Wordfence

Wordfence is a freemium security plugin for WordPress that identifies and blocks malicious traffic.

General usage

Its popularity has made WordPress a juicy target for hackers and malware. Wordfence is a widely-used security tool that allows you to monitor and block any malicious attacks.

It includes a Web Application Firewall and malware scanner specially developed for WordPress, which are regularly updated with the latest firewall rules, malware signatures and malicious IP addresses. It also supports end to end encryption.

In addition to stopping hackers from exploiting vulnerabilities and blocking automated bot attacks, it also guides you how to fix an issue when it detects malware. 

Activity reports can be scheduled at regular intervals and provide updates on top IPs blocked, details of successful and failed login attempts, a firewall summary and a rundown of blocked attacks on the entire Wordfence network.

If you need more control over your application’s security measures, Wordfence’s premium version offers features such as spam blacklists, real-time IP blacklists, real-time firewall updates and country blocking. 

 

Popularity

Wordfence is the 10th most popular WordPress plugin – quite impressive if you take into account that there are over 54,000 WordPress plugins. 

Marketplace benefits

Marketplaces built with WordPress would do well to install Wordfence. It is extremely adept at detecting vulnerabilities in ecommerce plugins as this cautionary tale from 2020 shows. The Wordfence Threat Intelligence team discovered a vulnerability in Welcart e-Commerce, a WordPress plugin with over 20,000 installations. They contacted the plugin publisher who fixed the vulnerability. Simultaneously the Wordfence firewall was updated to protect its users.

CobbleWeb does not use WordPress for the main transactional platform of custom marketplaces, but we still play it safe and install Wordfence for linked blog and CMS installations.

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