Sucuri Security Setup for WordPress: Audit, WAF, Hardening

Sucuri Security Plugin Setup for WordPress Site Protection

After a WordPress site is hacked, recovery is only half the battle. You need to prevent a repeat attack. Our Sucuri Security setup includes plugin installation, hardening, and WAF integration. Drawing on five years of experience securing 50+ WordPress sites, we guarantee that after our setup, all basic attack vectors are closed. According to Sucuri, its WAF blocks up to 99% of malicious traffic before it reaches your server. This article covers how to properly configure both the free plugin and the paid cloud protection. Sucuri protects over 200,000 websites worldwide and scans millions of URLs daily.

Sucuri offers two products: the free Sucuri Security plugin (audit, scanning, hardening) and the paid Sucuri Firewall / CDN — a WAF at the DNS level. The plugin without Sucuri Firewall is a monitoring tool, not real-time protection. Experience shows that clients using only the free plugin often miss the moment of an attack — notifications arrive after infection. Therefore, we recommend the combination: plugin + WAF. Sucuri WAF outperforms plugin-only solutions by over 5x in blocking malicious traffic while adding zero server load. If you want to protect your site from hacking, contact us for a consultation.

What the Free Plugin Does

Security Activity Auditing — logs all administrative actions: logins, plugin changes, updates. Stores logs in the database table and optionally sends them to the Sucuri API (protection against deletion during compromise). File Integrity Monitoring — compares core files with official hashes. Detects modified and added files. Remote Malware Scanning — external scanning via the SiteCheck API: checks the homepage for malicious code, blacklist status from Google, Bing, Norton. Security Hardening — a set of one-click security measures.

Security Hardening

In Sucuri → Settings → Hardening, apply the following measures:

<Files "*.php">
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
</Files>

location ~* /(?:uploads|files)/.*\.php$ {
    deny all;
}

How to Configure Sucuri Notifications?

Sucuri → Settings → Alerts:

• Email for alerts: do not use [email protected] – if the domain email is compromised, you lose notifications. Use an external email.
• Alert on new user registration: ✓
• Alert on WordPress admin login: ✓ (only for small sites)
• Alert on failed login attempt: no (too many emails)
• Alert on plugin activated/deactivated: ✓

Post-Hack Actions

Upon detecting a hack: Sucuri → Post-Hack. The section includes:

1. Update Secret Keys — generate new keys in wp-config.php, reset all sessions
2. Reset User Password — reset all user passwords
3. Reset Installed Plugins — reinstall all plugins (only from WP repository)
4. Available Free WordPress Transfers — emergency site transfer

Don't wait for a hack – order proactive Sucuri setup today. Our setup services start at $149 for the free plugin configuration and $399 for full WAF integration.

Why Choose Sucuri WAF?

The paid WAF works differently: your domain's DNS points to Sucuri servers, all traffic goes through them. Sucuri filters malicious traffic before it reaches your server. The plugin in this case serves for configuration and monitoring. To connect: Sucuri → Firewall WAF → Add Site. Change the domain's NS/A record. Sucuri proxies traffic to the origin server by IP (whitelist only Sucuri IP).

Sucuri WAF vs Wordfence

For optimal protection, contact us — we'll help you choose between Sucuri and Wordfence.

What's Included in Sucuri Setup

We provide a full package:

• audit of current WordPress configuration
• installation and configuration of the free plugin
• activation of all hardening points
• connection of Sucuri WAF (if needed)
• notification setup to external email
• administrator training on plugin usage
• documentation on post-hack recovery

Timeline and Pricing

Installation and configuration of the free Sucuri plugin with hardening – 1–2 hours. Connecting Sucuri WAF with DNS changes – 2–3 hours (plus up to 24 hours for DNS propagation). Pricing starts at $149 for basic setup and varies based on complexity. Get a consultation on securing your WordPress site – we'll find the best solution.

Web Application Security: HTTPS, CSP, XSS, CSRF, WAF, DDoS Protection

A website breach rarely looks like in movies. More often it's: a bot finds an unprotected /admin/export endpoint, downloads the customer database, and closes the connection. Or: through an outdated WordPress plugin, a web shell is uploaded, and the server starts sending spam. Or quieter: an XSS in a comment field allows stealing admin session cookies, unnoticed for months. We have analyzed dozens of such cases — each vulnerability could have been fixed at the development or audit stage.

Web application security is not a single setting. It's layers of protection, each closing a separate class of attacks. Order an audit — we'll assess the project and deliver a turnkey plan within 2–4 weeks.

How do we ensure comprehensive web application security?

HTTPS and Proper TLS Configuration

HTTPS is the minimum mandatory level. But having an SSL certificate and having a properly configured TLS are different things.

In Nginx/Apache configuration we check:

• Protocols: only TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3, SSLv3 and TLS 1.0/1.1 are disabled
• Cipher suites: prefer ECDHE (Forward Secrecy), remove NULL, RC4, DES, 3DES
• HSTS (Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload) — browser will never make insecure requests
• OCSP Stapling — speeds up certificate revocation check
• Redirect 301 from HTTP to HTTPS — both in server config and code (double redirect causes SEO weight loss)

Check: SSL Labs (ssllabs.com/ssltest) should show A or A+. If B, the configuration is weak.

Let's Encrypt + Certbot for production is standard. Automatic renewal via certbot renew in cron. Wildcard certificates for subdomains via DNS-01 challenge.

Content Security Policy: The Most Powerful and Complex Protection

CSP is an HTTP header that tells the browser which sources are allowed to load resources. A properly configured CSP completely blocks most XSS attacks, even if the vulnerability exists in the code.

The problem: breaking the site with an incorrect CSP is easy. default-src 'none' — and fonts, images, JS stop working. So we start with Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only — CSP logs violations but does not block anything. We monitor reports for 2–4 weeks, refine the policy, then switch to enforcement mode.

Example of a real policy for a site with Google Analytics, Google Fonts, and Stripe:

Content-Security-Policy:
  default-src 'self';
  script-src 'self' https://www.googletagmanager.com https://js.stripe.com 'nonce-{random}';
  style-src 'self' https://fonts.googleapis.com 'unsafe-inline';
  font-src 'self' https://fonts.gstatic.com;
  frame-src https://js.stripe.com;
  img-src 'self' data: https://www.google-analytics.com;
  connect-src 'self' https://api.stripe.com https://www.google-analytics.com;
  report-uri /csp-report;

nonce — a random string generated server-side per request. Inline scripts with the correct nonce are allowed; without nonce, they are blocked. This completely breaks XSS via <script>alert(1)</script>.

'unsafe-inline' in style-src is a compromise for inline styles. It's better to remove it by moving all styles to CSS files, but that requires refactoring.

Why XSS Remains the Most Common Vulnerability?

XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) — injection of JS code through user input. According to OWASP, XSS is in the top 3 web application vulnerabilities. Three types:

Protection: never insert user input into HTML without escaping. In PHP — htmlspecialchars() with ENT_QUOTES. In Laravel Blade templates — {{ $var }} is safe, {!! $var !!} is dangerous. In React — {variable} is safe, dangerouslySetInnerHTML is dangerous. For Rich Text — use htmlpurifier on PHP or DOMPurify in the browser.

CSRF: Protecting Forms and APIs

CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) — an attacker forces the victim's browser to send a request on their behalf. Example: a user is logged into a bank, opens a malicious page, which makes fetch('https://bank.ru/transfer?to=evil&amount=50000') — if the bank is unprotected, money is transferred.

CSRF tokens — standard protection for forms: the server generates a random token, stores it in the session, and inserts it as a hidden field in the form. On POST request, the token is verified. The attacker does not know the token. Laravel does this automatically with @csrf.

SameSite cookies — modern protection: SameSite=Strict or SameSite=Lax prevents the browser from sending cookies in cross-site requests. Works in all modern browsers.

API without sessions (JWT, Bearer tokens) — CSRF is irrelevant if the token is not stored in a cookie (but in the Authorization header or localStorage). However, localStorage is vulnerable to XSS — so for sensitive data, HttpOnly cookies with SameSite are preferable.

WAF and DDoS Protection

WAF (Web Application Firewall) filters HTTP traffic for attacks: SQL injection, XSS, path traversal, known exploit patterns. Options:

• Cloudflare WAF — cloud-based, OWASP Top 10 rules out of the box, custom rules via expressions. Managed Rules automatically block new threats.
• ModSecurity (Nginx/Apache) — self-hosted, OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS). Flexible but requires tuning and monitoring of false positives.
• AWS WAF — for infrastructure on AWS, integrates with CloudFront and ALB.

DDoS protection. Cloudflare at L3/L4/L7 is the de facto standard for most sites. Automatic mitigation of volumetric attacks, Under Attack Mode during active attacks. For critical infrastructure — Cloudflare Magic Transit or specialized solutions (Qrator, StormWall for the Russian market).

Rate Limiting at the application level — an additional layer. Laravel ThrottleRequests middleware: 60 requests per minute per IP for general endpoints, 5 for /login and /password/reset. Redis as a counter store — mandatory for horizontally scalable systems (otherwise limits are not synchronized between servers).

Other Mandatory Measures

Security headers. Besides CSP: X-Frame-Options: DENY (clickjacking protection), X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff (MIME sniffing), Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin, Permissions-Policy (restrict browser API access: camera, microphone, geolocation).

SQL injection. Prepared statements everywhere. No concatenation of user input into SQL strings. ORM (Eloquent, Doctrine) protects by default. $wpdb->prepare() in WordPress is mandatory.

Dependency updates. composer audit and npm audit in CI/CD pipeline. Dependabot or Renovate for automatic PRs with updates. Critical CVEs — patch within 24 hours.

Secrets and configuration. .env — never in Git. Secrets in production — via CI/CD environment variables (GitHub Secrets, GitLab CI Variables) or HashiCorp Vault. Leak detection: git-secrets, truffleHog in pre-commit hooks.

How We Work

1. Audit — code scanning, configuration review, dependency analysis, manual business logic verification.
2. Planning — vulnerability remediation plan, stack selection (CSP, WAF, rate limiting).
3. Implementation — TLS setup, CSP configuration, headers, Rate Limiting, WAF.
4. Testing — re-penetration test, load testing, false positive check.
5. Deployment and Monitoring — enable production CSP, set up alerts, train the team.

What's Included

• Report with found vulnerabilities and recommendations (PDF + code snippets)
• Ready TLS configuration (Nginx/Apache)
• CSP policy with Report-Only and production versions
• WAF and Rate Limiting setup
• Dependency update plan
• Access to monitoring tools (Sentry, Datadog)
• 30 days of post-audit support (consultations, fixes)

Timeline and Cost

The budget is calculated individually — contact us for a project evaluation.