Website vulnerabilities are a serious problem for many individuals and businesses with an online presence. They can affect the rate of doing business, organizational reputation, and the bottom line.
With WordPress being one of the most widely used content management systems around the globe, it’s important to carry out a security audit of your WordPress website.
This can help identify potential vulnerabilities and enable you to take proactive measures to protect your valuable data.
If you’re looking for a user-friendly guide that covers your website security needs and you want to know how to carry out a WordPress security audit, this post is for you.
Understanding WordPress security
Approximately 70% of WordPress websites are vulnerable to attacks. From a different perspective, there were over 4.3 billion attempt.s to exploit WordPress vulnerabilities in 2020 alone.
Examples of symptoms that something is wrong with your site’s security include:
- An unresponsive or sluggish website
- Difficulty managing the back-end features
- Trouble in browsing the front-end with ease
- There’s a drop in your website traffic
- A greater number of suspicious notifications
- Numerous login attempts on your website
- The appearance of suspicious links on your site
If you are experiencing any of the above situations, it means that now is the perfect time to secure your site and ensure your business, customers, and online data are safe from malicious actors.
You can do this through a thorough WordPress security audit, which helps you identify signs of a security breach and identify potential issues before they become serious problems.
Assessing WordPress core and plugin updates
WordPress works hard to ensure that it offers you a secure platform for your website. The team behind the scenes regularly offers core and plugin updates for you to improve your website’s performance and keep it safe.
These updates are released quite frequently, and you should not neglect to check for these around twice a month.
Failing to do this and neglecting to install updates for an extended period can lead to serious website problems further down the road.
To do this, all you have to do is go to the WordPress admin area, visit the Dashboard, and go to the Updates page.
You can then proceed to install them. However, before doing so, you need to ensure you run a full backup of all your WordPress files and your database for an added layer of security. Alternatively, you can turn on auto-updates and let the system run its course.
The best part is that it takes a few clicks to perform the manual process, and you can have greater certainty in the security of your site.
Some recommended WordPress security plugins include those that perform firewall and malware scans, backups, plugins, and updates to improve your website speed and growth, etc.
Just make sure that the plugins you install are from trusted developers. Remember that by not updating your WordPress website regularly, you are most likely using a version that has known vulnerabilities.
Evaluating user roles and permissions
WordPress offers website owners the ability to manage multiple users and define roles and permissions for each one.
That’s why the next important step in carrying out your WordPress security audit involves evaluating user roles and permissions.
To do this, you should check your site’s dashboard and evaluate each user that appears on the menu. If you see any unknown accounts, you should remove them immediately.
Securing login and authentication mechanisms
One of the most common hacking attempts on WordPress is to infiltrate websites with stolen passwords or those that are easy to guess.
For an extra layer of security, it’s recommended that you change your and your other users’ passwords frequently, making sure that they are of high complexity to keep your website safe.
Some good rules of thumb to ensure strong passwords include using a combination of at least eight lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols together in a random fashion. The more frequently you do this, the better for your website security.
Also, make sure that your directories are well-secured through strong passwords.
In addition to securing your login mechanisms, it is also highly recommended that you introduce two-factor authentication to help keep your account and website safe.
This means that you will receive a one-time code on a separate device through a message or an authentication email that you will need to enter to secure entry into your account.
Verifying WordPress file and database security
Another crucial step in your WordPress security audit is to verify your files and database security.
Regarding your files, you need to set correct file permissions on tasks that include uploading files, executing scripts, and more.
For this purpose, you need to check all your files and directories. You should also set your permissions for read, write, and execute accordingly for different users, including admins and editors.
When it comes to database security, you should begin by backing up your data regularly.
Here, you need to use strong encryption techniques to ensure that aspects such as your logins and passwords are protected.
In addition, you should limit user privileges and access to your database as necessary.
Implementing website firewall and malware scanning
It’s now time to implement a website firewall and malware scanning. The purpose of a firewall is to ensure that your site is protected and threats are detected and blocked before they even reach your site.
That’s why it’s essential to scan your site for any malicious attempts at unauthorized access regularly. In order to do this, you should install a trusted security plugin.
Next, run a full scan to determine if there’s any malware detected. Incorporating cloud security management is a vital step.
It strengthens your website's overall security by managing and enhancing cloud-based security measures.
As part of this step, you should also use a web application firewall.
There are several options you can choose from:
- DNS level firewall: through this firewall type, your website traffic is routed through a cloud proxy server. As such, these firewalls only send genuine traffic to your web server.
- Application level firewall: these are plugins that scrutinize your traffic when it reaches your server. However, this takes place before most WordPress scripts are loaded. It is considered a “heavier” and less efficient method for reducing the server load.
Securing the web hosting environment
A secure website ensures that your users trust you and your brand. This is where Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates come in.
Whether you have an affiliate marketing site or an e-commerce store, you need to protect your online transactions for you and your customers.
SSL certificates can be purchased. However, they are also frequently offered for free by most hosting providers. It's essential to choose the right server type.
There are many options with different security levels. You should also use a plugin to force HTTPS redirection.
This will activate the encrypted connection between your website as the host and the web browser of your users or clients, ensuring that all data exchanged between you will remain private.
Analyzing website traffic and monitoring logs
Analyzing your website traffic and monitoring logs is another essential element of your WordPress security audit.
You will first need to download and install the WordPress Security Audit Log on your site. You then need to activate it and begin the configuration process.
You can choose the period that you’d like to keep your data in your log for. Usually, it’s for the last six months, 12 months, and more. You’ll then need to confirm the setup process.
Now that the foundation has been prepared, it’s time to monitor what is happening on your site. Here, you can go to your dashboard and select the Audit Log option. If you’ve just installed the plugin, that’s what activity will be displayed.
Other important elements that will be displayed include:
- The date of the event
- The user
- The user’s IP address
- The event message
It's also important to mention that as part of your security measures, you should consider implementing data quality checks within your logs to ensure that the information being logged is accurate and reliable.
This will help you maintain the integrity of your security audit logs and enhance your overall security posture.
Worth bearing in mind is that you are able to stop tracking certain user logs if you like.
It’s also possible to control certain events with a WordPress Security Audit Log. This can be controlled through the Audit Log option, and you can select either Enable/Disable Events.
You can then enable or disable individual events by clicking or unchecking the boxes that appear next to them.
A further option you have is to terminate a logged-in user session. Choose Logged in Users from the Audit Log on your dashboard. This enables you to terminate sessions individually or as a whole.
Finally, you can download your log reports. You have two main options: periodic reports with a set data range and selected format or statistics reports with a data range, criteria, and format.
You can then generate the report and download it. Doing so will help ensure your data is backed up fully.
Educating website administrators and users on security best practices
Although we’ve covered some of the best practices for carrying out your WordPress security audit, it’s also important to educate your website administrators and users on these best practices.
This means training them in terms of both technical know-how and providing them with practical information that they can use and apply to keep your website safe.
Incorporating knowledge of no-code security solutions can further enhance your team’s understanding and capability to protect your site effectively.
All aspects of your security audit and your ongoing security efforts should be implemented timeously and accurately by the relevant members of your team.
That’s much similar to how creative directors train graphic designers to make creative logos that correspond to design guide books.
Incorporating knowledge of no code security into your team's training can further enhance your website's security posture.
Responding to security incidents and creating an incident response plan
It is possible that you may face certain security incidents that you need to respond to. It’s best to be well-prepared for this purpose to ensure that you can respond on time and with accuracy.
For this reason, you need to create an incident response plan that outlines the steps that need to be taken in a series of different scenarios.
If you put in the effort to create such a plan for you and your team, you are more likely to respond faster and with greater accuracy to thwart attacks and ensure no harm comes to your website, business, and reputation.
Conclusion
A WordPress website offers a world of opportunities to individuals and business owners. However, keeping it secure is an absolute must.
Preventing your site from malicious attacks means that you can assure your users of safety and protect both them and yourself from harm.
By following the best practices and tips covered here for conducting a comprehensive WordPress security audit for your website, you’ll have more assurance and confidence in the stability and security of your website.