WordPress powers a massive portion of the internet, making it a prime target for cybercriminals. While the WordPress core itself is generally secure by design and hacks directly targeting it are rare, attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Instead of going after the core, they often exploit vulnerabilities in plugins, themes, poor hosting setups or weak security practices by site owners.
How to Secure a WordPress Website
Securing a WordPress site involves protecting against common threats like data theft, spam, and resource hijacking. Key WordPress security best practices include:
- Keep WordPress core, themes and plugins updated.
- Use strong passwords and enable multi-factor authentication.
- Limit user roles and privileges.
- Audit for unauthorized changes using security plugins.
- Avoid vulnerable or outdated third-party plugins.
- Use nonces and sanitization to protect site integrity.
- Configure secure SMTP for email delviery.
- Back up your site regularly.
- Choose a managed hosting provider with built-in security.
Following these practices helps prevent exploits, preserve data confidentiality, and minimize downtime after incidents.
Why Cybercriminals Target WordPress Sites
Many initial WP attacks are not manually executed; they are launched by automated bots and crawlers that scan the web 24/seven, hunting for websites with outdated software, weak passwords or known vulnerabilities. Once they find an opening, they exploit it almost instantly. Attackers can use WP vulnerabilities in a variety of ways depending on their goals. Here are the most common reasons hackers target WordPress sites:
1. Data Theft
For many sites or services, data is gold. Hackers target WordPress installations to steal customer information, payment details, login credentials and behavioral data. This information is then sold on the dark web or used for identity fraud and further attacks.
2. Spam Distribution
Spam still makes up a huge part of all email traffic. Hackers often exploit vulnerabilities to hijack servers and turn them into spam-sending machines. This harms the site owner's reputation and can result in banning by email providers.
3. Resource Hijacking (Cryptojacking)
Some attackers aren’t interested in data; they target the server’s computing power instead. By compromising a poorly secured WordPress site, they can install crypto mining scripts that silently siphon off server resources to mine digital currencies, often without the site owner’s knowledge.
Things You Can’t Afford to Ignore
Securing your WordPress site is not optional. It is essential. Once a site is hacked, recovery can be a long and frustrating process. You may need to comb through every line of code to find and remove malicious content, restore clean versions and reset all your login credentials.
But the damage doesn’t stop there. A compromised site can quickly lose its search engine rankings, resulting in a drop in traffic and revenue. Worse yet, a breach can seriously harm your reputation.
The CIA Principles of WordPress Security
CIA stands for Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability, three core principles that form the foundation of any effective cybersecurity strategy. For WordPress websites, applying the CIA triad looks like this:
1. Confidentiality
User Credentials
WordPress does a decent job of encouraging strong passwords, but that alone isn’t always enough to keep attackers out. To strengthen account security, enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) is highly recommended. It adds an extra layer of protection even if a password is compromised. It’s also wise to limit the number of failed login attempts to block brute-force attacks before they gain traction.
Sensitive Data
Plugins, themes and even global variables can unintentionally expose confidential details — or at least provide clues that lead to them. A common mistake, like setting the WP_DEBUG parameter to true in a live environment, can reveal the path to your site's root directory, which is an open invitation for attackers. Author pages can also leak information. They often display usernames or email addresses, which hackers can use to launch brute-force attacks.
Some threats may come from unexpected sources, such as third-party tracking scripts. These can leak data or even serve as attack vectors. You can use specialized website scanners to check tracking resources, detect security risks in web analytics tools and find out whether your website is exposing sensitive data.
2. Integrity
Data Verification
Although WordPress itself includes built-in mechanisms to handle data securely, those protections often do not extend beyond the core system. So, developers need to step in. For example, interacting directly with the database can introduce security risks. Instead of writing raw queries, using built-in functions like update_post_meta is safer and helps prevent SQL injection attacks. When working with custom queries or tables, it is best practice to use the $wpdb class along with the prepare() function. This adds a layer of sanitization that keeps attackers from sneaking harmful commands into your database.
Query Sanitation
Most WordPress management queries are relatively secure, especially if you’re using SSL encryption and a reputable hosting provider. But no system is completely foolproof. It’s still important to keep an eye on how users interact with your site and ensure that incoming requests are legitimate and come from authenticated users.
To help with this, WordPress uses nonces. These are unique security tokens generated with every user-initiated action. These tokens are tied to specific URLs and must be validated before the associated request is processed. This helps prevent unauthorized actions and adds an extra layer of protection against common exploits, such as Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF).
Third-Party Code
As mentioned earlier, a significant number of WordPress breaches can be attributed to vulnerable plugins and themes. Simply put: the more third-party code you use, the larger your attack surface becomes.
If you rely on a plugin or theme from an external source, take time to vet it thoroughly. Look at user reviews, check the last update date and verify which PHP versions it supports. A plugin that has not been maintained in years or is incompatible with the latest PHP can be a major red flag.
3. Availability
Updates
WordPress itself handles core security updates automatically, which is a big plus. But when it comes to themes and plugins, staying secure requires more hands-on effort. Many of these components need to be manually updated, and unfortunately, not all of them play nicely with each other or with your current setup.
Before updating third-party themes or plugins, you should test them in a staging environment. Compatibility issues are common, and some users face trial-and-error frustrations before finding a stable, secure combination that works smoothly with their site.
User Privileges and Roles
Sensitive data stays safe when it’s only accessible to the right people. That is why it is important to limit user access based on need. Instead of giving every user full control, assign roles with the least privileges necessary to perform their tasks. WordPress makes this easy by allowing you to create and manage custom user roles.
WordPress handles email through the server on which it is hosted, but this default setup is not always secure. To protect your emails from interception or tampering, use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) for sending messages.
There are numerous reliable SMTP plugins available that make this process smooth and secure. To complete the setup, you will also need to add a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record to your domain's DNS settings. This record tells email providers that your domain is authorized to send messages through your chosen SMTP service, helping to prevent spoofing and improve deliverability.
Auditing
Maintaining data securely means keeping a close eye on what is happening behind the scenes. If an attacker gains access to your server, they could quietly modify your code without you noticing — unless you’re actively monitoring it.
That is where security auditing tools come in. Plugins like Sucuri Security can scan your entire file system for suspicious or malicious code. These tools alert you to unauthorized changes, helping you catch threats early and take action before real damage is done.
Backups
Most reputable hosting providers include automatic backups as part of their service. But even if your host does not offer this feature, you still have plenty of reliable options.
Many backup plugins and services can regularly save your WordPress site to cloud storage platforms like Amazon S3, Dropbox or Google Drive. Setting up regular backups ensures that, if something goes wrong — whether it’s a hack, crash or human error — you can quickly restore your site and minimize downtime.
Hosting Services
Your choice of hosting provider plays a big role in your site’s security. Low-quality hosts may run outdated PHP versions, leaving WordPress sites exposed to known vulnerabilities. There is also a significant difference between basic hosting that simply gives you server space and managed WordPress hosting, which includes built-in security features and performance optimizations. While managed hosting may cost more, it is often worth the investment. You’ll benefit from regular updates, better server-side protections, and expert support, all of which reduce your risk of being compromised.
Secure Your WordPress Site
While the WordPress core receives regular updates with important patches and improvements, the surrounding ecosystem, like plugins, themes and custom code, is often far less secure. The good news? By following best practices when installing third-party components, managing user roles and writing code, you can significantly reduce your risk and maintain a secure site.
