The cyberspace has brought with it the reality of hacking, which is indeed commonplace.
That leads individuals to seek solutions to protect their website from malicious activities through downloading and installing plugins.
Here, we are going to look at two companies, Sucuri and Wordfence, breaking down what security features they offer to sites. Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Sucuri
Let’s start with an in-depth look at sucuri so that we can better understand their model and what they offer. We’ll look at the various features that they provide to help you know what you’re getting from them as a service provider.
Website Hack Protection
Sucuri clean and protect websites, given that they are ever under attack from hackers. Their primary offering is fixing hacks and also preventing future attacks. They are a cloud-based platform for every site.
The brand’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) are what provide the protection required to fight website threats. With these in place, your website can increase its performance while also maintaining the traffic and rankings on search engines.
When you break it down, some of the aspects that you can expect protection from is malware and even hacking. You’re assured that the system will protect your website from malicious code and from hacking, too, thanks to the WAF.
One thing that remains a reality is that hackers are always discovering new vulnerabilities on a given site every day. With the Zero-Day Exploit Prevention feature, Sucuri protects sites and also stops any suspicious behavior detected.
Also, you’ll notice that mitigating a new threat doesn’t typically require a patch.
The system also blocks layers 3, 4, and 7 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that are known to cause downtime. The other defense you get under Website Hack Protection is from Brute Force Attacks.
It is able to stop automated hacker tools and also password cracking software that then prevents site abuse. The solutions you get include Virtual Patching and Hardening.
Something you’ll notice is that if you can’t update a security patch update, then it becomes vulnerable to attacks from hackers. That’s why you can expect constant security patch updates to make sure that your site is always protected.
They come up with accurate security patches due to machine learning. What that means is that they look at threats across the network to understand malicious behavior.
From there, learn about the best ways to protect your website.
If you have sensitive pages, something that all websites tend to have, you can enable the Protect Page feature. Whatever page that is, you’re then able to add passwords, 2FA, CAPTCHA, or IP whitelisting.
For example, on pages with personal data, you’re able to keep those protected from hacking and other malicious activities. Looking closely at IP whitelisting, only your team will have the ability to access website administrative areas.
You can also restrict who can get access to keep unwanted eyes from these areas.
Other aspects of the website protection also include application profiling, which blocks requests from people who don’t fir your profile. There is also signature detection where all HTTP/HTTPS web traffic goes through an inspection before reaching your site for total protection.
Additionally, there is Bad Bot Blocking, which detects and stops malicious bots or hacker tools trying to get to your site. Geo-Blocking is also another feature that you can activate.
If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know that most website attacks come from only a handful of countries. With one click, you can block traffic from the top three attack countries.
Website Malware Scanning & Detection
Reports and alerts are a big part of any website, even when it comes to security. Sucuri provides Website Malware Scanners that does the site monitoring for you.
Given that offense is the best defense, there is the website Server-Side scanner that is always running. It checks through files to see if there are any suspicious actions.
There is also the SEO Spam scanner that gives you the chance to see signs of SEO spamming way before search engines pick it up. If your website’s SSL certificate (HTTPS) undergoes any changes, you get an immediate alert that allows you to jump into action.
You also get a similar notification should your website go down.
Website Malware Removal & Protection
Perhaps the essential service that Sucuri offers is their Website Malware Removal & Protection feature. They are able to repair and restore hacked websites way before they damage the company’s reputation.
Sucuri does a thorough clean of your website, and their confidence in the ability to do so is backed with their 30-day money-back guarantee. Some of the services you can expect are the removal of malicious code from your site’s database and file system to restore the site.
The other thing that Sucuri does for you is to submit blacklist removal requests on your behalf to websites that have blacklisted you. The reason why that’s important is that if they don’t, you lose 95 percent of your traffic. Something else that brands tend to overlook is their SEO.
Some think they can get away with SEO stuffing when that actually harms the brand. Therefore, if that’s the case with your site, Sucuri steps in to make sure that your website looks right for search engines.
Customer support
Sucuri has a system in place to help all their clients. They have a dedicated team of researchers that monitor active malware campaigns.
It is then the analysts’ job to come up with a way to provide clients with the best malware removal service in the industry. Sucuri also employs tools to help run cleanups.
These are done automatically, but the analysts will also step in to have a manual look at malware incidents reports and fix them. Nothing is too complicated for them.
All the plans do have varying response times, but you’re assured a fast response time all the same.
Even with that, each plan offers unlimited cleanups, databases, and pages, so you don’t have to pay more for basic needs. If you have a specific problem, you can reach out to the team because they offer round the clock support . In short, you’ll never be alone when dealing with a potential or real site hacking.
Pricing
There are four packages you can get from Sucuri. There is the Basic, which goes for $199.99 annually, the Pro, which is the most popular, going for $299.99 for the same duration and Business, which is $499.99 per year.
The four packages are for those who need enterprise features or cover multiple sites. For them, they’d require something tailored uniquely to their context.
The most significant difference in the various packages is the Malware & Hack Scan frequency. For the Basic, it’s every 12 hours, the Pro after every six hours, and finally, for the Business, the scan runs every 30 mins.
Wordfence
Worfence is a software that is built from the ground up to protect WordPress websites. They have identified that a lot of WordPress sites are getting hacked, and they’ve stepped up to fill the gap.
They are different from Sucuri because they are an Endpoint Firewall and not a Cloud Firewall.
Wordfence Firewall
Let’s look at why it matters that Wordfence offers an endpoint firewall.
The reason why it makes a difference is that endpoint runs from your server and thus provides better protection than the cloud alternatives.
The reason for that is that it’s not uncommon for cloud firewalls to get bypassed. They also have a history of suffering from data leaks.
The other added advantage they also have is that the Wordfence firewall can leverage user identity information in 85 percent of the firewall rules. That’s something cloud-based firewalls have no access to.
It is the features that Wordfence has that has caused it to have 22 million downloads to date. Those who use the software are assured that all traffic gets scanned from malware in real-time.
They also get to enjoy faster IP blocking code, so you don’t get any unwanted traffic at any point.
From the years they have been operational, Wordfence has leveraged their experience to create innovative solutions for their customers. One such example is through the collection of treat intelligence.
Once they see something new, they create a new rule and then role it to other users. That way, other sites have protection way before the same attack gets deployed to their website.
The company has aimed to make it so that you’d be crazy not to use Wordfence to protect your WordPress website. They have been able to do that thanks to their innovation in WordPress security and always being industry innovators.
What they offer instead is a firewall that integrates directly to WordPress and not a cloud service, even though that’s the direction technology is moving in.
WordPress Firewall
While it’s the same as Wordfence Firewall, let’s look at the specifics of the firewall on a WordPress site. What the company offers is a Web Application Firewall (WAF), which identifies and then blocks malicious traffic.
Given that it runs on an endpoint, it is able to provide deep integration with WordPress. It’s different from cloud alternatives in that it doesn’t break encryption.
It also cannot get bypassed, and there won’t be any leak data. There’s also the malware scanner that blocks requests, whether in the form of content or malicious code.
The limiting of login attempts gives defense against brute force, and it also gets you to put in strong passwords to ensure the same doesn’t happen. The company advocates for users to get the premium account where they can enable the real-time IP Blacklist function.
It works by blocking all requests coming from the most malicious IPs, which then protects the site.
On your end, you can monitor site visits and also hack attempts. That’s not something that typically happens in other security packages available online.
You don’t only get updates on the same; you also get to see the origin, the IP address, and the time the attempt took place. You can also block any attempted logins from password information stolen during a data breach. Overall, anything suspicious is detected and allows you to block them.
WordPress Security Scanner
There is a lot that the Wordfence Scanner checks. It’ll have a look at the core files, themes, and plugins for any malware. Additionally, it’ll scan backdoors, bad URLs, malicious redirects, code injections, and SEO spam.
Another impressive aspect of the security scanner is that it’ll compare the files on your website to the WorldPress.org repository to ascertain their integrity.
If anything is different, the changes get reported to you. After, it goes a step further and repairs and overwrites any discrepancies, putting in the original version and deleting what doesn’t belong.
Wordfence also plays an active role in protecting your website by checking for close or abandoned plugins as well as any other vulnerabilities.
Some of the weaknesses removed include suspicious content and dangerous URLs that might be in your site files, posts, or comments.
When you’re on their premium account, you get access to real-time malware signature updates. There are also more checks and better control over the time taking to scan the site and the frequency that gets done.
Customer support
Three million WordPress sites are relying on Wordfence for their security. That is a lot less than Sucuri, which stands at 22 million downloads to date.
Even so, they have a full understanding of what hackers do to compromise a site, where they generally come from, and any malicious code they do leave behind.
All this happens thanks to the security analysts and developers they have that are 100 percent focused on WordPress security. The team is also continually adding updates with every new threat discovered. Any ticket typically gets sorted in a few hours.
Pricing
There is a free version of Wordfence and a Premium version. The upgrade gets you real-time IP blacklist, real-time firewall rule updates, and real-time malware signature updates.
The price of the upgrade depends on the number of licenses that you want. The pricing model is such that when you purchase more licenses, you have a higher discount than purchasing one.
Conclusion
The main difference between these two security plugins is that one is cloud-based; the other is an endpoint. Sucuri also does have a niche target market, while Wordfence accommodates a lot more website developers. They each have their strong points, so what you get is dependent on your needs.
