3 Security Tools You Need for Your Author Website

Once you launch your book marketing campaign and create an author website as a part of it, your work hardly stops there. The hardest part is to maintain that author website by regularly publishing new posts, updating old ones and, most importantly, keeping it safe from malware and hackers.

WordPress is integrated with many security tools for their websites, which can come in extremely handy for its users — and the payment for these tools must be accounted for when you set your budget, since it comes under essential costs that you simply cannot skip.

Hackers can steal user information, like emails, passwords, credit card numbers, and even distribute malware to users, which will be a serious blow to your reputation. While WordPress already comes with some core security software, you need to incorporate the best plugins to make sure your website is truly safe, and isn’t compromised. 

1. WPScan

The WordPress Security Scanner (WPScan) is a feature sponsored by Automatic and developed by WordPress specialists themselves, with over 21,000 security vulnerabilities, which is able to scan WordPress vulnerabilities, plugin vulnerabilities, and theme vulnerabilities. WPScan comes with both free and paid API (Application Programming Interface) plans — most websites can use the free plan, since it contains most of the features that makes this plugin so useful. 

Features:

• Scans your WordPress core version, plugins, and themes
• Scans for exposed debug log files, backed up files, and weak passwords
• Can schedule scans to run within specific intervals
• Their database is manually-curated and periodically updated

2. Sucuri

The Sucuri Security WordPress plugin is a globally recognised software package, which enhances your website’s security by running periodic scans and automatically detecting and removing malware. Since it’s a cloud-based service, you’re not required to either download the software or store it in your devices.

Free Plan Features:

• Has security notifications, blacklist monitoring, security hardening, and file integrity monitoring
• Offers post-hack security actions and remote malware scanning, powered by their scanning engine, SiteCheck

Premium Plan Features: 

• Allows you to run scans frequently, and also create a customer service channel (instant chat and emails) to provide better services for your customers/users
• A website firewall, protecting your website from a variety of website attacks like brute force attacks, exploitation of software vulnerabilities, Denial of Service (DOS/DDOS) attacks, etc.

3. Jetpack

Jetpack, as advertised by WordPress, is “the most popular WordPress plugin for just about everything.” Made by WordPress itself, Jetpack ensures that websites hosted by WordPress remain secure and safe from external threats, and also that they function faster and smoother regardless of the amount of traffic the website attracts. 

Features:

• Provides auto real-time backups (with unlimited storage for backups), easy restores, repairs broken websites malware scans, and spam protection
• Advanced site stats and analytics to help you understand your audience
• Enables easy switching to a new host and keeps your data secure, while also making the transfer of theme files and plugins to the new host seamless
• Block spam comments and form responses with anti spam features powered by Akismet
• Monitor your site uptime/downtime and get an instant alert of any change by email
• Jetpack’s free CDN (Content Delivery Network) also auto optimizes images and decreases your website’s page load time
• Powerful and easily customisable site search settings so users can find the content they’re looking for instantly