The sheer number of attacks on websites and blogs worldwide is rising, 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 began reporting that over 160,000+ legitimate WordPress-powered sites had been hacked.
Thousands of websites and blogs are attacked every year! Could yours be next?
(Image source: Blog Defender)
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 well-known flaw to attack unsuspecting WP websites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.
You may think that your site is of little value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to benefit at your expense.
If hackers can exploit a security weakness in your system that lets them gain complete control of your blog, that blog can then be used to target larger and more valuable sites.
The harsh reality is that software-driven bots are most likely trying to break into your website or blog while you are reading this. Whether they will get into your site successfully or not, depends on how challenging you will make things for hackers to keep persisting until they discover how to get in, or give up and decide to look for a more vulnerable target.
How Much Information Are You Broadcasting To Hackers About Your Site?
Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …
(Hackertarget – WP Security Check Source: Hackertarget.com)
You will see that the scan returns a number of results and information about your WordPress setup …
(WP security check results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)
It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you are able to see all of this information, so can hackers.
(Image source: BlogDefender website)
Being able 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 are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.
Fortunately, there is a way you can stop broadcasting all of this information about your website and help to protect it against malicious attacks.
Blog Defender WordPress Security Suite
Product Description
The product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.
Matt Garrett, the developer of the BlogDefender security suit began to develop BlogDefender after noticing that a WordPress blog he set up for his mother got hacked into and suspended. This site was new and so had practically no value to offer, yet it was still attacked.
Matt only became aware of what had happened after being suspended 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 by whoever had broken into the site.
(Product image source: Blog Defender)
Matt’s experience provides the valuable lesson that every website is valuable to hackers.
Blog Defender scans you WordPress installation for security weaknesses …
And then shows you how to fix these quickly …
Plugins
The product suite includes three plugins:
The first plugin in the product suite provides automated backups …
(Screenshot: BlogDefender.com)
Plugin #1 “Automated Backups” lets you do automated backups to your server, external servers and leading cloud-based storage solutions using a number of backup methods (including FTP and email backups), perform complete or partial backups, exclude tables or files from your backups, restore backups, replace URLs (useful when migrating sites to new domains or server locations), do bulk text replacements in your WordPress database, perform malware scans and blacklist checks automatically, and more.
Plugin #2 provides WordPress security …
(Product image: BlogDefender site)
Plugin #2 provides a range of vital website protection functions (see “Product Features” section below).
Plugin #3 allows you to scan WordPress sites to see whether anything unusual in your files has been found, and fix any problems found …
(Source: BlogDefender website)
Pro Plugin # 3 also scans content to see if any malicious scripts have been added to your site, bans bad bots, blocks brute force attacks and detects any content leeching (where people benefit from your work without offering you any benefit in return).
Videos
In addition to plugins, the Blog Defender WP security product suite also includes 7 video tutorial modules plus training guides that teach you exactly how to protect your site from malicious attacks …
(Product image source: BlogDefender.com)
Go here to learn more:
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Blog Defender to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets on your website:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement
The plugins included with Blog Defender are quite easy to install. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Simple And Easy To Follow
Blog Defender can be used as a do-it-yourself step-by-step training product that walks you through the website security process and shows you exactly what to do, including how to set everything up, and even which free WordPress plugins to install to get things done without paying additional expenses.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Protect your WordPress site from hackers, spammers, bad bots, data miners and malicious users whose aims is to exploit your site for personal and financial gain at your expense.
- Protect Your Info Products – If you are a digital product author (e.g. downloadable ebooks, videos, etc.), your work can be stolen and end up becoming freeware on download sharing sites.
- Avoid A Tragic Situation – When a website is hacked, you can expect to go through a whole lot of frustration and aggravation. It can take days to uncover the problem and sort through the issues these have caused. During this time, your, website or blog can be closed by your webhost, or even blacklisted in search engines. And if this is not enough to have to deal with, hackers can spam your contact list and steal your personal and financial information, you could be fined or even charged with fraud, and a whole lot more.
Features
Blog Defender was designed to locks down your site and keeps your business safe and secure 24/7.
The product addresses the following areas:
- Host Security Advisory
- 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
- Monitoring Files
- Link Tracking
- Block Known Offenders
- Automating WordPress Updates
- WordPress Security Audit
- Tighter Server Security
- Kick Out Policy
- Online Reputation Checking
- And More …
Blog Defender uses a logical process to help protect your website, addressing potential hosting security issues, using tools to quickly identify risky WP themes and plugins, and then implementing website-wide security using the tools and plugins provided.
(Blog Defender website security process. Image source: Blog Defender)
Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials and feedback users have written about the Blog Defender product:
“You are literally walked through the process!” Nikki Stephens, www.nikkistephens.com
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”Just one tip could have prevented my blogs getting hacked!” Richard Legg – www.richard-legg.com
Useful Tips
According to the plugin developer, Matt Garrett, since Blog Defender was first released in 2012, no websites or blogs secured with the product have been hacked.
Matt also 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.”
Cybersecurity is an ever-escalating arms race and all security solutions are only as good as the information and technologies that developers currently 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 web security products or services currently being offered at a higher price.
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, 30 day, complete money-back guarantee.
Product 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.. Price = $47.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the Blog Defender software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here:
Additional Plugin Information
For installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Blog Defender website.
Download This Product
Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your web sites is something you cannot ignore.
WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress software, plugins and themes up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.
Adopting security procedures like the one that Blog Defender provides, will help you understand what your responsibilities are as the site owner, what hosting companies can and can’t do if your site is hacked or compromised, what security features to look for in a webhost, and how to avoid all the major security risks without paying a lot of money.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
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