Do you want the best Firewall Plugin for WordPress on your website?
WordPress firewall plugin guide your website against hackers, brute force and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. So we will show you the best WordPress firewall plugins you can install on your WordPress site and how they protect your website.
What is a Firewall WordPress Plugins?
Contents
WAF which stands for web application firewall also known as WordPress firewall plugin acts as a shield between your website and all incoming traffic. These web application firewalls monitor your website traffic and blocks many common security threats before they reach your WordPress site.
Types of WordPress Firewall Plugins
There are two common types of WordPress firewall plugins available on WordPress.
DNS Level Website Firewall
A DNS Firewall firewall is a network security solution that prevents network users and systems from connecting to known malicious Internet locations. DNS Firewall works by employing DNS Response Policy Zones (RPZs) and actionable threat intelligence to prevent data exfiltration. These firewall route your website traffic through their cloud proxy servers. This allows them to only send genuine traffic to your web server.
Application Level Firewall
Application firewalls, or application layer firewalls, use a series of configured policies to determine whether to block or allow communications to or from an app. Traditional firewalls control data flow to and from the CPU, examining each packet as it passes through. An application firewall takes it further by controlling the execution of files or code by specific applications. This way, even if an intruder gains entry to a network or server, they can’t execute malicious code.
We recommend using a DNS level firewall because they are exceptionally good at identifying genuine website traffic vs bad requests and also they track thousands of websites, comparing trends, looking for botnets, known bad IPs, and blocking traffic to pages that your users would normally never request.
DNS level website firewalls significantly reduce the load on your WordPress hosting server and also speed up your website which makes sure that your website does not go down.
let me show you the best WordPress firewall plugins that you can use to protect your website.
Best Firewall Plugins for WordPress
Sucuri Security
Sucuri is a full-featured security plugin for WordPress sites from the website auditing company Sucuri. The basic version of Sucuri is free, and users can also purchase a premium version with additional features. Both versions of Sucuri include security activity auditing, file monitoring, and malware scanning.
Sucuri also improves your website’s performance by reducing server load through caching optimization, website acceleration, and Anycast CDN (all included). It protects your website against SQL Injections, XSS, RCE, RFU and all known-attacks.
Setting up their WAF is quite easy. You will need to add a DNS A record to your domain and point them to Sucuri’s cloudproxy instead of your website.
WordFence
Wordfence is a comprehensive WordPress security plugin with a plethora of tools to protect WordPress websites.
A built-in web application firewall monitors the site for malware, SQL injections, file changes, updates, and much more.
Wordfence is an application-level firewall. The firewall blocks the spam traffic and malicious requests when they reach the server before loading the pages. This way server takes a significant amount of the load because Wordfence does not filter the request at the network level.
Wordfence comes with on-demand security scans as well as scheduled scans. It also allows you to manually monitor traffic and block suspicious looking IPs directly from your WordPress admin area.
iThemes Security
iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) gives you over 30+ ways to secure and protect your WordPress site. Most WordPress admins don’t know they’re vulnerable, but iThemes Security works to lock down WordPress, fix common holes, stop automated attacks and strengthen user credentials.
The premium version includes additional security features including a strong password generator, scheduled malware scans, and a dashboard widget for managing all functions.
Cybersecurity experts warn that it’s not possible to guarantee that a site is completely safe from hacking and other website security issues, but the best WordPress security plugins can provide comprehensive, customizable solutions to protect your website from cyber threats of all kinds.
CloudsFlare
Cloudflare is a popular CDN provider available in the market used by lots of users to speed up WordPress websites. Beside CDN, Cloudflare packs a suite of powerful security features.
Cloudflare is also a DNS level firewall which means your traffic goes through their network. This improves performance of your website and reduces downtime in case of unusually high traffic.
The Pro plan only includes DDoS protection against layer 3 attacks. For protection against advanced DDoS layer 5 and 7 attacks, you will need at least their business plan.
Cloudflare does not have application-level security scans, and it works on the network level. The plugin will not monitor or scan your website for any WordPress threat. Nor will it send you any alert.
JetPack
Jetpack is a popular WordPress plugin that comes with a suite of features including WordPress security and backups. Jetpack is an application level firewall which means that bad traffic is blocked after it reaches your WordPress hosting server.
Jetpack works similarly to Wordfence and blocks harmful traffic at the application level. Which means it does not do much to reduce the pressure from the server.
The biggest downfall is the pricing and also affects the loading speed of the website. Advance features for Firewalls are paid, and you don’t need all the extra features Jetpack offers.
Defender
Defender is a free plugin from WPMUDeveloper. Defender adds the best in WordPress security plugin to your website with just a few clicks. Stop brute force attacks, SQL injections, cross-site scripting XSS, and other WordPress vulnerabilities and hacks with Defender malware scans, antivirus scans, IP blocking, firewall, activity log, security log, and two-factor authentication login security. Defender’s premium version offers additional features to meet specific needs, and both free and premium options include instant email notifications of security issues on the WordPress website.
SecuPress
SecuPress is a newer security plugin on the market (originally released as freemium in 2016), but it’s definitely one that’s growing rapidly. It’s actually developed by Julio Potier, one of the original co-founders of WP Media, who you might recognize, as they develop WP Rocket and Imagify. There is both a free version and premium version which includes a lot of additional features.
Google Authenticator
The majority of plugins that have individual security features don’t make much sense to install. The reason for this is because you can typically go with a plugin like iThemes Security Pro and get that one feature along with dozens of other ones. The premium, or pro, version of google authenticator offers additional features including customizable templates for email and SMS. This plugin adds two-factor authentication for all users to use any WordPress website and works with all kinds of phones and devices.
Conclusion
After careful comparison of all these popular WordPress firewall plugins, we believe that Sucuri is undoubtedly the best firewall protection you can get for your WordPress site.
It is the best DNS level firewall with the most comprehensive security features to give you complete peace of mind. On top of that, the performance boost that you get from their CDN is very impressive.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress firewall plugin for your website. If you have any issue on this, you can use our comment session or join our delegate on Facebook to solve any issues related to WordPress and subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.