WP Cerber Security vs Wordfence Security
The most important thing to know about WordPress firewall plugins is the amount of protection they offer against real threats, but we are somehow the only ones that do testing that would measure that. A lot of the claimed threats that WordPress security plugins claim to protect against are not really threats. What is a real threat is vulnerabilities in other plugins being exploited and that is something that firewall plugins can provide protection against. The developers of WP Cerber Security and Wordfence Security make it sound like they provide strong protection against those vulnerabilities, but in reality, they don’t do a very good job or provide no protection whatsoever.
The marketing of WP Cerber Security prominently claims it “[exceeds] customers’ expectations” by “vigorously [defending] WordPress against hacker attacks.” It also is claimed that it “screens all suspicious requests and blocks them before they can harm a website.”
With Wordfence Security, the developer has long claimed its firewall “stops you from getting hacked” without any qualifications.
Since 2021, we have done 16 tests of a large group of WordPress security plugins to see if they would protect against real vulnerabilities that had existed in other plugins. In those tests, WP Cerber Security provided no protection in any of the tests. Wordfence Security did somewhat better, providing protection in six. Two of those 16 tests involved serious vulnerabilities that had been in WP Cerber Security itself. Yes, a security plugin with serious vulnerabilities of its own.
Another method of testing we have is automated testing to see if WordPress firewall plugins will protect against the same attacks our firewall plugin can. The results for both plugins are not good. With WP Cerber Security providing no protection and Wordfence Security only stopping 22.4% of the tests, in the most recent run we did of that at the beginning of January.
Better Alternatives
Based on those results, Wordfence Security is the only option of those two for those looking for protection, but there are two much better options.
Those two plugins are our Plugin Vulnerabilities Firewall and NinjaFirewall. NinjaFirewall does significantly better in our automated testing, with protection against 38.8% of the attacks. Our plugin provides protection against 100%.
While NinjaFirewall is a competitor to our plugin, we recommend it for websites where doesn’t make sense to be spending money on security. For the price, free, it provides great protection, much better than Wordfence Security’s, despite being much less popular.
Our firewall plugin is part of our service, which provides a lot beyond just the firewall plugin, so for those who need security better than can be gotten for free, it can provide a lot of additional protection.