With WordPress being the most popular content publishing platform globally, it is frequently targeted by computer hackers. While the core WP is securely maintained with regular security-related updates and patches, the installation of third-party plugins and themes can increase the vulnerability factor of the WordPress website.
With the gradual increase in online vulnerabilities, security of the WordPress site has become a top priority for website owners. The easiest and fastest mode of ensuring your site security is by installing Web Application firewalls (or WAF), which can protect your site from most of the known and foreseeable online threats.
Types of Security Firewalls Available for Your Website
To secure the website from a malicious hacking attack, WAF is installed between the web server and the Internet connection. The firewall analyses every HTTP request that is sent to the website. If the firewall detects any malicious threat in any of the HTTP request, it disconnects the web connection and sends an alert to the network administrator. In addition to its overall effectiveness in preventing security lapses, WAF is easy to configure according to the needs of each website.
Primarily, there are two types of WAF firewalls available for WP site security:
- Plugin-based firewall can be easily installed on a WordPress site, just like any other third-party plugin. These firewalls examine each external request made to your Web server, following which they are either blocked or passed.
- Cloud-based firewall which, as the name suggests, are installed on a cloud-based infrastructure that is external to your website host. Also known as a DNS-level website firewall, this firewall examines your website traffic using proxy cloud servers and permits only organic traffic to reach your web server.
Additionally, an inbuilt firewall is another security option, although it is not as regularly used as the above two listed firewalls.
Along with being a protective shield between your WordPress site and the incoming traffic, WAF firewalls monitor your web traffic and protect your site from hacking attempts, brute force attacks, malware attacks, and so on.
Like any software, WAF firewalls has its own set of vulnerabilities and flaws, and as a website proprietor, you should consider the pitfall of these before choosing to buy one for your website.
Advantages of plugin-based firewalls
Plugin-based firewalls are often preferred over other firewalls and for good reason.
Listed below are some of the advantages of choosing to use a plugin-based firewall.
Being an Endpoint Firewall, it’s Difficult to Bypass
Unlike a cloud-based firewall, plugin-based firewalls sit on the server that they are protecting. If the firewall was sitting detached to the server, then hackers may find ways to bypass the firewall and attack the website directly. A plugin-based firewall, on the other hand, runs on the server of your website and therefore cannot be bypassed.
Highly Configurable & Tailored Specifically for WordPress
Plugins are one of the main reasons behind WordPress’ popularity as a website building platform. Plugins allow users to design their website according to their needs. Plugins are easy to use and are exclusive to WordPress sites. Likewise, the plugin-based firewall is made specifically for WP websites. Cloud-based firewall works for all websites and is not specific to WordPress.
Since plugin-based firewalls are WordPress tailored they are far more configurable to meet specific WordPress needs. For instance, you can configure the firewall to protect a certain WordPress folder which is something that a cloud-based firewall might not be equipped to do.
Can Easily Enable/Disable & Allow/Block Requests
As we can see, sitting at the user end has a number of advantages. One such advantage is that the plugin-based firewall is easy to use because you can configure it from WordPress dashboard. It saves time. Besides, juggling between multiple dashboards can be exhausting. You end up spending so much of your valuable time away from your website. But with a plugin-based firewall, there is no need to switch between dashboards.
Disadvantages of plugin-based firewalls
As plugin-based firewalls are installed in the same web network as your website, they are comparatively more expensive and need to be configured by trained technical personnel.
Listed below are the disadvantages of using a plugin-based firewall:
Inability To Stop a DDoS Attack
In recent years, there has been a surge in Distributed Denial of Service (or DDoS) attacks, which succeed in flooding a website with a high web traffic load thus causing the site to either slow or shut down. Unfortunately, plugin-based firewalls are unable to detect or protect WP sites from DDoS attacks. In the event of a DDoS attack, the security plugin must be able to protect the entire web server, while separating the legitimate traffic from the malicious traffic.
In this case, a cloud-based plugin can provide higher security, as it can monitor and filter out the malicious traffic from hitting your servers or routers.
Overloading of The Web Server
As plugin-based firewalls are configured at application levels, it examines each of web traffic after it reaches your web server before loading the WordPress scripts. This results in the overloading of the web server, thus leading to slow website and poor online experience for online customers. A slow website can also impact your site’s ranking on the Google search engine, along with a loss of online customers.
On the other hand, cloud-based plugins reduce the web server load, thus ensuring that the WP website does not slow down or shuts down during an attack. DNS-based firewalls can also improve your site speed by reducing your server load.
Caching of Data
Most websites, including plugins, use caching techniques to improve the overall speed. Plugin-based firewalls use the website resources to perform data caching, while also preventing easy access to the cached pages on the WordPress site.
On the other hand, cloud-based plugins run on integrated or built-in cache systems, which provides higher security along with optimising the website speed. Cloud-based plugin caching reduces the load on your web server, thus resulting in better performance.
Disadvantages of cloud-based firewalls
As compared to plugin-based firewalls, cloud-based or DNS-level firewalls are more equipped to identify genuine web traffic as against bad web requests. To achieve this efficiency, cloud-based firewalls track and monitor thousands of websites around the globe, analysing online threats and bad IP sources, and by blocking access to web pages that are regularly never requested by online users.
Additionally, as cloud-based firewalls are provided as an online service, they need not be installed by trained technical personnel and hence are more affordable. To implement a cloud-based firewall, you only need to configure your Domain Name System (or DNS) records to the online WAF so that each HTTP request by an online visitor is first directed towards the online WAF and then forwarded towards your website. In addition to providing online security, cloud-based firewalls can boost your website performance and offer better-caching facilities.
However, despite their advantages, cloud-based firewalls also have a few disadvantages, as listed below:
Constant Configuration of DNS Settings
While configuration or reconfiguration of the DNS for your website can help in optimising the speed of the Internet for your site, it can also be a cumbersome process, particularly for larger websites with many web pages. Additionally, there is no control over outages or lack of response from the cloud-based DNS servers, which may require either changing your browser, restarting your router, or switching off a few of the firewall settings.
Vulnerability To Unknown and Direct Attacks
Despite their robust security features, cloud-based firewalls can have their own set of issues and security flaws, due to which there is no guarantee against all types of web attacks. For example, some attacks have been successful in switching off the firewall’s detection engine and reducing their security capabilities. Firewalls are also known to be vulnerable to previously unknown types of attacks.
Most users trying to access your website do so through the domain name, which still goes through the firewall. However, hackers can gain direct access to your web server through the IP address instead of the domain name. A direct attack, which can retrieve the IP address of the site to be hacked, instead of their DNS address, can increase the security vulnerability of the website. Depending on the quality of the cloud-based firewall that is being used, hackers can bypass its security configuration and gain unauthorised access. While direct attacks can be prevented by hiding the website’s IP address, achieving the same can be extremely challenging as hackers keep finding innovative means of accessing the IP information.
Single Point of Failure
A cloud-based firewall enables your firewall security to be independent of your website and hosted web server. Because of this, it can also act as a single point of failure for your site, as your website can experience a possible shutdown in the event of a firewall failure.
With the growing number of DDoS attacks, organisations need to monitor their Internet infrastructure for any resources with a single point of failure. This needs to be done not just for the primary web servers but also for firewalls, routers, and Internet connections.
Conclusion
Despite their limitations, both the plugin-based and cloud-based WAF type of products offer the best option for keeping your WP website safe from hackers and malicious attacks. As a business enterprise, you must determine the type of online security that is required for your site and try to minimise the damage caused by online security lapses. Most business that fails to respond to the threats posed by such hacks will find themselves to be most vulnerable to these attacks.
While there is no bulletproof or guaranteed security measures against hacking attempts, a firewall solution that can address every aspect of security including protection, detection, and quick response should be the ideal choice for enhancing your WordPress security.
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