Marc Armengou

<p><strong>Security Hardener</strong> applies WordPress security best practices based on the <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/security/hardening/" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress Advanced Administration / Security / Hardening</a> documentation and widely accepted hardening measures. It uses WordPress core functions and follows best practices without modifying core files.</p>
<h4>Key Features</h4>
<p><strong>File Security:</strong><br />
* Disable file editor in WordPress admin<br />
* Optionally disable all file modifications (blocks updates – use with caution)</p>
<p><strong>XML-RPC Protection:</strong><br />
* Disable XML-RPC completely (enabled by default)<br />
* Remove pingback methods when XML-RPC is enabled</p>
<p><strong>Pingback Protection:</strong><br />
* Disable self-pingbacks<br />
* Remove X-Pingback header<br />
* Block incoming pingbacks</p>
<p><strong>User Enumeration Protection:</strong><br />
* Block <code>/?author=N</code> queries (returns 404)<br />
* Secure REST API user endpoints (require authentication)<br />
* Remove users from XML sitemaps<br />
* Prevent canonical redirects that expose usernames<br />
* Optionally block author feed pages (<code>/author/username/feed/</code>)</p>
<p><strong>Login Security:</strong><br />
* Generic error messages (no username/password hints)<br />
* Login honeypot — silently blocks bots before any credential check<br />
* IP-based rate limiting with configurable thresholds<br />
* Security event logging (last 100 events)<br />
* Automatic blocking after failed attempts</p>
<p><strong>Security Headers:</strong><br />
* <code>X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN</code> (clickjacking protection)<br />
* <code>X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff</code> (MIME sniffing protection)<br />
* <code>Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin</code><br />
* <code>Permissions-Policy</code> (restricts geolocation, microphone, camera)<br />
* Optional HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) for HTTPS sites — max-age set to 1 year</p>
<p><strong>Additional Hardening:</strong><br />
* Hide WordPress version (meta generator tag and asset query strings)<br />
* Remove obsolete wp_head items (RSD, WLW manifest, shortlink, emoji scripts)<br />
* Security event logging system<br />
* Optionally disable Application Passwords for API authentication</p>
<blockquote>
<p>⚠️ <strong>Important:</strong> Always test security settings in a staging environment first. Some features may affect third-party integrations or plugins.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Privacy:</strong> This plugin does not send data to external services and does not create custom database tables. It stores plugin settings and a security event log in the WordPress options table, and uses transients for temporary login attempt tracking. All data is preserved on uninstall by default and only deleted if the “Delete all data on uninstall” option is explicitly enabled.</p>


Security Hardener

Basic hardening: secure headers, login honeypot, user enumeration blocking, generic login errors, rate limiting, and more.

Paul

Shield Security

<p>Shield stops bot attacks before they hack your site. Bots CAN be stopped. Shield stops them.</p>
<h3>Key Security Features At A Glance</h3>
<h3>[PRO-Only] Zero-Configuration, Fast & Reliable WordPress Backups Included</h3>
<p>We’ve made WordPress backups faster than ever with our integrated WordPress Disaster Recovery Backups solution – <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/shieldbackups" rel="nofollow ugc">ShieldBACKUPS</a>.</p>
<p>No more risky Cloud Storage/OAuth credentials exposed on your sites; Backups that work without relying on a temperamental WordPress cron.</p>
<p>ShieldBACKUPS keeps your data off-site, encrypted, and far away from hackers.</p>
<h3><em>silent</em>CAPTCHA Bad Bot Protection</h3>
<p>Bad bots are your #1 security threat. They account for nearly all WordPress security probes, attacks, injections, malware, and vulnerability exploitation.</p>
<p>Google reCAPTCHA and CloudFlare Turnstile are considered the best way to detect bots, but these along with all other CAPTCHAs interrupt the user experience.</p>
<p>Shield’s exclusive <em>silent</em>CAPTCHA detects bad bots and blocks them from taking any abusive actions on your site, such as brute-force user login attacks and WP Comments SPAM.</p>
<p>Furthermore, privacy directives from legislation such as Europe’s GDPR restrict what data you may share of your visitors. All <em>silent</em>CAPTCHA data is kept on your WordPress site and ensures full compliance with GDPR regulations.</p>
<h3>Comprehensive Activity Log</h3>
<p>Shield’s has best-in-class logging that documents every WP action on your site.</p>
<p>Unlike existing logging solutions, Shield detects changes to your WordPress sites that happen directly on your database. e.g. by hackers that have infiltrated your defenses via an exposed vulnerability.</p>
<p>No other WordPress security plugin does this.</p>
<h3>Limit Login Attempts and Block User Registration SPAM</h3>
<p><em>silent</em>CAPTCHA technology is invisible to your visitors and protects your WordPress login, registration and lost password forms from brute force attacks, and eliminates user registration SPAM from bots.</p>
<h3>User Session Theft Protection</h3>
<p>Shield can lock user session to browsers, or IP addresses. Combine with 2FA (below), you can protect your users from session theft and account theft.</p>
<h3>Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for all users</h3>
<p>Two-Factor Authentication is a crucial part of WordPress user security. It protects against account theft, takeover, and sharing. Shield supports email-based login code, Google/Microsoft/Lastpass Authenticator, Yubikey One-Time Passwords and Passkeys (pro).</p>
<h3>Exclusive Security Admin Protection</h3>
<p>Not only does Shield Security protect your WordPress site, it also provides security against tampering of key WordPress options and the Shield Security plugin itself. With Shield’s exclusive Security Admin feature, you can lockdown the security plugin from other admins to prevent accidental or malicious changes that will impact your security.</p>
<h3>CrowdSec Partnership</h3>
<p>Shield is the only WordPress security plugin with strategic partnerships that bring powerful protection to your WordPress sites. With our CrowdSec integration, your WordPress sites benefit from crowd-sourced IP Block Lists so your site can block malicious bots before they can do any damage whatsoever.</p>
<h3>All The Features You’ll Absolutely Love</h3>
<ul>
<li>[ShieldPRO] ShieldBACKUPS – Disaster-proof your WordPress site with fast, reliable, easy WordPress backups!</li>
<li>Exclusive <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/ju" rel="nofollow ugc">silentCAPTCHA Security</a> – WordPress-specific bot-detection alternative to Google reCAPTCHA and CloudFlare Turnstile.</li>
<li><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/j0" rel="nofollow ugc">Automatic Bot & IP Blocking</a> – reputation-based security intelligence to block repeat offenders automatically.</li>
<li><strong>Instant Bad Bot Blocking with <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/l5" rel="nofollow ugc">our exclusive CrowdSec Security integration</a></strong></li>
<li>Easy To Understand Security Dashboard that highlights quick wins and areas to rapidly improve site security</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/lf" rel="nofollow ugc">Artificial Intelligence based PHP Malware Detection</a></li>
<li>Security for your important user forms, by blocking Block Bots:
<ul>
<li>Login Forms</li>
<li>User Registration Forms</li>
<li>Lost Password Reset Forms</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] WooCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Contact Form SPAM Protection: Contact Form 7, NinjaForms, Elementor, WP Forms, and more!</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Memberpress, LearnPress, BuddyPress, WP Members, ProfileBuilder</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/iw" rel="nofollow ugc">Brute Force Security Protection, Limit Login Attempts + Login Cooldown</a></li>
<li>Powerful Firewall Rules</li>
<li>Restricted Security Admin Access
<ul>
<li><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/ix" rel="nofollow ugc">Prevents Unauthorized Changes By Compromised Admins</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>(MFA) <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/iy" rel="nofollow ugc">Two-Factor / Multi-Factor Login Authentication</a>:
<ul>
<li>Email</li>
<li>Google Authenticator</li>
<li>Yubikey</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Passkeys</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Backup Login Codes</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Multiple Yubikey per User</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Remember Me (reduces 2FA requests for users)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/iz" rel="nofollow ugc">Block XML-RPC</a> (<em>including</em> Pingbacks and Trackbacks)</li>
<li>Security firewall for the REST API – block anonymous requests</li>
<li>Powerful IP Addresses-based Security:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/j0" rel="nofollow ugc">Automatic IP Address Blocking Using Points-Based System</a></li>
<li>Block or Bypass individual IPs</li>
<li>Block or Bypass IP Subnets</li>
<li>Full IP Security Analysis in 1 place to review activity on your sites</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Comprehensive WordPress File Scanner for Intrusions and Hacks
<ul>
<li>Detect File Changes – <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/j1" rel="nofollow ugc">Scan & Repair WordPress Core Files</a></li>
<li><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/j2" rel="nofollow ugc">Detect Unknown/Suspicious PHP Files</a></li>
<li>Detect Abandoned Plugins.</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Malware Scanner – detects known and unknown malware.</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Plugin and Theme Scanning – identify file changes in your plugins/themes.</li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Detect Plugins/Themes With Known Security Vulnerabilities.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/j3" rel="nofollow ugc">Create a <strong>Private Secure Login URL</strong> by hiding wp-login.php</a></li>
<li>Comment SPAM Blocking – Block <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/jf" rel="nofollow ugc">Comment SPAM from Bots and Humans</a>.</li>
<li><strong>Never Block Google</strong>: Smart Security Automatically Detects Known Good Bots: GoogleBot, Bing and other Official Search Engines including:
<ul>
<li>Google</li>
<li>Bing,</li>
<li>DuckDuckGo</li>
<li>Yahoo!</li>
<li>Baidu</li>
<li>Apple</li>
<li>Yandex</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Automatically Detects 3rd Party Services and Prevents Blocking Of:
<ul>
<li>ManageWP / iControlWP / MainWP</li>
<li>Pingdom, NodePing, Statuscake, UptimeRobot, GTMetrix</li>
<li>Stripe, PayPal IPN</li>
<li>CloudFlare, SEMRush</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Full Security Activity Log – <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/j5" rel="nofollow ugc">Monitor <strong>All</strong> Site Activity, including</a>:
<ul>
<li>Activity log for all user login & registration attempts</li>
<li>Plugin and Theme installation activity logs, including activation & deactivation etc.</li>
<li>User creation activity log, including detection of administrator promotions</li>
<li>Activity log for Page/Post create, update, delete</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Advanced User Sessions Control
<ul>
<li>Restrict Multiple User Login</li>
<li>Restrict Users Session To IP</li>
<li>Password Security – Block Pwned Passwords</li>
<li>User Enumeration Blocking – Firewall blocks requests to <code>?author=x</code></li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Security for old and idle user account with manual and automatic User Suspend.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Full/Automatic Support for All IP Address Sources including Proxy Support</li>
<li>HTTP Request/Traffic Logging – <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/j7" rel="nofollow ugc">Full Traffic Logging and Request Monitoring</a></li>
<li>[ShieldPRO] Traffic Rate Limiting Security – prevent server overload from DoS Attacks</li>
<li><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/j6" rel="nofollow ugc">HTTP Security Headers & Content Security Policies (CSP)</a></li>
</ul>
<h4><a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/shieldfeatures" rel="nofollow ugc">Full Shield Security Features List</a></h4>
<p>Shield is the only security plugin for WordPress that prioritises protection and intrusion prevention before repair. With Shield Security, your site will immediately to block visitors as they probe your site looking for vulnerabilities, and before they can do damage.</p>
<p><strong>No other standalone WordPress security plugin</strong> (including <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/shieldvswordfence" rel="nofollow ugc">Wordfence</a>, WP Cerber, Ninja Firewall, All-In-One Security) approaches security in this way. The 1st step in any good security system is Intrusion Detection/Prevention, the 2nd step is repair. Shield Security does both.</p>
<h4>Get the highest rated 5* Security Plugin for WordPress</h4>
<p>Per download, Shield Security <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/jl" rel="nofollow ugc">has the highest 5* rating</a> in the WordPress plugin repository.</p>
<h3>Leave Behind the Security Marketing Hype and Scare Mongering</h3>
<p>Our solution isn’t designed to scare you and make you feel unsafe.</p>
<h3>2 Key WordPress Security Strategies</h3>
<p>Shield Security uses 2 simple key strategies to protect your WordPress sites:</p>
<ol>
<li>Intrusion Prevention System – Detect Bots/Malicious IPs that will try to hack and invade your WordPress sites.</li>
<li>Block & Recover – Block Bad Bots and Repair Hacks</li>
</ol>
<h4>Key Security Strategy #1: Hacking Prevention</h4>
<p>Bad Bots are the primary cause for nearly all our security troubles – they’re relentless, automatic and powerful.</p>
<p>Shield Security is highly focused on their detection and eradication from your WordPress sites.</p>
<p>Blocking malicious bots before they do damage through malware and exploitation of vulnerabilities is the #1 security strategy to protect and enhance security on a WordPress site.</p>
<p>Shield detects these malicious visitors, then blocks their access to your site completely. This involves analysing different security bot-signals and combining them to identify a visitor as malicious.</p>
<p>These security signals include:</p>
<ul>
<li>site probes that generate 404 errors</li>
<li>failed logins</li>
<li>logins with invalid usernames</li>
<li>xml-rpc access</li>
<li>fake search engine web crawlers</li>
<li>invalid user agents</li>
<li>excessive website requests and resource abuse</li>
<li>and many more signals our security team have identified.</li>
</ul>
<p>Early identification and blocking of malicious bots reduces your WordPress site’s vulnerability to any sort of attack.</p>
<h4>Key Strategy #2: Hacking Recovery</h4>
<p>Even with the best security efforts, a site can get hacked. This usually involves file modification: either a hack file is added, or a file is changed.</p>
<p>There are 3 key WordPress assets whose files can be hacked:</p>
<ol>
<li>WordPress Core</li>
<li>WordPress Plugins</li>
<li>WordPress Themes</li>
</ol>
<p>Almost every security plugin can now do #1 – it’s easy because WordPress.org provides <em>checksums</em> for core files.</p>
<p>But, there are no hashes available for plugins and themes, particularly premium plugins, so they can’t do it.</p>
<p>Shield is <strong>the only WordPress security plugin</strong> that offers accurate detection of file modifications for all plugins and themes because we <strong>build our own file fingerprints</strong>.</p>
<p>Shield can compare the file contents of every plugin & theme in the WordPress.org repository, looking for changed or new files</p>
<p>And, if you’re a ShieldPRO client, you can protect premium plugins/themes too, including Yoast SEO and Advanced Custom Fields Pro.</p>
<p>Where possible, Shield will repair any unrecognised/modified files it detects.</p>
<h4>Non-stop Security Notifications Are Not Okay.</h4>
<p>Your security plugin must be smarter, and take responsibility for decisions, so you don’t have to.</p>
<p>Shield handles many problems for you, making intelligent decisions without noisy email notifications.</p>
<h3>Dedicated Premium Support When You Go PRO</h3>
<p>The Shield Security team prioritises email technical support over the WordPress.org forums.<br />
Individual, dedicated technical support is only available to customers who have <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/ab" rel="nofollow ugc">purchased Shield Pro</a>.</p>
<p>Discover all the advantages of switching your WordPress security Pro at <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/ab" rel="nofollow ugc">our Shield Security store</a>.</p>
<h3>Partnerships & Integrations</h3>
<p>We believe that <a href="https://clk.shldscrty.com/ol" rel="nofollow ugc">silentCAPTCHA</a> is one of the simplest and most powerful solutions available today for all WordPress site owners to block and eliminate automated bot spam.</p>
<p>That’s why we’ve started a collaboration campaign with other WordPress plugin developers to adapt their plugins to natively support Shield’s silentCAPTCHA solution, alongside Google reCAPTCHA & Cloudflare Turnstile.</p>
<p>When you use one of the products from any of our partners, you will be able to activate Shield’s silentCAPTCHA bot spam protection so that your forms are protected from automated spam. You won’t need any site/API keys, custom integrations, or JavaScript that can breaks your forms. It all works automatically for you when you enable the feature.</p>
<p>As of this release, we have partnered with the following WordPress form providers:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-form-builder/" rel="ugc">Easy Form Builder</a> v4+</li>
</ul>


Shield: Blocks Bots, Protects Users, and Prevents Security Breaches

Shield stops bot attacks before they hack your site. Bots CAN be stopped. Shield stops them.

Security Hardener vs Shield: Blocks Bots, Protects Users, and Prevents Security Breaches