The scale of attacks on websites and blogs worldwide is rising, and it’s only going to get 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 162,000 legitimate WordPress-powered sites had been hacked.
Thousands of websites and blogs are attacked 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 flaw to attack unsuspecting WP sites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service cyber attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.
You may think that your website provides no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to benefit at your expense.
If a malicious user can find a web security flaw, the blog can then be used as a “bot” to attack other highly-valued websites.
The harsh reality is that malicious bots are most likely trying to hack into your web site while you are reading this article right now. Whether they will hack into your site successfully or not, will depend on how challenging you have made things for hackers to keep trying until they work out how to get in, or are forced to decide to look for a less protected target.
How Much Information Are You Broadcasting To Hackers About Your WordPress Site?
If you visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …
(Hackertarget – WP Security Scan Product image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)
You will see that the check will yield various results and information about your site setup …
(WP security scan results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)
It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can access all of this information about your site, so can hackers.
(Screenshot image: Blog Defender)
The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed on your site, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories on your server can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any potential security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.
Fortunately, there is a simple solution to stop broadcasting all of this information about your website and make your site invisible to hackers and bots.
Blog Defender WordPress Security Product Suite
Product Description
The product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.
Matt Garrett, the developer of BlogDefender began developing BlogDefender after noticing that a WordPress-driven site he set up for his mother had been hacked into. This particular blog had practically nothing of value to offer, yet it was still attacked.
Matt only became aware of this after being suspended by his host and seeing that a significant amount of unusual activity had occurred inside the site, as well as the addition of a number of phishing files by whoever had broken into his mother’s site.
(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)
Matt’s experience is evidence that every website has some value to hackers.
Blog Defender scans you WordPress installation for security holes …
And let’s you quickly fix these …
WordPress Plugins
Blog Defender comes with three plugins:
Pro Plugin #1 “Automated Backups” in the Blog Defender suite helps you schedule automated backups …
(Product image source: Blog Defender)
Plugin #1 lets you do automated site and file backups to your server, third-party servers and well-known cloud solutions using a number of backup methods (including FTP and email backups), schedule full 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 in your database, perform auto database scans and repairs, and more.
Plugin #2 provides WordPress security …
(Screenshot source: BlogDefender website)
This plugin provides a range of essential website security functions (see “Blog Defender Features” section below).
Plugin #3 lets you scan your plugins, themes and WP core files to detect whether any code in your files has been modified, and repair problems …
(Screenshot: BlogDefender.com)
Plugin #3 “WP Scan & Repair” also scans content to see if any malicious content have been added to your site files, bans bad bots, blocks brute force attacks and detects any content leeching (where people benefit from your hard work without reciprocating the favor).
Step-By-Step Tutorial Videos
In addition to plugins, the Blog Defender security product suite also includes training videos plus printable guides that show you exactly what to do to protect your website from hackers and bots …
(Product image source: BlogDefender.com)
More info:
Benefits Of Using Blog Defender
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Blog Defender to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets on your site:
Be Up And Running In No Time
The plugins install just like any plugin. Just upload the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Really Simple And Easy To Follow
Blog Defender can be used as a practical and useful training product that will walk you through the website security process and show you exactly what to do, including how to set everything up, and even which WordPress plugins you can use for free to get things done inexpensively.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Protect your website from hackers, spammers, botnets, data miners and malicious users whose aims is to ruin your business for their own personal and financial gain.
- Helps Avoid Intellectual Property Theft – If your site sells an information product (e.g. downloadable ebooks, video tutorials, etc.), your product can end up becoming freeware on free downloading sites.
- Avoid A Tragic Situation – When a website gets hacked, expect to go through a whole lot of inconvenience and heartache. It can take days to uncover the problem and sort through the issues these have caused. In the meantime, your, websites could be closed by your webhost, or even blocked by search engines. Additionally, hackers can spam your contact list and steal your business details or financial information, you could be fined or even charged with fraud, and much more.
Blog Defender Features
Blog Defender provides many features to website owners.
The product provides fixes for all of the following security areas and vulnerabilities:
- Hosting Security Advisory
- WP Plugin Security Audits
- WordPress Theme Security Audits
- Anti Brute Force Security
- Anti Cross-Site Scripting
- WP Database Security
- Nefarious Traffic Blocking
- Hiding WordPress ‘Tell Tale’ Signs
- Anti-Comment Spam Blocking
- Monitor Files
- Link Monitoring
- Blocking Known Offenders
- Automating WP Updates
- WordPress Security Audit
- Tighten Server Security
- Kick Out Policy
- Online Reputation Checking
- And More …
Blog Defender provides a logical sequence of steps for securing your website, addressing hosting security, using scanning and detection tools to quickly identify risky WordPress themes and WP plugins, and then implementing site-wide security using the tools and plugins provided.
(Blog Defender security process. Screenshot source: Blog Defender)
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Here are just a few of the testimonials plugin users have provided for the Blog Defender product:
”This is a seriously good product!” Simon Hodgkinson, www.hodgkinsonpublishing.com
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”In the past month alone, I’ve had 3 niche blogs hacked, costing me hundreds of dollars in lost sales – all of which could have been avoided if I followed the steps in this training. I can tell you, there’s nothing worse than spending months building up a blog, adding posts every few days, and then finding it all gone in an instant. The great thing about these ‘over the shoulder’ videos is that you get to see exactly how to do everything, so it doesn’t matter if you’re technically challenged. Just copy what you see on the screen, and then relax knowing your blogs are safe. (Just one of the tips in the first video alone could probably have prevented my blogs getting hacked) I even noticed one or two tips in there that help with SEO too … so following these videos could even bring your blogs more traffic!” Richard Legg – www.richard-legg.com
Useful Tips
According to Matt Garrett, the plugin developer, since Blog Defender’s first release, no websites or blogs secured with the product have been hacked.
Matt 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 is a perpetual game of cat and mouse and all security solutions are only as good as the knowledge and tools that developers presently can harness. The latest release of Blog Defender creates an easier WordPress security solution that doesn’t require constant attention, doesn’t cost you a fortune and it’s as good if not better than most premium security products or services currently being offered at a higher price.
Blog Defender Plugin 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, full refund guarantee.
Software Cost
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.
Please Note: The price of this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software retails for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product developer when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here:
Additional Information
For help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Blog Defender website.
Our Recommendation
Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of web security.
WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, WordPress plugins and themes, 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 learn what’s going on in your site and where the vulnerabilities are, what hosting companies can and can’t do if your website is hacked or compromised, what security features to look for in a webhost, and how to avoid major WordPress security holes without costly solutions.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Blog Defender Security Suite
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