Security is always a top priority when hosting any website. It’s extremely important to keep plugins, themes and other software all up to the latest version to shield yourself away from exploits.
On sites such as WordPress, we see that 99% of the time, malware hacks are from the exploits of out of date code, themes, or plugins.
Unfortunately it is not always enough to solely maintain latest versions to prevent exploits on WordPress sites.
Luckily there is a security software offering proactive defense available for cPanel hosted servers that will give you the upper hand on keeping your WordPress sites secure.
In this article we’ll cover a few different ways Imunify360 can be used to maintain your WordPress sites security.
What is Imunify360?
Imunify360 is a security software available for use on cPanel servers that aids in protecting WordPress sites against malware and other potential vulnerability exploits.
Imunify360 offers a variety of handy features such as malware scanning, incident reporting, PHP hardening, brute force attack protection, and additional Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules which are added into the Mod Security configuration.
Overall Imunify360 provides additional security with less headache so you can host your sites with ease.
Features of Imunify360 for WordPress
Brute Force Protection
Imunify360 works along side the Web Application Firewall (WAF) with your web server and provides additional rule sets which are added into the Mod Security configuration.
These rules range from additional protection from SQL and file injections to brute force attacks. When such a rule is triggered by the IP address of an attacker it will block the IP to prevent the malicious requests.
Malware Protection
It is a tedious process making sure a site is protected as much as can be against malicious scripts. However with Imunify360, malware scanning and remediation has never been more of a breeze.
Below we see how we can run a malware scan for all sites on the web server using the “scan all” button on the upper right.
Alternately you can also trigger a scan to start on individual sites by hitting the “play button” icon to the right of the desired site.
Not only can you initiate scans on all of your sites through the dashboard but you can also clean up any flagged hits of malicious files using the green “clean up all” button with the “broom” icon.
The clean option would show within the Malware tab of Imunify360 under “Malicious” where it would show flagged files:
Note: In the above example no files show within the list so the “clean up all” option is not present.
However if there were any flagged files from the scan there would be a green button in the upper right above the “actions” column which says “clean up all”. This button would then be selected to start a cleanse of any flagged items.
Harden PHP with Imunify360
Staying on top of preventing Malware starts with hardening PHP on your server. Doing so will help a great deal in preventing code exploits from taking place and with Imunify360 this was made quite easy to do.
To install this feature for Imunify360 you would need to do so via command line interface within the web server by running the following command:
Once installed you can also confirm it is active by logging into WHM and visiting the “Proactive Defense” menu for Imunify360:
Above we see “Kill Mode” is enabled which will “kill” off any malicious scripts once detected by Imunify360.
The status of PHP hardening from Imunify360 can also be confirmed as active using the command line interface with the below command:
From the example above we see it enabled or “True” and it is being managed by Cloud Linux.
Monitor Incidents
As we venture over to the Imunify360 “Incident” tab we will see entries of activity that the software has monitored. Within this section it will list and report any potentially malicious behavior which has taken place.
The activity which is tracked ranges from login attempts to potentially malicious file requests and such attempts will receive a block from the Web Application Firewall.
Shown below if we click on an event within the Incidents tab it will expand to provide more information on that item.
The following image of this functionality shows Mod Security (the WAF) has blocked the attempt, which rule number was triggered, the IP involved, and a brief description of what action was taking place:
Domain Reputation
Email deliverability relies heavily on domain reputation and Imunify360 has our back in that department.
Poor reputation can also effect how a site will show within a search engine such as Google. With that being said, it is very important to maintain positive reputation for your domains.
Luckily with Imunify360 you will be made aware of any issues if they arise. This will then allow you to act right away and make moves to correct the issue before it becomes a bigger problem.
In the image below we see how this section can be accessed in Imunify360 dashboard by simply hitting the “3 dots” on the upper right of the dashboard and selecting the “Reputation Management” option:
Shown below is where you would view the information obtained by Imunify360 if a domain was detected to be listed on any black lists. The information shown would include the domain name in reference, type of threat, vendor holding the listing, when it was detected, and the action which caused the listing:
Firewall Monitoring
It is never a bad idea to stay in touch and up to date on activities taking place with your servers firewall.
The Imunify360 software also provides a menu for the firewall which will display information on all recent firewall activity. This can include items such as IP blocks or whitelists that have taken place:
Bot Protection
Having an issue with malicious bots? Imunify360 will detect “bad actors” or bots and redirect them to a challenge page which can help a ton in preventing spam activity on contact forms or even login attempts to your site.
Not to worry though as legitimate users will still view your web content like normal but on the other hand when a bot attempts to access it they are redirected to solve a challenge before being able to access content.
This is due to Imunify360 being able to detect potential bad actors or bots and address them with a challenge if they attempt access.
This can come in handy if your server is being overwhelmed by illegitimate traffic from bots and in turn can reduce the amount of resources used in those requests.
The same feature also works with cPanel user accounts. For example if a bot or bad actor attempts to access a cPanel account it will redirect to a challenge page as well.
Conclusion
Web site security can be a tedious undertaking. Solely maintaining latest versions of software is usually not enough to prevent issues before they coming bigger problems. Luckily with the use of Imunify360 on your cPanel server you will be provided with very useful tools that make the entire process less of a headache.
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