The scale of attacks on websites and blogs worldwide is massive, and this is getting worse.
It’s safe to assume that if you haven’t been hacked yet, then it’s only a matter of time before someone attempts to hack into your site.
On March 11, 2014, technology sites like Cnet.com began reporting that over 162,000 WordPress web sites had been hacked.
Thousands of websites are hacked every year! Will yours be one of them?
(Image source: BlogDefender.com)
According to the Cnet report,
“With some old-fashioned trickery, hackers were able to get more than 162,000 legitimate WordPress-powered Web sites to mount a distributed-denial-of-service attack against another Web site.”
(Source: cnet.com/news/ddos-attack-is-launched-from-162000-wordpress-sites)
According to security firm Sucuri, hackers had leveraged a well-known flaw to attack unsuspecting WP sites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.
You may think that your site has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to benefit or profit at your expense.
If hackers can exploit a security flaw that lets them remotely control your web site, the web site can then be used as a “bot” to attack other valuable web sites.
The truth is that malicious bots are very likely looking for weaknesses and trying to break into your web site right now. Whether they can hack into your site successfully depends on how hard you can make things for hackers to continue persisting until they either work out how to get in, or give up and decide to look for a less protected target.
How Much Information About Your WordPress Site Are You Broadcasting To Hackers?
Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …
(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Scan Source: Hackertarget.com)
You will see that the check will yield a number of results and information about your site setup …
(Hackertarget – WordPress security check results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)
It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can freely access all of this information about your WordPress website, then so can hackers.
(Product image source: Blog Defender)
The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories on your server can all be potentially valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.
Fortunately, there is a solution that can stop broadcasting all of this information about your website and help to protect it against other malicious threats.
Blog Defender Security Suite
Product Description
Blog Defender is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.
Matt Garrett, the developer of the BlogDefender security suit developed BlogDefender after noticing that a WordPress site he set up for his mother got hacked into and suspended by its hosting company. This particular site was fairly new and so had practically nothing to offer, yet it was still attacked.
Matt only became aware of the event after being informed by his host and observing that a significant amount of suspicious activity had taken place within his site, as well as the addition of a number of phishing files designed to drive unsuspecting victims to the site and steal financial information.
(Image source: BlogDefender site)
Matt’s experience shows that every website has some value to hackers.
Blog Defender scans you WordPress installation for security weaknesses …
And let’s you quickly fix these …
WP Plugins
The product suite comes with 3 WordPress plugins:
The first plugin in the Blog Defender product suite helps you schedule automated backups …
(Product image source: Blog Defender)
The plugin lets you do automated site and file backups to your server, third-party servers and leading cloud storage solutions using different backup methods (e.g. FTP), automate complete or partial backups, exclude files or tables from your backups, restore previous backups, replace URLs (useful when migrating websites to different domains or server locations), search and replace text strings in your database, perform malware scans and blacklist checks automatically, and more.
Plugin #2 “WP Security” provides WordPress security …
(Product image: BlogDefender site)
The “WP Security” plugin performs a range of essential site and file protection functions (see “Plugin Features” section below).
The third plugin allows you to scan your content and files to detect if any of your files have been found, and fix the problem …
(Screenshot: Blog Defender)
Pro Plugin #3 “WordPress Scan & Repair” also scans content to see if any malicious scripts have been inserted into your site, bans bad bots, blocks brute force attacks and detects any content leeching (where people benefit from your content without providing anything in return).
Blog Defender – Step-By-Step Tutorial Videos
In addition to the plugins, Blog Defender also includes step-by-step video tutorials and downloadable documentation that will show you exactly what you need to do to protect your website from hackers …
(Source: BlogDefender website)
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Blog Defender
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Blog Defender to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets on your website:
Be Up And Running In No Time
The plugins install just like every other WP plugin. Just upload them to your Plugins folder via your admin user login and activate.
Very Simple And Easy To Follow Training
Blog Defender is an easy-to-follow do-it-yourself training product that will walk you through the website security process and show you exactly what to do, including how to set things up, and even which free plugins you should install to get things done without paying for extra expenses.
Additional benefits of using the plugin include the following:
- Protect your site from hackers, spammers, bad bots, data mining tools and malicious users attempting to exploit your site for personal and financial gain at your expense.
- Secure Your Info Products – If you’re an information product creator (e.g. downloadable e-books, videos, etc.), your product can end up becoming freeware on peer-to-peer sharing sites.
- Avoid Getting Blocked By Search Engines – When a website has been hacked, you should expect to go through a great deal of inconvenience and aggravation. It can take days to uncover problems and sort through the issues these have caused. In the meantime, your, account can be suspended by your webhost, or even deindexed by search engines. And if that isn’t painful enough, your personal contacts could be spammed, your customer list and financial details could be stolen, you could be fined or even charged with fraud, and a whole lot more.
Blog Defender Features
Blog Defender provides many features to WordPress users.
Blog Defender covers the following security areas and vulnerabilities:
- Webhost Security Advisory
- Plugin Security Audits
- Theme Security Audits
- Anti Brute Force Security
- Anti Cross-Site Scripting
- WordPress Database Security
- Nefarious Traffic Blocking
- Hiding WordPress ‘Tell Tale’ Signs
- Anti-Comment Spam Blocking
- File Monitoring
- Link Tracking
- Known Offender Blocking
- Automate Core WordPress Updates
- WordPress Security Audit
- Tightening Server Security
- Kick Out Policy
- Online Reputation Checking
- And More …
Blog Defender provides a logical sequence of steps for securing your web site, addressing hosting security, using scanning and detection tools to quickly identify risky themes and plugins, and then helping you implement website-wide security using the tools and plugins provided.
(Blog Defender security process. Product image source: Blog Defender)
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials plugin customers have submitted regarding Blog Defender:
”I’ve had to go through the inconvenience of a hacked blog before and let me tell you it’s not nice. With online security becoming an increasing problem, especially with WordPress, this is a great way to secure your blog. I’ll be following Matt’s training and securing all my blogs…Great job.” JohnThornhill – www.johnthornhill.com
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“Sure wish I’d had this before I lost over a dozen blogs just recently!” Kathe Lucas – www.wackycentral.com
Plugin Tips
According to the plugin developer, since Blog Defender was first released, no Blog Defender-secured sites have been hacked.
Matt Garrett states on his site …
“With the volume of attacks nowadays … we probably won’t hold forever, so we’ve been busy creating even tougher WordPress security.”
The war on hackers is is a perpetual game of cat and mouse and all security solutions are only as good as the knowledge and technologies that developers presently have access to. The latest release of Blog Defender provides users with an easier WordPress security solution that doesn’t need constant attention, is quite inexpensive and it’s as good if not better than many web security products or services currently being offered at a higher price.
Support
The product is well-supported, can be used by both Mac and PC users, is compatible with the latest WordPress release and is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, complete refund guarantee.
Software Pricing
Blog Defender is normally available with a personal license only for use on unlimited sites. When we last checked, however, it was also being sold with Developer rights, allowing users to secure client sites as well.. Cost = $47.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the Blog Defender plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was written. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here:
Additional Info
For help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Blog Defender website.
We Recommend
Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WP core files, plugins and WP themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.
Adopting security policies such as the one Blog Defender provides, will help you understand what your security responsibilities are as the site owner, what hosting companies can and can’t do if your websites are hacked or compromised, what security features to look for in a webhost, and how to avoid major security risks without paying a lot of money.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Blog Defender Security Suite
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