Binary Review: Wordfence for WordPress
2 min read
I use a wide range of widgets, software, plugins and gadgets and rarely do I find one that is worthy enough for me to write-up a review for it. Wordfence is one of those jewels that is worthy of my review and get as much publicity it can to support it. In the short time I have used it the WordPress widget has come in more useful that I ever expected.
My blog here is a WordPress site. Not going to get into the details of the deployment but WordPress has it’s pros and cons and if done incorrectly can leave your site wide open for hacking and mischief to your posts. As I was going through my blog and improving it on the back end I came across Wordfence as a highly recommended widget. I read up on it, it looked legit and useful so I installed and configured it on my blog. Within 10 minutes I was already finding security holes, gaps, issues, version problems and Wordfence became my security notification system for my blog.
Installation is simple as it could be, push button and away it goes. I first did a full scan of my files and themes, cleaned up issues in the report and setup notifications. Now whenever I login to the admin portal I get an alert and if anyone else tries. This afternoon I get an email that an IP address has been blocked by Wordfence because it unsuccessfully attempted to login to my admin portal over 20 times. Wordfence gave me the IP address and told me the account it tried to access which was ‘admin’. A little Google searching and the IP address came from Turkey.
In addition to the portal security Wordfence provides real-time traffic, performance increase by caching the blog, virus and malware scan of your blog files, is a firewall and many more features every WordPress site needs. Wordfence should be a mandatory installation for any site in my opinion. Wordfence has two option for service, free and a premium service for less than $4 a month. Unlike most Free vs. Paid plug-ins Wordfence free version is packed with everything you need and the premium is in fact advanced, premium features serious bloggers would need.
I cannot recommend Wordfence highly enough. Everything about it is right up my wheelhouse for security, it’s easy to use and understand and protects my blog from individual file infection to denial of service attacks. If you have a WordPress site go download and install Wordfence now.
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WordFence from Mark Maunder on Vimeo.
Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.
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