Keeping your WordPress site secure is crucial for protecting your users‘ data and maintaining your site‘s reputation. Performing regular security audits allows you to proactively identify and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by attackers.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll walk through the steps to audit the security of your WordPress site.
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Why Perform a WordPress Security Audit?
Here are some key reasons why conducting regular security audits is essential:
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Identify vulnerabilities – Security audits help uncover weaknesses like outdated software, misconfigurations, and malicious code that could be exploited. Finding and fixing these proactively is key.
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Prevent attacks – By closing security gaps, you minimize the risk of your site being compromised through hacks, malware infections, and other attacks.
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Maintain compliance – Audits help ensure your site meets security best practices and industry compliance requirements. This is especially important for ecommerce sites handling sensitive customer data.
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Monitor suspicious activity – Audits allow you to detect unauthorized access attempts, users trying to exploit vulnerabilities, and other suspicious behaviors.
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Protect reputation – A hacked site damages your brand‘s reputation and loses customer trust. Audits prevent this by keeping your site locked down tight.
Regular audits every few months ensure your site‘s security posture remains strong over time.
WordPress Security Audit Checklist
Follow this comprehensive WordPress security audit checklist to thoroughly inspect your site‘s security:
1. Update All Software
Outdated software containing known vulnerabilities is one of the most common entry points for attackers.
Ensure WordPress, all plugins, themes, and other software running on your site are fully updated to the latest versions. This patches any holes an attacker could exploit.
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WordPress Core – Log in to your site‘s admin dashboard and navigate to Updates to install the latest WordPress core release.
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Plugins – Check Plugins > Installed Plugins for available updates and update all plugins to their newest versions. Prioritize vulnerable and publicly facing plugins.
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Themes – Go to Appearance > Themes to see if theme updates are available. Update any third-party premium or custom themes.
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PHP and Database – Make sure your PHP version and MySQL database are also up to date. Check with your host on the latest supported versions.
2. Scan for Malware
Malicious code injected into your site can lead to hacked sites, data theft, and redirected traffic. Scan thoroughly to detect any malware.
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Plugin Scan – Install the Wordfence plugin and run a scan from the Wordfence menu. It will inspect files and the database for any malicious code.
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Online Scanners – Services like Google Safe Browsing, Sucuri SiteCheck, and Quttera can scan your public-facing site for malware.
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Virus Scanner – Use free software like ClamAV to scan your WordPress file directories for viruses, trojans, and other malware.
3. Review Users and Permissions
The users who can access your WordPress dashboard and servers need to be scrutinized to ensure no unauthorized access.
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Users – Check Users > All Users to review all dashboard accounts. Remove any unknown or suspicious users.
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User Roles – Verify users have the minimum roles needed to do their jobs under Users > Roles. Don‘t allow admin access lightly.
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File Permissions – Use FTP or your host‘s file manager to ensure folders like wp-content have permission restrictions (755 or stricter) for security.
4. Analyze Site Activity
Unusual spikes in traffic and suspicious access patterns can reveal hackers probing your site and attempting attacks.
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Traffic Changes – Monitor analytics software like Google Analytics for big drops or surges in traffic that could indicate issues.
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Login Attempts – Use a security plugin like Wordfence to monitor failed login attempts and block attackers.
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File Changes – WordPress activity logs show changes made to core, plugin, and theme files that might reveal malicious edits.
5. Check Server Security
Your web server itself needs to be properly hardened against intrusions.
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Shield Directories – Block access to sensitive directories like wp-config and wp-content outside of your IP address.
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SSH Keys – Use key-based SSH authentication for server access instead of passwords which can be brute forced.
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Auto Updates – Make sure your server has auto updates enabled for security patches to software like PHP, OpenSSL, etc.
6. Review User-Generated Content
Malicious users can spread malware or offensive content if submitted content is not properly moderated.
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Comments – Manually review comments queued for moderation for spam and check commenters are real.
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Images – Verify uploaded images do not contain malicious files pretending to be images.
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Forums – Carefully moderate your forum for any posts or threads with suspicious links or content.
7. Check Plugin Vulnerabilities
Hackers can exploit vulnerable plugins to gain access to sites. Check plugins have no known vulnerabilities.
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WordPress Plugins – Use the Wordfence plugin or services like Plugin Vulnerabilities to assess plugins for security holes.
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Non-WordPress Plugins – Audit plugins for things like caching and security for vulnerabilities just like WordPress plugins.
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Remove Abandoned Plugins – Get rid of outdated plugins no longer supported by developers that could contain unpatched flaws.
8. Review Configuration
WordPress can be misconfigured in ways that undermine security. Double check settings that impact security.
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User Accounts – Make sure user registration and author creation is restricted to admins only.
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File Permissions – Verify files are set to recommended permission limits and not open wide.
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SSL Encryption – Check that you have an SSL certificate installed and force site-wide HTTPS.
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Automatic Updates – Enable auto updates for core, plugins and themes to maintain security.
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Password Policies – Enforce strong password policies and reset intervals like expired passwords every 90 days.
9. Check for Backdoors
Sometimes attackers inject backdoors into sites that let them maintain persistent access. These need to be detected and removed.
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Files – Scan files for any code added to core, plugins or themes that provide secret access points like shell commands.
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Database – Review WordPress tables like wp_options and wp_users for suspicious entries added by attackers.
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Web Shells – Tools like Lynis or Maldet can check for any web shells in your file system.
10. Schedule Regular Scans
Don‘t just audit your site once. Schedule recurring scans with tools like Wordfence to continually assess your site‘s evolving security posture over time.
Automated WordPress Security Audits
Manually running through all these audit steps takes considerable time and effort. Automating security scans and audits streamlines the process.
Popular automated options include:
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Wordfence – The free version includes daily malware scans. Premium adds scheduled daily audits.
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Sucuri SiteCheck – Free remote malware scans. Paid plans provide scheduled site audits.
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WP Security Audit Log – Records all site activity for auditing. Add-on extends monitoring.
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VaultPress – Daily automated scans plus human-reviewed threat detection.
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ManageWP – Centralized dashboard to scan multiple sites. Useful for agencies.
How Often to Audit WordPress Security
Conducting a full audit quarterly is recommended for most sites. Schedule more frequent audits if you operate an ecommerce site, have highly sensitive data, or have been compromised before.
Ongoing automated scans between full audits continually assess your site security too. Prioritize audits after making major site changes like new plugins, theme edits, or server migrations.
Take Action on Audit Findings
The whole point of auditing is to find and fix security gaps. Don‘t just run scans and then ignore the results.
- Review all issues found and create a prioritized list based on severity.
- Resolve critical high risk items immediately like malware infections and gaping holes.
- Formulate a plan to methodically address less urgent findings.
- Follow through until your site passes clean security audits. Stay vigilant.
Taking the time to regularly audit your WordPress site security will give you peace of mind that your site is locked down tight and resilient against attacks.
