The iThemes Security Pro plugin just added another way for you to monitor and manage the security of your WordPress website: a real-time, dynamic Security Dashboard with all your website’s security activity stats in one place … all from inside your WordPress admin dashboard.
Looking at your WordPress security log entries can be time-consuming and even difficult to understand. The new iThemes Security Dashboard brings your security logs to life by pulling together related entries and displaying it in a way that is relevant to you.
New! Monitor Real-time Security Activity Stats with Security Cards
The new iThemes Security Dashboard utilizes new Security Cards to organize all your security activity in a more digestible way. Security Cards break the info from the logs down to easy to consume bite-sized nuggets of data.
Baseball cards don’t give you information about every player in the MLB. The cards only care about the guy pictured on the front. Likewise, the Security Cards don’t show you every entry in the log. Instead, they only show you information related to that specific card.
Security cards aren’t limited to data from the past. Security cards give you a real-time overview of the security activity happening on your site.
The 11 Security Cards
| Card Name | Description |
|---|---|
| 1. Malware Scans | See the history of your site’s malware scans. |
| 2. User Security Profiles | See a list of every admin user on the site. Click on any username to get their security overview. |
| 3. User Security Profile | Pin a single user’s profile to your dashboard, and see their user role, password strength and age, whether or not they have two-factor enabled and when they were last on the site. |
| 4. Active Lockouts | Display all active lockouts. If your client locked themselves out, you can quickly clear the lockout from this card. |
| 5. Lockout | See a history of lockouts on our site. |
| 6. Banned Users | View a history if IPs banned by iThemes Security. |
| 7. Brute Force Attacks | Displays a graph that charts brute force activity. |
| 8. Trusted Devices | Displays a graph charting approved, auto approved and blocked devices. |
| 9. 404s | See an overview of 404s over the past 30 days. |
| 10.Database Backups | View a 30-day history of backups and create a new database backup. |
| 11. Update Summary | Display the number of WordPress, plugin, and theme updates over a specific time. |
How to Enable the New Security Dashboard
After updating to iThemes Security 5.6.0, you will see that the Security Dashboard module has been added to the security settings. Click the Enable button to begin using your dynamic security dashboard.
Once you’ve enabled the dashboard, you can view it from both the Admin Dashboard and Security settings in your WordPress Admin menu.
Next, you can create a new dashboard using the iThemes Security default dashboard or create one from scratch. Enter a name for your board and then click the Create Board button.
Need help configuring your Security Dashboard? Use the “Help” tab in the upper right corner of the screen.
Customizing Your Security Dashboard
The dynamic security dashboard is entirely customizable. You pick the cards you want to see, the order they appear on your screen, and how big or small you want each card to be. This is your dashboard created by you for you.
The goal of the Security Dashboard is to give you the information you want in a way that makes sense to you. You can start with a blank canvas and add only the cards that are important to you.
You can add or remove a security card from the Edit Cards menu.
Moving the Security Cards
Move a security card by dragging and dropping it to the desired location.
Adjusting the Size of the Security Cards
To change the size of a card, click the slider icon and drag your mouse until it is the desired size.
Sharing is Caring
Once you have completed your dashboard, you can share your perfection with other users in 3 steps.
1. Click the Share Dashboard button.
2. Choose the User or User Role.
3. Click the Share button
Now the User or Users will have access to the dashboard the next time they login.
Security Dashboard Settings
The Security Dashboard includes a helpful setting so you can remove a users ability to view or create dashboards. This is helpful if you are a site builder/manager and wish to set up a Security Dashboard for your clients, but not let clients create their own.
A Security Dashboard for Everyone and Everything
Is there another person on the team that manages the site? Tell them to make their own dashboard! Whether you need a new dashboard for a client or you want a dashboard to view the user card for every admin user, iThemes Security has you covered.
Create a new dashboard using the iThemes Security default dashboard or create one from scratch. Enter a name for your board and then click the create a new security dashboard, and then select the Security Cards cards you wish to display.
Get iThemes Security Pro Now
Each week, Michael puts together the WordPress Vulnerability Report to help keep your sites safe. As Product Manager at iThemes, he helps us continue to improve the iThemes product lineup. He’s a giant nerd & loves learning about all things tech, old & new. You can find Michael hanging out with his wife & daughter, reading or listening to music when not working.
Hi iThemes,
What impact will activating this feature have on the speed of the WordPress admin area?
Kind regards,
Simon
Hey Simon! It is nice to talk to you outside of a support ticket. There should be no impact on the speed of the WordPress admin area.
WOW! This looks great! I have a question – If there are 2 admins on the site (Me, the web guy that does all the work, and the client who insists on being an Admin), can this only be visible to one person?
If the user goes snooping around, will s/he see it as well? Or can only specific users be able to see it?
For example, WPMU Dev has a feature that only the person that installed the plugin can see the ‘backend’ of the plugin.
Thanks – I am going to go check this out.
Be Well.
Paul.
My friend Paul! In the Security Dashboard settings, you can prevent selected users from creating dashboards and from viewing/editing Security Dashboard settings.
Monitoring WordPress security is necessary and already using it on my website. With new features, the plugin becomes a must have a plugin for every WordPress user.
Thank you so much for the kind words!
So I have 20+ websites. Will there be a feature that can have all the sites reporting back to one place?
Hey Will, I have a feeling you will like what you see from the security team in 2019!
How do you remove/delete a dashboard?