Guardian Gaze Security – AI Based Malware Scanner, Firewall and Login Protection vs UpdraftPlus

Guardian Gaze is a research-driven WordPress security plugin built by RedSecLabs to help website owners, developers, and agencies find and remove malware, hidden backdoors, injected database content, and unauthorized file changes — without slowing down your site. Unlike scanners that only check files, Guardian Gaze inspects both your WordPress files and your database, so malicious code hidden inside posts, options, postmeta, or comments doesn’t go unnoticed. Scanning works immediately after activation — there’s no mandatory account, license key, or registration wall blocking you from your first scan. Guardian Gaze focuses on: • WordPress malware and hidden backdoor scanning (core, plugins, themes, uploads) • Database malware scanning (options, posts, postmeta, comments) • File integrity monitoring for unauthorized changes • IP management, country blocking, and traffic filtering • Scheduled, automated scanning with email reports • Clear, centralized visibility into your site’s security posture Detection logic is backed by an ongoing threat intelligence feed. Guardian Gaze can run entirely with the malware definitions bundled in the plugin — optionally linking your site to our server keeps those definitions up to date automatically. Linking is free and takes seconds, but it is never required to scan. Why Guardian Gaze? • Scan first, decide later. No forced registration screen standing between you and a scan. • Database-aware. Most free scanners only check files. Guardian Gaze also scans wp_options, wp_posts, wp_postmeta, and wp_comments for injected iframes, base64 payloads, spam links, and eval()-based backdoors. • Lightweight by design. Scans are structured to avoid heavy resource usage on shared and managed hosting. • Built by security researchers. RedSecLabs maintains the detection patterns and threat intelligence behind Guardian Gaze. Key Features WordPress Malware & Backdoor Scanner A built-in scanner that checks WordPress core files, plugins, themes, and the uploads directory for suspicious or unauthorized code. • Full site, core-only, plugins-only, themes-only, or uploads-only scan modes • Detects modified or infected files and known malware/backdoor signatures • Highlights changes to WordPress core, plugin, or theme files • No registration required — scan immediately after activation • Designed for continuous monitoring, not just one-time checks Database Malware Scanner Scans your WordPress database directly for injected malicious content that file-only scanners miss. • Checks wp_options, wp_posts, wp_postmeta, and wp_comments • Flags hidden iframes, base64-encoded payloads, spam links, JavaScript redirects, and eval()/backdoor-style code • Severity-rated results (critical, high, medium, low) • One-click cleanup of flagged database records File Integrity Monitoring Tracks file changes across your WordPress installation over time. • Detects modified, newly added, or infected files • Highlights changes in WordPress core, plugin, or theme integrity • Lets you review findings before taking action IP Management & Firewall-Style Traffic Filtering Manage and reduce unwanted or abusive traffic at the IP level. • Manually block or allow specific IP addresses • Country-level blocking for geographic traffic filtering • Reduce bot noise, vulnerability scanners, and probing traffic Ideal for sites experiencing repeated probing or targeted attacks. Scheduled Scanning Automate malware scans and stay ahead of threats. • Daily or weekly scan schedules • Configure scan recipients and email reports • Review results from your dashboard or by email Security Notifications Get emailed the moment something worth knowing about happens, instead of having to check the dashboard. • Alert when an administrator account logs in • Alert when a plugin, theme, or WordPress core update becomes available (sent once per new version, no duplicates) • Set a custom alert recipient, or use the site admin email Central Security Dashboard One place to see your site’s current security posture: • Latest malware and database scan results • Site health overview (WordPress, PHP, plugin, and theme status) • Blocked and flagged IP addresses • Overall security score with a letter grade Continuous Threat Intelligence Updates Guardian Gaze ships with a bundled set of malware definitions, so scanning works out of the box. Optionally link your site to the Guardian Gaze Security Intelligence API to keep those definitions current automatically as new threats emerge. Privacy & Data Use Guardian Gaze only calls external services for functionality you’re actually using, such as fetching updated malware definitions or optional geolocation lookups. • No unnecessary data collection • No passwords or sensitive post/page content transmitted • Secure WordPress-native API communication (HTTPS) • Optional features (linking, geolocation) can be skipped or disabled • Only the security metadata required for the feature you’re using is processed Full details are listed under “External Services Used” below, as required for the WordPress.org plugin directory. Premium Add-On (Optional) Guardian Gaze is fully usable on its own — scanning, database malware detection, file integrity monitoring, IP management, and scheduled scans all work without upgrading. For teams who want additional hardening and automation, the separately-installed Guardian Gaze Premium add-on unlocks: • 🔒 AI/LLM-Assisted Backdoor Analysis — contextual AI review of suspicious files flagged during a scan, in addition to pattern-based detection • 🔒 Real-Time File Monitor — SHA-256 baseline snapshots that flag any file change the moment it happens • 🔒 Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) — TOTP support for Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, and similar apps • 🔒 Google reCAPTCHA Login Protection — reCAPTCHA v2 or v3 on the login form • 🔒 Brute-Force Login Lockout — automatic IP lockout after repeated failed login attempts • 🔒 One-Click Security Hardening — toggle common WordPress hardening rules without editing code • 🔒 Security Audit Log — a permanent log of important admin actions and events • 🔒 File Quarantine & Restore — isolate infected files safely, then restore or delete them Premium requires the free Guardian Gaze plugin to be active and is available at guardiangaze.com. External Services Used Guardian Gaze connects to the following services to provide security features and functionality: 1. Guardian Gaze API – wp-api.guardiangaze.com Used for license validation, malware pattern updates, threat intelligence updates, and optional email reporting. Data Sent: • Admin email • Site URL • API key • Plugin version and definitions version • IP addresses (for global blocking features) • Scan report data (if email reporting is enabled) Terms of Service: https://www.guardiangaze.com/terms-of-service/ Privacy Policy: https://www.guardiangaze.com/privacy-policy/ 2. Guardian Gaze API – www.guardiangaze.com Used for plugin registration. Data Sent: • Site URL Terms of Service: https://www.guardiangaze.com/terms-of-service/ Privacy Policy: https://www.guardiangaze.com/privacy-policy/ 3. WordPress.org API – api.wordpress.org Used for WordPress core file integrity checks and version validation. Data Sent: • WordPress version • Locale / language Terms of Service: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/ Privacy Policy: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/ 4. Guardian Gaze Country API – wp-api.guardiangaze.com/country.php Used for IP address geolocation. Data Sent: • Visitor IP address Terms of Service: https://www.guardiangaze.com/terms-of-service/ Privacy Policy: https://www.guardiangaze.com/privacy-policy/ Important Notes • All API calls use WordPress wp_remote_get() and wp_remote_post() • Data is transferred over HTTPS whenever available • No user passwords or sensitive content is collected or transmitted • Geolocation lookups are cached to limit external requests • Registering/linking your site is optional and only affects how current your malware definitions are — it does not gate scanning itself About RedSecLabs RedSecLabs is a cybersecurity company focused on threat research, detection engineering, and building defensive tools for real-world scenarios. Guardian Gaze reflects this philosophy by offering a transparent, research-backed WordPress security plugin built for long-term reliability and practical protection.

The UpdraftPlus Backup & Migration Plugin is trusted by the WordPress community to backup, restore and migrate their WordPress websites. UpdraftPlus is actively installed on more than 3 million websites around the world. Backup with UpdraftPlus UpdraftPlus is the world’s highest ranking and most popular scheduled backup and migration plugin. Backup to your preferred storage location and restore in just three clicks. Backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift or email. The paid version also allows you to backup to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, pCloud, WebDAV or UpdraftVault, our integrated storage option for UpdraftPlus. Backup manually or schedule to run every 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours, daily, weekly, monthly or fortnightly. Restore with UpdraftPlus Your WordPress website is vulnerable. Your site may get hacked. Something could go wrong with an update or your server could crash. You might need to reverse a change made or a mistake caused by human error. Whatever the reason, you can restore your WordPress website in just a few clicks with UpdraftPlus. Choose which components to restore (e.g. plugins, themes, database etc.), click again to restore, then click again to return to the main screen. Migrate with UpdraftPlus It’s easy to migrate your WordPress website to another web host, server or domain with this free version of UpdraftPlus. To migrate, simply download your database, plugins, themes etc. from the source site, then upload them into your destination site. When migrating, a built-in search-and-replace engine identifies old strings and replaces these to reflect the new location. UpdraftPlus saves you time and reduces the risk of broken links or missing files associated with manual migrations. Why UpdraftPlus? Writing a reliable backup and migration plugin that ‘just works’ consistently across millions of different WordPress deployments is hard. UpdraftPlus is relied upon to do exactly that. We’re trusted and actively deployed on more websites around the world than any other WordPress backup and migration plugin. UpdraftPlus: Backs up, migrates and restores Offers a huge number of remote storage locations Allows you to schedule backups, so you can ‘set and forget’ Is comprehensive and easy to use Is proven to work on over 3 million sites. UpdraftPlus Premium The free version of UpdraftPlus will back up and migrate your website perfectly well. However if you need more features and options you can purchase our Premium version. Backup and Migrate with UpdraftPlus Premium, and: Get automatic backups before updates. Restore the very latest version if a WordPress or plugin update breaks your site. Backup Incrementally. Changes are added to the master, saving server resources vs repeatedly backing up in full. Get more remote storage options including Microsoft OneDrive, SFTP, Microsoft Azure, WebDAV, Google Cloud, SCP, Backblaze and pCloud. Get 1GB of integrated storage with UpdraftVault for 99.999% reliability, redundancy and scalability. Get more control over how many backups are stored in a specified interval. Restore from other backup plugins including BackWPup, BackupWordPress, Simple Backups and more. Run backups at set times e.g. during periods of low traffic. Backup to more than one location for added protection. Get detailed reports. Includes cryptographic checksums so you can verify the integrity of the backup files and more. Get Premium migration. Migrating to the destination site is more direct and can be done from the source site. Get Multisite / multi-network compatibility. Backup non-WP files and databases e.g. tables belonging to your e-commerce store or customisations to WordPress core. Get database encryption. Manage your backups and migrations from the WP-CLI. Get Premium Support. Find out more on our comparison page. UpdraftPlus Premium is available for purchase here. Managing multiple websites? UpdraftCentral is a powerful remote control dashboard for WordPress that allows you to manage your backups, as well as updates, users, pages, posts, plugins and themes from one central location. Choose between: UpdraftCentral (free, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Premium (paid-for, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Cloud (paid-for, fully-hosted) Optimize your sites centrally by combining the power of WP-Optimize and UpdraftCentral or manage your backups centrally by combining the power of UpdraftPlus with UpdraftCentral. Need to create a temporary clone of your site? UpdraftClone makes it quick and easy to create a temporary sandbox for changes you want to try out. Simply select the versions of WordPress and PHP that you want, and we’ll do the rest. More about UpdraftClone The full suite of plugins from Team Updraft and friends UpdraftPlus. Backup, migrate and restore. Rated 5* on the plugin directory and trusted by more than 3 million WordPress website owner WP-Optimize. Clean the database, compress images and caching. Optimize your WordPress website. 5* user rating. 1 million + active installs. All-In-One Security (AIOS). Secure your WordPress website. Comprehensive, feature rich and easy to use. 5* user rating and 1 million + active installs. WP Overnight. Quality Extensions for your WooCommerce store. 5* rated invoicing, order and product management, customer management solutions and more. Easy Updates Manager. Take control of updates. Lots of features for free, and a Premium version with even more – over 300,000 users. Internal Link Juicer.Boost your SEO. Automate internal links within your WordPress website. Save time and rank higher in the search engines. For other useful, free plugins see our lead developer’s profile, here. Are you multilingual? Can you translate? Do you want to help people that speak your language to backup, migrate and restore their WordPress websites? The UpdraftPlus backup, migration and restoration plugin is ready and waiting. The translation process is easy, and web-based – please go here for instructions: https://updraftplus.com/translate/. Or, if you’re already an expert WordPress translator, just pick out the .pot file from the wp-content/plugins/updraftplus/languages/ directory – if you scan for translatable strings manually, then you need to get these functions: _x(), __(), _e(), _ex(), log_e(). Many thanks to our existing translators. License Copyright 2011-24 David Anderson This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Non-English translators are provided by volunteers, and wordpress.org does not give plugin developers control over their translations; thus relying on them is at your own risk; UpdraftPlus cannot guarantee that translations from the original English are accurate. We recognise and thank those mentioned at https://updraftplus.com/acknowledgements/ for code and/or libraries used and/or modified under the terms of their open source licences.