site owner, you should invest in securing your website. Many WordPress security plugins are available to tackle different issues. You don’t have to splash out for a good WordPress security plugin; you can rely on many free plugins to protect your website.
In this article, we list out 10 of the best Free WordPress Security Plugins.
10 Free WordPress Security Plugins
Jetpack
Jetpack is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. It guarantees 24/7 automatic website security. The plugin is free and premium, but the essential features are free.
Once installed, JetPack backs up your website. The backup is automatic and real-time, so you can restore it anytime.
Furthermore, JetPack protects your website using 2FA and against brute force attacks. You can scan your site for malware and fix all detected errors with one click.
Should your site experience any downtime, you’ll be emailed and alerted so you can quickly get back online.
Wordfence Security
If you need a firewall for your website, Wordfence Security is the best WordPress plugin to install. In addition to the firewall, the plugin features a malware scanner.
The Wordfence Security Firewall monitors your site for malicious traffic and automatically blocks any detected. A Threat Defense Feed gives real-time updates on your website’s security status.
Wordfence Security protects your website from hackers by limiting login attempts. Wordfence is very effective against brute force attacks. 2FA is also featured, and you can place a CAPTCHA on your login page for extra security. Wordfence is now one of the most popular WordPress security plugins out there.
Akismet Spam Protection
Akismet is the most used spam protection plugin. You need such a plugin to keep your website free from spam comments and messages. From stats collected by the plugin, WordPress websites get more than 6000x spam comments than legitimate comments.
The plugin works by automatically scanning all comments. Any that appears as spam is filtered out. If a commenter’s inputs are hidden or misleading links, Akismet uncovers them.
It’s still up to you to discard spam comments. However, you can set the plugin to automatically discard spam comments to save space.
iThemes Security
iThemes Security is one versatile security plugin for WordPress. There are more than 30 security features to utilize.
By default, iThemes Security strengthens your server security by blocking attacks on your database and file system. The plugin scans your website and database and auto-fixes any error detected.
SSL is enforced on all pages, including admin pages, to secure your web pages. Furthermore, the plugin prevents brute force attacks by blocking IP addresses with multiple failed login attempts.
iThemes security features Google CAPTCHA, 2FA, Security Keys, WordPress Salts, and more.
All in One WP Security
All-in-One WP Security is an easy-to-use WordPress Security plugin. It protects your site by enforcing the most recent WordPress security techniques and also works as a vulnerability scanner.
After scanning your website and database, All in One WP Security rates your site’s security status based on the features you employ. Three security modes are featured: basic, intermediate, and advanced.
An advantage of All in One WP is that the plugin is free; there are no hidden pro features. Furthermore, it’s a fast plugin that won’t slow down your website.
Really Simple SSL
Simple SSL helps enforce SSL on all your pages so your site can load in HTTPS. However, for the plugin to work, you need to have an SSL certificate installed already.
This plugin can resolve all SSL-related issues on your WordPress website. This includes problems like no header pass, reverse load balancer or proxy, etc. Furthermore, you can activate HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).
Simple SSL keeps you informed on the validity of your SSL certificate. If your certificate is about to expire, you’ll get an email notification.
Hide My WP Ghost
Hide My WP Ghost is an ideal WordPress security plugin for protecting your site from hackers. It secures your site against brute force attacks, SQL Injections, script injections, and more.
The plugin does this by changing and hiding default WordPress paths. This includes admin, login, plugins, themes, upload paths, etc. Meanwhile, the files and directories remain the same, and none are physically changed.
The Hide My WP Ghost plugin will work with any host server and even WordPress Multisite. Furthermore, the plugin protects you against brute force attacks using Math Captcha.
Shield Security
The Shield Security plugin was developed to simplify WordPress security. It offers many security features.
The plugin helps you prevent bot and automated access by blocking their IP addresses. However, it doesn’t block access from Google bots and other important bots. You can restrict admin access so that admins can make fewer site changes. Shield Security features powerful firewall rules.
With automatic file scanning, the plugin scans and repairs damaged core files. You can set up 2FA via email, Yubikey, or Google Authenticator.
Bulletproof Security
BulletProof Security is a plugin from AITpro Website Security. The one-click setup wizard makes it straightforward to set up.
The plugin works as a malware scanner, firewall protector, table prefix changer, and more. It monitors your login and blocks access with many failed attempts to prevent hacking.
It automatically logs out idle sessions and comes with the Lite version of the JTC anti-spam and anti-hacker tool.
With Bulletproof Security, you can put your site in backend or front-end maintenance mode when making updates.
Cookies and Content Security Policy
If you collect cookies and care about your site visitors’ security and privacy, use this free WordPress security plugin.
When activated, the plugin lets visitors select what type of cookies they accept. The Cookies and Content Security Policy plugin protects your site by blocking images, scripts, and iframes from suspected domains.
You can translate the plugin using any WordPress multilingual plugin. However, natively, it was optimized to work with PolyLang and WPML.
Why Is WordPress Security Important?
Cyber attacks are natural and very frequent in present times. The statistics are there to prove it.
WordPress is a good CMS, too, but natively, it isn’t very secure.
A hacker can easily access a WordPress website without any security protection. WP White Security data shows that over 70% of popular WordPress installations are vulnerable.
If you don’t protect your site using security plugins, you risk losing all the time, money, and hard work you’ve spent building your WordPress website.
WordPress security doesn’t end with installing security plugins. You can do several other essential things to secure your WordPress website from hackers.
Conclusion
As a WordPress website owner, the last thing you want is to lose your website to hackers and cybercriminals. The 10 WordPress plugins listed in the article are free but reliable in securing WordPress. Nevertheless, you can buy premium security plugins with the money.
Author Bio: Daniel Segun is the Founder of SecureBlitz Cybersecurity. He has a background in Computer Science and Digital Marketing. When he’s not writing, he’s probably busy designing graphics or developing websites.