How to install and set up the Sucuri Security plugin in WordPress

With millions of active installations around the world, the WordPress platform is an attractive target for hackers. Sucuri Security is a free plugin designed to protect your WordPress installation from malware, known exploits and intrusion attempts.

Follow these steps to install and set up Sucuri Security for added protection of your WordPress installation.

Sign into your WordPress administration menu and, from the sidebar, select Plugins > Add New. Search for Sucuri Security and install it, then activate the plugin. To learn more about installing WordPress plugins, read this HostPapa knowledge base article: How to install plugins in WordPress.

Once activated, you’ll notice a new Sucuri Security entry in your admin sidebar.

Head to Sucuri Security > Dashboard and click the button that says Generate API Key to activate Sucuri’s event monitoring feature. This provides a unique key with which to authenticate your website against the remote Sucuri WordPress API service.

Be sure to read the notes regarding API support before clicking the Submit button.

Once Sucuri Security is active, you should start to receive email notifications of major events. These include a user authenticating, or failing to authenticate, when a file is uploaded, a post or page published and so on.