Getting the Most From Wordfence Premium

If your WordPress site matters, upgrading to Wordfence Premium gives you the best protection available. And at $99 per year, it is incredibly affordable. Once you’ve made this great investment, there are a few things you can do to optimize your site’s security.

Install Your Premium License Key

Do you have the free version of Wordfence installed? You probably see that your site security status circles are not fully 100%. You can quickly change that after you purchase your premium license.

Your Premium license key is available on the API Keys page at Wordfence.com. To install it, simply go to either the Global Options or All Options page within the plugin on your site, and paste the license key into the ‘License Key’ box in the Wordfence License section. Hit the ‘Install License’ button and you’re all set!

That one step enables these important Premium features:

• The Real-time IP Blacklist blocks all requests from the most malicious IPs, protecting your site while reducing load.
• Real-time firewall rule updates protect you from the latest threats
• Real-time malware signature updates provide malware blocking within the firewall and malware scanning features with the latest threat intelligence
• Site reputation checks tell you if your IP has been blacklisted for malicious activity, generating spam or other security issues.
• Premium support from our amazing team of Senior Support Engineers

 

 

There are just a few more steps to make sure you site is locked down.

Optimize the Firewall

Your Wordfence firewall should be in extended protection mode, which means the Wordfence firewall will execute before any other PHP code on your server. There’s no better protection available than the Wordfence firewall when it’s optimized and armed with the Premium firewall rules, malware signatures and malicious IPs.

You can learn more about optimizing the Wordfence firewall in our help section.

Enable Two-Factor Authentication

Two factor is one of the most secure forms of remote system authentication available. We support both text messages to your cell phone or Google Authenticator as second authentication methods. If a password is ever stolen somehow, this extra layer of protection ensures your WordPress site remains secure.

Configure Country Blocking

If you’re experiencing malicious activity from a country that you’re not doing business in, you can block it with Wordfence Premium. Be judicious in your blocking, however. Make sure you don’t block countries that may affect your site’s functionality (e.g., don’t block the United States and inadvertently block Google and PayPal).

You can also use country blocking to secure your login page only. If you know you’ll only be logging in from one location, secure your login page from being accessed from other locations.

Customize Your Scan Schedule

With Wordfence Premium, a full scan runs every 24 hours by default, which should be fine for most sites. You can specify which hour or hours of the day you’d like scans to run. We recommend looking at your site traffic patterns and selecting times when traffic is generally the lowest for the day. If you’d like to increase the frequency, you can schedule them to run as often as every hour.

Managing a Large Number of Sites?

We’re doing something new for those of you tasked with securing a large number of WordPress web sites. The Wordfence Client Partner initiative gives agencies, educational institutions, and other large scale users of WordPress a dedicated technical partner to assist with Wordfence at scale. Does this sound like you? Let us know. We’re here to help.

Get Support From Our Senior Support Engineers

The comprehensive capabilities of Wordfence give you tools and features that provide a level of security for WordPress you won’t see elsewhere. But when you’re just getting started, it all may seem overwhelming at first. With Wordfence Premium, you have access to the best WordPress security support team in the world. Our awesome team of Sr. Support Engineers can assist you with any Wordfence- or site security-related question you may have. Just enter a ticket here and they will respond within a few hours on average.

Conclusion

We hope this article helped get your started with Wordfence Premium. To learn more about Wordfence please check out our great help content, or our learning center to learn more about WordPress security in general.