NinjaFirewall (WP Edition) – Advanced Security Plugin and Firewall vs Really Simple Security – Simple and Performant Security (formerly Really Simple SSL)

A true Web Application Firewall NinjaFirewall (WP Edition) is a true Web Application Firewall. Although it can be installed and configured just like a plugin, it is a stand-alone firewall that stands in front of WordPress. It allows any blog administrator to benefit from very advanced and powerful security features that usually aren’t available at the WordPress level, but only in security applications such as the Apache ModSecurity module or the PHP Suhosin extension. NinjaFirewall requires at least PHP 7.1, MySQLi extension and is only compatible with Unix-like OS (Linux, BSD). It is not compatible with Microsoft Windows. NinjaFirewall can hook, scan, sanitise or reject any HTTP/HTTPS request sent to a PHP script before it reaches WordPress or any of its plugins. All scripts located inside the blog installation directories and sub-directories will be protected, including those that aren’t part of the WordPress package. Even encoded PHP scripts, hackers shell scripts and backdoors will be filtered by NinjaFirewall. Powerful filtering engine NinjaFirewall includes the most powerful filtering engine available in a WordPress plugin. Its most important feature is its ability to normalize and transform data from incoming HTTP requests which allows it to detect Web Application Firewall evasion techniques and obfuscation tactics used by hackers, as well as to support and decode a large set of encodings. See our blog for a full description: An introduction to NinjaFirewall filtering engine. Fastest and most efficient brute-force attack protection for WordPress By processing incoming HTTP requests before your blog and any of its plugins, NinjaFirewall is the only plugin for WordPress able to protect it against very large brute-force attacks, including distributed attacks coming from several thousands of different IPs. See our benchmarks and stress-tests: Brute-force attack detection plugins comparison The protection applies to the wp-login.php script but can be extended to the xmlrpc.php one. The incident can also be written to the server AUTH log, which can be useful to the system administrator for monitoring purposes or banning IPs at the server level (e.g., Fail2ban). Real-time detection File Guard real-time detection is a totally unique feature provided by NinjaFirewall: it can detect, in real-time, any access to a PHP file that was recently modified or created, and alert you about this. If a hacker uploaded a shell script to your site (or injected a backdoor into an already existing file) and tried to directly access that file using his browser or a script, NinjaFirewall would hook the HTTP request and immediately detect that the file was recently modified or created. It would send you an alert with all details (script name, IP, request, date and time). File integrity monitoring File Check lets you perform file integrity monitoring by scanning your website hourly, twicedaily or daily. Any modification made to a file will be detected: file content, file permissions, file ownership, timestamp as well as file creation and deletion. Watch your website traffic in real time Live Log lets you watch your website traffic in real time. It displays connections in a format similar to the one used by the tail -f Unix command. Because it communicates directly with the firewall, i.e., without loading WordPress, Live Log is fast, lightweight and it will not affect your server load, even if you set its refresh rate to the lowest value. Event Notifications NinjaFirewall can alert you by email on specific events triggered within your blog. Some of those alerts are enabled by default and it is highly recommended to keep them enabled. It is not unusual for a hacker, after breaking into your WordPress admin console, to install or just to upload a backdoored plugin or theme in order to take full control of your website. NinjaFirewall can also attach a PHP backtrace to important notifications. Monitored events: Administrator login. Modification of any administrator account in the database. Plugins upload, installation, (de)activation, update, deletion. Themes upload, installation, activation, deletion. WordPress update. Pending security update in your plugins and themes. Stay protected against the latest WordPress security vulnerabilities To get the most efficient protection, NinjaFirewall can automatically update its security rules daily, twice daily or even hourly. Each time a new vulnerability is found in WordPress or one of its plugins/themes, a new set of security rules will be made available to protect your blog immediately. Strong Privacy Unlike a Cloud Web Application Firewall, or Cloud WAF, NinjaFirewall works and filters the traffic on your own server and infrastructure. That means that your sensitive data (contact form messages, customers credit card number, login credentials etc) remains on your server and is not routed through a third-party company’s servers, which could pose unnecessary risks (e.g., decryption of your HTTPS traffic in order to inspect it, employees accessing your data or logs in plain text, theft of private information, man-in-the-middle attack etc). Your website can run NinjaFirewall and be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). See our blog for more details. IPv6 compatibility IPv6 compatibility is a mandatory feature for a security plugin: if it supports only IPv4, hackers can easily bypass the plugin by using an IPv6. NinjaFirewall natively supports IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, for both public and private addresses. Multi-site support NinjaFirewall is multi-site compatible. It will protect all sites from your network and its configuration interface will be accessible only to the Super Admin from the network main site. Possibility to prepend your own PHP code to the firewall You can prepend your own PHP code to the firewall with the help of an optional distributed configuration file. It will be processed before WordPress and all its plugins are loaded. This is a very powerful feature, and there is almost no limit to what you can do: add your own security rules, manipulate HTTP requests, variables etc. Low Footprint Firewall NinjaFirewall is very fast, optimised, compact, and requires very low system resource. See for yourself: download and install the Code Profiler plugin and compare NinjaFirewall’s performance with other security plugins. Non-Intrusive User Interface NinjaFirewall looks and feels like a built-in WordPress feature. It does not contain intrusive banners, warnings or flashy colors. It uses the WordPress simple and clean interface and is also smartphone-friendly. Contextual Help Each NinjaFirewall menu page has a contextual help screen with useful information about how to use and configure it. If you need help, click on the Help menu tab located in the upper right corner of each page in your admin panel. Need more security ? Check out our new supercharged edition: NinjaFirewall WP+ Edition Unix shared memory use for inter-process communication and blazing fast performances. IP-based Access Control. Role-based Access Control. Country-based Access Control via geolocation. URL-based Access Control. Bot-based Access Control. Import/Export the configuration from WP-CLI. Centralized Logging. Antispam for comment and user regisration forms. Rate limiting option to block aggressive bots, crawlers, web scrapers and HTTP attacks. Response body filter to scan the output of the HTML page right before it is sent to your visitors browser. Better File uploads management. Better logs management. Syslog logging. Learn more about the WP+ Edition unique features. Compare the WP and WP+ Editions. Requirements WordPress 4.9+ Admin/Superadmin with manage_options + unfiltered_html capabilities. PHP 7.1+ MySQL or MariaDB with MySQLi extension Apache / Nginx / LiteSpeed / Openlitespeed compatible Unix-like operating systems only (Linux, BSD etc). NinjaFirewall is NOT compatible with Microsoft Windows.

Easily improve site security with WordPress Hardening, Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), Login Protection, Vulnerability Detection and SSL certificate. Really simple, Effective and Performant WordPress Security Really Simple Security is the most lightweight and easy-to-use security plugin for WordPress. It secures your WordPress website with SSL certificate generation, including proper 301 https redirection and SSL enforcement, scanning for possible vulnerabilities, Login Protection and implementing essential WordPress hardening features. We believe that security should have the absolute minimum effect on website performance, user experience and maintainability. Therefore, Really Simple Security is: Lightweight: Every security feature is developed with a modular approach and with performance in mind. Disabled features won’t load any redundant code. Easy-to-use: 1-minute configuration with short onboarding setup. Security Features Easy SSL Migration Migrates your website to HTTPS and enforces SSL in just one click. 301 redirect via PHP or .htaccess Secure cookies Let’s Encrypt: Install an SSL Certificate if your hosting provider supports manual installation. Server Health Check: Your server configuration is every bit as important for your website security. WordPress Hardening Tweak your configuration and keep WordPress fortified and safe by tackling potential weaknesses. Prevent code execution in the uploads folder Prevent login feedback and disable user enumeration Disable XML-RPC Disable directory browsing Username restrictions (block ‘admin’ and public names) and much more.. Vulnerability Detection Get notified when plugins, themes or WP core contain vulnerabilities and need appropriate action. Login Protection Allow or enforce Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for specific user roles. Users receive a two-factor code via Email. Improve Security with Really Simple Security Pro Protect your site with all essential security features by upgrading to Really Simple Security Pro. Advanced SSL enforcement Mixed Content Scan & Fixer. Detect files that are requested over HTTP and fix them to HTTPS, both Front- and Back-end. Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security and configure your site for the HSTS Preload list. Firewall Really Simple Security Pro includes a performant and efficient WordPress firewall, to stop bots, crawlers and bad actors with IP and username blocks. 404 blocking – Blocks crawlers as they trigger unusual numbers of 404 errors. Region blocking – Only allow/block access to your site from specific regions. Automated and customisable Firewall rules. IP blocklist and allowlist. Security Headers Security headers protect your site visitors against the risk of clickjacking, cross-site-forgery attacks, stealing login credentials and malware. Independent of your Server Configuration, works on Apache, LiteSpeed, NGINX, etc. Protect your website visitors with X-XSS Protection, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, a Referrer Policy and CORS headers. Automatically generate your WordPress-tailored Content Security Policy. Vulnerability Measures When a vulnerability is detected in a plugin, theme or WordPress core you will get notified accordingly. With Vulnerability Measures, you can configure simple but effective measures to make sure that a critical vulnerability won’t remain unattended. Force update: An update process will be tried multiple times until it can be assumed development of a theme or plugin is abandoned. You will be notified during these steps. Quarantine: When a plugin or theme can’t be updated to solve a vulnerability, Really Simple Security can quarantine the plugin. Advanced Site Hardening Choose a custom login URL Automated File Permissions check and fixer Rename and randomize your database prefix Change the debug.log file location to a non-public folder Disable application passwords Control admin creation Disable HTTP methods, reducing HTTP requests Login Protection Secure your website’s login process and user accounts with powerful security measures. Two-Step verification (Email login) 2FA (two factor authentication) with TOTP Passwordless login with passkey login Enforce strong passwords and frequent password change Limit Login Attempts With Limit Login Attempts you can configure a threshold to temporarily or permanently block IP addresses or (non-existing) usernames. You can also throw a CAPTCHA after a failed login (hCaptcha or Google reCaptcha) Access Control Restrict access to your site for specific regions. Add specific IP addresses or IP ranges to the Blocklist or Allowlist. Useful Links Documentation Security Definitions Translate Really Simple Security Issues & pull requests Feature requests Love Really Simple Security? If you want to support the continuing development of this plugin, please consider buying Really Simple Security Pro, which includes some excellent security features and premium support. About Really Simple Plugins Our mission is to make complex WordPress requirements really easy. Really Simple Security is developed by Really Simple Plugins. For generating SSL certificates, Really Simple Security uses the le acme2 PHP Let’s Encrypt client library, thanks to ‘fbett’ for providing it. Vulnerability Detection uses WP Vulnerability, an open-source initiative by Javier Casares. Want to join as a collaborator? We’re on GitHub as well!