Are you worried that your WordPress site is not secure enough? Do you want to find and fix the security flaws that exist on your site?

You’re on the right track. If hackers find vulnerabilities on your site, they exploit it and run all sorts of malicious activities such as redirecting your visitors to unknown sites, spamming your customers, and selling illegal products through your site.

Such activity can damage your site and your business considerably. When search engines like Google detect the hack, they blacklist your site and prevent visitors from accessing it. Similarly, your web host will suspend your WordPress account until you fix the hack. If that happens, you stand to lose visitors, customers, and revenue.

Fortunately, you can prevent this scenario by finding and fixing vulnerabilities before hackers do. In this guide, we cover the top 5 WordPress Vulnerability scanners that can detect vulnerabilities so that you can take necessary action to prevent being hacked.

TL;DR: Vulnerabilities appear in different shapes and forms on your site. You need a smart security scanner that is designed to detect any security flaws on your site. Use the MalCare Security Scanner to find vulnerabilities and fix them in under a few minutes.

How Do WordPress Security And Malware Scanners Help You?

Creating and maintaining a WordPress site isn’t easy. Having worked with WordPress for over a decade, we know how many tasks need to be handled. After all putting in all that hard work, a single vulnerability could compromise your site.

If a hacker gains access to your site, they inject malware or malicious codes to exploit your site. They can cause considerable damage not only to your website, but to your visitors, your revenue, and your brand’s reputation.

To prevent this, you need security tools to detect hacker activity early on and stop them in their tracks. You can use a security scanner on your WordPress site to monitor for malicious activity and hack attempts on your site. A good scanner will do the following:

• Monitor your website and track all activities in a log
• Regularly scan your website for suspicious activity and the presence of malware
• Detect hidden and disguised malware
• Detect and block hack attempts
• Check for pending updates on your site and alert you if any are available
• Detect search engine blacklist status
• Never slow down your website while it monitors and scans
• Enable you to fix your website’s security flaws instantly

There are plenty of WordPress Security Scanners available, however, not all of them provide the same level of service. Some provide excellent features while others are average at best. We tried out the WordPress scanners in the market and narrowed it down to the Top 5 WordPress Security Scanners to detect vulnerabilities.

Top 5 WordPress Vulnerability Scanners

We’ve listed out scanners that make the cut based on the features we mentioned above.

1. MalCare

Trusted and loved by thousands of WordPress developers and agencies, MalCare is an all-round WordPress security plugin that helps you easily detect and fix vulnerabilities and hacks. Its security scanner is designed and developed by the team behind the popular backup plugin BlogVault. It offers unparalleled security features to prevent hack attacks and secure your site.

Offerings?

• Daily and real-time security scans of your entire site
• Robust firewall to block hack attempts
• Find any kind of malware including hidden and disguised
• Alerts for available updates
• Manage all security tasks from the MalCare dashboard
• Offsite scans that never affect your site’s performance
• Clean malware and hacks instantly in under a few minutes

Highlights

• Intelligent scanner – Many scanners rely on outdated methods such as pattern or signature matching that looks only for known malware. MalCare uses smart signals to analyze the behavior of code on your website. This enables the scanner to detect malware on your site regardless of whether it is new, complex, or disguised.
• Complete WordPress security scan – It may be surprising to find out that not all scanners check your entire site. They check only a few important files and folders. But hackers find ways to hide and disguise their malware in different locations. MalCare combs through every file and folder of your website. It also scans your WordPress database leaving no stone unturned. If there is malware on your site, MalCare will find it.
• Early detection of vulnerabilities – MalCare’s Early Detection Technology finds any kind of malware on your site before it can damage your site. Detect harmful activities before your site gets blacklisted by Google or suspended by your host.
• Guaranteed malware removal – When the plugin detects malware on your site, you can use the plugin to instantly clean your site. MalCare guarantees 100% malware removal.
• Works without breaking your site – Malware removal involves deleting infected files which can sometimes cause your site to malfunction or crash. MalCare intelligently removes malware without ever breaking your website.

Drawbacks

MalCare doesn’t work with local websites built on your computer.

Price

The first WordPress security scan is free with MalCare. Premium plans start at $8.25 per month.

2. Sucuri

The Sucuri Security Plugin enables you to stay on top of emerging website security threats. It offers a thorough check of your website not only on WordPress but also on Magento and Joomla!

Offerings?

• Strong but lightweight malware scanner
• Multiple scanners to cover different aspects of security
• Web Application Firewall to prevent hacks
• Protection against DDoS and brute-force attacks
• Check website blacklist lookup status
• Email, SMS, Slack or RSS alerts
• Works with any site platform or CMS (content management systems)

Highlights

• Traffic monitoring – Every visitor coming to your site will be analyzed and checked against a database of malicious code. It also analyzes the type of traffic that comes to your site. If the visitor doesn’t fit your web application’s profile, it will be blocked.
• Bad bot blocking – When Sucuri detects a hacker tool or a bad bot trying to attack your site, it blocks it from accessing your site.
• Virtual patching – When developers discover a vulnerability in their software, they fix it and release a security patch in the form of an update. In instances where you can’t update your website immediately, it becomes an easy target for hackers. Sucuri updates patches on your site to prevent such hacks through the current version.
• Zero-Day exploit prevention – When a hacker discovers a vulnerability before the developer becomes aware of it, it’s called a zero-day exploit. This means if the vulnerability is present on your site, there is no patch available to fix it. In these cases, Sucuri detects and stops suspicious behavior.

Drawbacks

• The scanner relies on signature-matching in order to find malware on your site. This means it checks your site against a list of known malware signatures. This method can generate false positives and also miss finding new kinds of malware.
• It uses a remote scanner that could miss malware that’s deeply embedded into your website.

Price

Sucuri offers a free remote website security check. Premium plans start at $199 per year.

3. Wordfence

Wordfence is a popular WordPress Firewall and Security Scanner that enables you to check if there are any security lapses on your website. It offers a way to repair your site as well but it isn’t an easy automated solution.

Offerings?

• Scan core files, themes, and plugins for malware
• Block logins using known compromised passwords
• 2-factor authentication to block brute force attacks
• Monitor live traffic
• Block entire malicious networks and bad bots
• Repair files to recover from a hack
• Alerts for known security vulnerabilities

Highlights

• Extensive WordPress security scanner – The Wordfence scanner compares your website files against files in the WordPress repository. It checks your WordPress core installation, plugins, and themes. It also checks your website content, posts, and comments.
• WordPress Malware detection – The plugin detects different kinds of malware including malicious redirects, code injections, backdoors, and SEO spam. In addition, it detects bad URLs.
• WordPress Central – Enables you to scan and manage multiple WP sites in one location. You can view the security status of all your WordPress websites together. Get alerts on important security events such as admin logins, breached password usage, and surges in attack activities.
• Live Traffic Monitoring – Wordfence monitors incoming traffic and identifies potential hack attempts. It blocks requests made to your site that contain malicious code or content.

Drawbacks

• Wordfence uses your own website’s resources to scan your site. This can slow down your website.
• Similar to Sucuri, it also relies on the signature matching method. New malware could be missed. This means your site status may show ‘clean’ when it is actually hacked.

Price

Wordfence has a free version. Premium plans start at $99 per year.

4. WPScan

WPScan is a WordPress Security Scanner that informs you of security issues present on your site. It does this by checking your website on a daily basis against a list of security vulnerabilities in its database.

Offerings?

• Scan WordPress core, plugins, and themes every day
• Security vulnerability assessments on the WP admin console
• Email notifications when vulnerabilities are detected

Highlights

• Free for non-commercial use – The plugin is designed to enable bloggers and website owners to test the security of their WordPress sites without any investment.
• Access plugin dashboard on WP Admin – After installing the plugin, you can access the dashboard from your WP admin panel. Here, you can see the status of your WordPress core, theme, and plugins to quickly check if there are any vulnerabilities.
• Notifications – The plugin enables you to set up email alerts so that you’ll be notified immediately if it detects new web application vulnerabilities.

Drawbacks

• Installing WPScan is complex. You first need to register for an API token and then set up the plugin on your site.

Price

WPScan comes free of cost.

5. Quttera

Quttera’s online web scanner helps detect threats on your WordPress site. The web scanner uses patented technology that is built on a multi-layered approach and self-learning mechanisms.

Offerings?

• 1-click scan
• Site investigation from a remote server
• Blacklisted site status
• Detection of infected files by php malware or php shells
• Cloud technology
• Detailed investigation report

Highlights

• Online scanner and plugin scanner – Quttera offers an online web scanner as well as a WordPress plugin you can install on your site. The online scanner enables you to skip installing anything on your site and scan your WordPress site for free. That said, if you prefer to have Quttera monitoring your site, you can install the plugin.
• Detailed investigation report – Once Quttera completes scanning your site, it will give you a detailed report of scanned files. It also includes any other relevant information about your site’s security that is useful in protecting your website from being a hacker target.
• Wide range of protection – Quttera’s WordPress malware scanner can detect all kinds of malware including trojans, backdoors, worms, viruses, and other threats. It has the ability to detect malicious iframes, malicious code injections, and malicious obfuscation.

Drawbacks

• The scan takes place on a remote web server. It can take time for you to get the scan results back.
• Since Quttera’s scanner is a free service, it doesn’t guarantee accurate scan results.

Price

Quttera comes free of cost.

That’s our list of the top security vulnerability plugins for you to choose from. These useful tools enable you to check your site for security vulnerabilities and threats.

Final Thoughts

In our experience, even after implementing web security measures on your site, vulnerabilities can appear on your site every now and then. This happens because plugins and themes tend to develop security flaws over time. You can check a list of vulnerable WordPress plugins here.

Hackers are aware of this and are constantly in search of vulnerable WordPress sites to exploit. For these reasons, online security isn’t a set-and-forget activity but instead needs constant vigilance.

To make security management easier, MalCare was designed by analyzing over 240,000+ sites. Once activated on your WordPress site, it scans and monitors your website regularly. If there’s any malware or suspicious activity found on your website, MalCare will alert you immediately. You can clean your site using the instant malware removal.

It will also identify and block traffic with malicious intent and prevent hack attacks. MalCare serves as an all-round security solution for your WordPress site.

Secure your WordPress site with MalCare!