Lockdown WordPress with iThemes Security and iThemes Security Pro

The long anticipated day is here.

Today, we officially introduce two new WordPress security plugins to lock down and secure your WordPress sites: iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) and iThemes Security Pro.

How did we get here?

Four years ago, we walked into WordPress security without really fully realizing it — through our home run backup plugin, BackupBuddy.

No security strategy is complete without a comprehensive backup and restore system in place.

Second, website security has been an increasingly pressing issue for our iThemes customer community, and in WordPress as well. For the past couple of years we’ve seen a noticeable increase in customers reporting hacked sites in our forums and we’ve tried to help them as much as we can. And the issue isn’t going away … ever … in fact, it’s only getting worse.

Last year’s brute force attacks brought the issue to the forefront for all of us. WordPress is secure (and always getting more and more secure), but when you power more than 20% of the web like WordPress does, you become a bigger target as a result.

Third, last summer, unbeknownst to me, my personal site was getting hit hard by different attacks, causing problems with my hosting as my resource usage went through the roof.

At the time, I had no real security measures in place for my personal site, beyond my regular full-site, off-site backups with BackupBuddy, until Site5 contacted me about the issues and recommended I install and activate Better WP Security (BWPS).

(Quick note: This was my personal site where I blog a couple times a month and not our mission-critical work at iThemes. We have a dedicated server admin at iThemes who employs a number of security tactics and measures on multiple layers and monitors our key sites.)

I activated BWPS and saw immediate benefits. Better WP Security was outstanding and a relief for me because it took my site security up a whole level with the click of a button.

Through using BWPS and seeing the results, I found and reached out to the developer, Chris Wiegman. We began having conversations about pulling the plugin into the iThemes family and hiring him full-time to work on it (he had been moonlighting on the BWPS project for over 3 years).

Combine the pressing need within our own customer community for good security help and a personal experience with issues on my own site, with a great, passionate developer and WP security expert in Chris and an easy-to-use, extremely popular WordPress security plugin … and it was a no-brainer to say, “Let’s do it.”

Chris started full-time in December and has been working on a total revamp of the Better WP Security plugin since that time. The culmination of all that back story and work is finally unveiled today.

So what is rolling out today?

We’re actually rolling out two WordPress security plugins today:

• iThemes Security: The free and totally revamped new version (4.0) of what was formerly Better WP Security with some cool new features and updated dashboard. (Learn more about BWPS becoming iThemes Security here and go download the free version here).

• iThemes Security Pro: All the same great features of the free version plus soon-to-be released new Pro features (like country banning, two-factor authentication and more) as well as top-notch support you’ve come to expect from iThemes when you have questions or need help.

Upgrading info for current/existing Better WP Security to iThemes Security

Most settings from Better WP Security will transfer to iThemes Security except for the Hide Backend Setting. You’ll need to reset your Hide Backend Setting due to a new implementation of the feature. In addition, you’ll still want to review your settings after the update as there are new options you will be able to use.

For more information on using iThemes Security, check out our Getting Started with iThemes Security Guide.

What’s next? What is planned for these plugins?

We have big plans for the future of iThemes Security with new free and pro features coming soon. You can check out the roadmap for iThemes Security and iThemes Security Pro here as well as vote and comment on features.

Get iThemes Security Pro Today

Get iThemes Security Pro now