The scale of attacks on websites and blogs worldwide is increasing on a daily basis, and the situation is getting worse.
You can safely assume that if you haven’t been hacked yet, then it’s inevitable that at some point in time someone will attempt to hack into your site.
On March 11, 2014, technology sites like Cnet.com reported that 160,000+ WordPress-powered websites had been hacked.
Thousands of websites and blogs are attacked every year! Will yours be one of them?
(Screenshot image: 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)
As reported by security firm Sucuri, hackers had leveraged a flaw to attack unsuspecting WP web sites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service cyber-attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.
Every website with a vulnerability offers some value to hackers. No site is completely safe from cyber attacks. Business sites, personal blogs, government sites … even sites owned by web security experts can and have been targeted.
If a malicious user can hack and gain complete control of your web site, your site can then be used as part of a larger network of “bots” to target larger and more valuable sites.
The harsh reality is that malicious bots are probably trying to break into your site as you are reading this. Whether they will do this successfully or not, depends on how difficult or easy you have made things for hackers and botnets to continue persisting until they either work out a way to break in, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a more vulnerable target.
How Much Information About Your Site Are You Broadcasting To Hackers?
Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security scan …
(Hackertarget – WP Security Check Product image source: Hackertarget.com)
You will see that the check returns various results and details about your WordPress setup …
(Hackertarget – WordPress security scan results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)
It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you are able to see all of this information about your site, hackers can too.
(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)
Being able to see which version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories can be useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any exploitable security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their files.
Fortunately, there is a simple solution that can stop broadcasting all of this information about your site and make your site invisible to malicious attackers and bots.
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Product Description
Blog Defender is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.
Matt Garrett, the creator of the BlogDefender security suit began looking for a way to develop BlogDefender after noticing that a WordPress-driven site he set up for his mother had been hacked into and suspended. This particular site was fairly new and so had literally no value to offer, yet it was still targeted by hackers.
Matt only became aware of the event after being contacted by his host and seeing that a significant amount of suspicious activity had occurred within the server, as well as the addition of a number of malicious files designed to lure unsuspecting victims to the site and steal Paypal account details.
(Product image source: Blog Defender)
Matt’s experience provides the valuable lesson that all websites have value to hackers.
Blog Defender scans you web site for security holes …
And let’s you fix these quickly …
Blog Defender – WordPress Plugins
The product suite comes with three plugins for WordPress:
Plugin #1 in the product suite helps you schedule automated backups …
(Screenshot: Blog Defender)
The “Automated Backups” plugin lets you do secure site and file backups to your server, third-party servers and popular cloud-based backup solutions using a number of backup methods (including FTP and email backups), automate full or partial backups, exclude tables or files from backups, restore 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.
The second plugin provides WordPress security …
(Screenshot source: BlogDefender website)
The plugin performs a range of file and site protection functions (see “Features” section below).
Pro Plugin # 3 allows you to scan your website to see whether anything has been tampered with, and repair any problems it finds …
(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)
Pro Plugin # 3 also scans content to see if any malicious URLs have been added to your site, bans bad bots, blocks brute force attacks and detects any content leeching (where people benefit from your content without offering anything of value in return).
Blog Defender – Tutorials Videos
In addition to plugins, the Blog Defender product suite also includes seven video training modules plus downloadable guides that will teach you exactly what to do to protect your website from malicious users …
(Screenshot: Blog Defender)
More info:
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 web site:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
The plugins install like any WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugins to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Very Simple And Easy To Follow
Blog Defender is a practical and useful training product that walks you through the website security process and shows you what to do, including how to set things up, and even which free WordPress plugins to use to get the job done.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Protect your website from hackers, spammers, bad bots, data miners and malicious users attempting to ruin your business for personal and financial gain at your expense.
- Prevent Your Info Products From Being Shared Around The Net – If you are an information product creator (e.g. downloadable e-books, video training, etc.), your work can be stolen and end up becoming freeware on free sharing sites.
- Avoid Getting Blocked By Your Web Host And Banned By Search Engines – When a site is hacked, expect to go through a great deal of frustration and heartache. It can take days to uncover problems and sort through the issues these have caused. As a result, your, sites could get suspended by your host, or even deindexed in search engines. In addition, your contacts can be spammed, your subscriber list and financial details can be stolen, you could end up being fined or even charged with fraud, and more.
Features
Blog Defender provides a number of features to WordPress users.
The product provides fixes for all of the following issues:
- Hosting Security Advisory
- WP Plugin Security Audits
- Theme Security Audits
- Anti Brute Force Security
- Anti Cross-Site Scripting
- MySQL Database Security
- Nefarious Traffic Blocking
- Hiding WordPress ‘Tell Tale’ Signs
- Anti-Comment Spam
- Monitor Files
- Link Tracking
- Known Offender Blocking
- Automate Core Updates
- WordPress Security Audit
- Tighten Server Security
- Kick Out Policy
- Online Reputation Checking
- And More …
Blog Defender uses a logical sequence of steps to help protect your site, addressing potential hosting security issues, using tools to identify risky WP themes and WordPress plugins, and then helping you implement website-wide security using the tools and plugins provided.
(Blog Defender website security process. Screenshot source: BlogDefender website)
User Feedback
Here are some of the testimonials customers have published about Blog Defender:
”Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re too small or not important enough to be hacked! I’ve found out that I’ve had bots in the backend of my sites, making alterations and changing things around, so there’s no telling what damage they’ve caused. I’ve had my main blog for over 3 years now, and the thought of losing all the hard work I’ve put into it is just devastating, not to mention costly! I have a shared hosting plan, so of course once they can get into one site, they can also access the others. Luckily, I now have the procedures detailed within Blog Defender in place so that I can prevent the majority of this ever happening again. Once you’ve secured one site it gets a lot quicker to secure all subsequent sites. With Blog Defender, you get easy-to-follow videos, along with a detailed checklist that you can downloadf. You are literally walked through the process of securing your blog against hackers, which has given me real peace of mind. This is a growing issue that all website owners are facing; so it isn’t going to go away. Prevention is better than cure, particularly as some of the nastier hacks around can literally ruin your business. So do yourself a favour – get your sites protected now, before it’s too late.” Nikki Stephens, www.nikkistephens.com
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”Since working with blogs, I… like many others, have been concerned about how to handle the constant threat of blog attacks. After having a look at Blog Defender you can’t help but become most aware of the vulnerable areas all bloggers need to protect. Blog Defender is viable WordPress blog security prevention system that offers video instruction along with 3 software plugins that are free to download. The instruction shows the optimum settings on how to use the free plugins that will allow you top level force against blog hacker attacks.” Micheal Nicholas, Impact Info Marketing
Useful Tips
According to Matt Garrett, the plugin developer, no Blog Defender-secured websites were hacked since Blog Defender’s original release.
Matt Garrett states on his site, however …
“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 an escalating arms race and all security solutions are only as good as the information and tools that developers can access. 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 most premium 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 risk-free, thirty day, full refund guarantee.
Product Cost
Blog Defender is normally available for personal use only 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 Blog Defender can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Plugin Information
For installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Blog Defender website.
Use These Plugins
Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.
WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, plugins and themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to attacks by hackers and bots.
Adopting security policies such as the one that Blog Defender provides, will help you understand what’s going on in your site and where the vulnerabilities are, what hosting companies can and can’t do if your sites are hacked or compromised, what security features to look for in a webhost, and how to avoid all the major WordPress security holes without investing in expensive solutions.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites & Blogs
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