There are about 75 million WordPress websites with more than 400 million visitors per month. These juicy numbers make WordPress the most used website building platform out there. Building sites with WordPress requires no technical knowledge of coding. The platform is straightforward to use.
As a WordPress site owner, you should invest in securing your website. There are so many WordPress security plugins available that tackle different issues. You don’t have to splash out to get a good WordPress security plugin. There are lots of free security plugins that you can rely on 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. This plugin guarantees 24/7 automatic website security. It is both free, and premium but the essential features are free.
Once installed, JetPack backs up your website. The backup is automatic, and in real-time, so you can restore at any point.
Furthermore, JetPack protects your website using 2FA and also 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 alerted via email so you can quickly go 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. Any detected is automatically blocked. You get real-time updates on your website’s security status from a Threat Defense Feed.
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, most especially 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 legit 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 discard spam comments to save space automatically.
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 to your database and file system. The plugin scans your website and database and auto-fixes any error detected.
To secure your web pages, SSL is enforced on all pages, including admin pages. Furthermore, the plugin prevents brute force attacks by blocking IP addresses with multiple failed login attempts.
iThemes security features a 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. Also, it works as a vulnerability scanner.
After scanning your website and database, All in One WP security rates your sites’ security status based on what features you employ. There are three security modes featured, which include basic, intermediate, and advanced.
An advantage of using All in One WP is that the plugin is entirely free; there are no hidden pro features. Furthermore, it’s a fast plugin that won’t slow down your website.
Really Simple SSL
Really 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.
With this plugin, you 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).
Really Simple SSL keeps you informed on your SSL certificate validity. 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 if you want to protect your site from hackers. It secures your site against brute force attacks, SQL Injections, script injection, etc.
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 make WordPress security less complicated. There’s a lot of security features available.
The plugin helps you prevent bot and automated access by blocking their IP addresses. However, it doesn’t block access from Google bot and other important bots. You can restrict admin access such that admins can make fewer site changes. Shield Security features powerful firewall rules.
With automatic file scanning, the plugin scans for damaged core files and repairs them. You can set up 2FA via email, Yubikey, or Google Authenticator.
Bulletproof Security
BulletProof Security is a plugin from AITpro Website Security. It’s straightforward to set up with the One-Click Setup Wizard.
The plugin works as a malware scanner, firewall protector, table prefix changer, and more. To prevent hacking, it monitors your login and blocks access with many failed attempts.
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, you should 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 also 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 real and very much frequent in present times. The statistics are there to prove it.
WordPress is a good CMS, too, but natively, it isn’t very secure.
It’s very easy for a hacker to hack a WordPress website without any security protection. WP White Security data shows that more than 70% of popular WordPress installations are vulnerable.
If you don’t protect your site using security plugins, you risk losing all your time, money, and hard work invested in building your WordPress website.
WordPress security doesn’t end at installing security plugins. There are several other essential things to do 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 yet very reliable in securing WordPress. Nevertheless, if you’ve got the money, you can go for premium security plugins too.
Author Bio: Daniel Segun is the Founder of SecureBlitz Cybersecurity, with a background in Computer Science and Digital Marketing. When not writing, he’s probably busy designing graphics or developing websites.