iThemes Security Plugin Review

iThemes Security Plugin

WordPress Security is a major concern among developers because WordPress is the largest platform on the Internet. According to a Study, WordPress’ market share is 35% of every website on the Internet. With that in mind, developers always try to fix any loophole making WordPress safer than ever before. There is a bunch of Security also available in the plugin market to ensure WordPress security.

One of the plugins is the iThemes Security plugin, which is an all-in-one package for every need of your WordPress site security. This plugin works in modules. You just have to enable the module for securing a particular component and you are done. It creates neat log information about your site and any changes to your core installation files.

Features of iThemes Security

  1. Malware Scan Scheduling
  2. Two Factor Authentication
  3. Online File Check and Comparison
  4. Google reCAPTCHA
  5. Password Security
  6. User Actions Logging
  7. Local & Network Brute Force Protection
  8. Too many 404 Page Detection
  9. And many more…

iThemes Security In-Depth Review

iThemes Security plugin has some modules defined which are responsible to provide protection in their respective fields. You can access these modules to turn their protection On and Off through wp-admin > Security > Settings. Initially, the core iThemes Security recommends you to enable the following protection defined in the Security Check module:

  1. Banned User
  2. Database Backups
  3. Local Brute Force Protection
  4. Network Brute Force Protection
  5. Strong Passwords
  6. WordPress Tweaks

iThemes Security plugin

Furthermore, there are many other modules that are essential for your site security. Let’s take a look at some of the modules this plugin offers, shall we?

1. Security Check

Security Check component consists of some of the basic security and protection features which every site should take care of. It deals with the security related to Local and Network Brute Force Attacks, Strong Passwords, Database Backups, etc.

system check

2. Global Settings

In the Global Settings module, you can allow the iThemes Security plugin to make changes to your wp-config.php and .htaccess files. There are many other options such as Host & User Locked out message, Blacklist Threshold, Lockout Period, Proxy Detection, Allow Data Tracking, etc.

iThemes Security plugin

3. Notification Center

As the name suggests, you can choose Administrators and Shop Owners to get notifications through email while it also offers you to choose to receive security reports digest on a daily or weekly basis, etc.

iThemes Security plugin

4. User Groups

Here, you can select the user roles who can access iThemes Security and also it provides you the feature to force the use of Strong Passwords based on User roles.

iThemes Security plugin

5. 404 Detection

This feature will detect if a user is visiting a 404 Error or Non-Existent page on your website in a short period of time. This could possibly be a threat as the user may be trying to achieve loopholes of your website.

iThemes Security plugin

6. Away Mode

Away Mode is used to disable the access to WordPress Dashboard for a specified period as you do not always update your themes and plugins.

iThemes Security plugin

7. Banned Users

In this section, you can control and manage the banned hosts and agents. You can also completely ban them from here.

iThemes Security plugin

8. Database Backups

Here, you can very easily create or schedule a database backup. You can also change the backup mode, compress backup files, and exclude particular database tables.

iThemes Security plugin

9. File Change Detection

Similar to its name, this section will help you to detect any of your core file changes in which you are not involved. It will create a log file of the changed file and send you an email notification. It will compare your changed file versions with your previous file versions.

iThemes Security plugin

10. File Permissions

This feature will list all the current permissions for all of your core files and folders and also suggest you to change them accordingly.

iThemes Security plugin

11. Local Brute Force Protection

Local Brute Force Protection is the most important module of this plugin, as it will protect you from local brute force attacks and threats on your sites. These threats could be from a plugin or local malware file etc. You can also limit login attempts, allow direct permanent ban, number of lockouts before ban, etc.

iThemes Security plugin

12. Network Brute Force Protection

Network Brute Force is the next most important component of this plugin. This extends this Local Brute Force Protection feature by banning the users who tried to break into your site from another network or site.

iThemes Security plugin

13. Password Requirements

You can force users to set strong passwords only based on User Roles. These strong passwords are rated by the WordPress password meter.

iThemes Security plugin

14. SSL

This feature will ensure an SSL Certification for your domain. An SSL certified domain will encrypt all the incoming and outgoing user’s requests and data.

iThemes Security plugin

15. System Tweaks

These are some advanced tweaks which this plugin automatically does for you to further strengthen your WordPress security.

iThemes Security plugin

16. WordPress Salts

This feature will add a secret and unique key to some of your core and important elements of your WordPress site and installation. This will make your site even harder to hack.

iThemes Security plugin

17. WordPress Tweaks

In this component, you will find some of the basic and extra security options to tweak and toggle. These settings will surely improve your WordPress security such as Disable File Editor, Comment Spam, Restrict REST API, etc.
iThemes Security plugin

There are even some other modules remaining that are available for premium version only. Some of the premium modules are:

  1. Magic Links
  2. Privilege Escalation
  3. User Logging
  4. Settings Import and Export
  5. Passwordless login
  6. User Security Check
  7. And many more…

Malware Scan

You can scan your site anytime you want from a meta box situated at the right side in wp-admin > Security > Settings.

iThemes Security plugin

iThemes Security Logs

iThemes Security plugin also collects logs after every successful Security check and provides you the information about the component which needs your attention. You can access the Logs window of this plugin from wp-admin > Security > Logs.

security logs

Conclusion

So as to conclude, we can say that the iThemes Security plugin is all you need for your WordPress Security. It will highly improve your security and protection from malware, security threats, brute force attacks, vulnerabilities and loopholes, fake multiple requests, etc.

We highly recommend using this security plugin also it already has over 900,000+ Active Installations. So start securing your site now and thanks for reading!

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