Improve iControlWP Security By Turning On Handshaking

We’re crazy about security at iControlWP – it’s a ongoing goal to make sure your iControlWP is always secured from external access.

From the day iControlWP launched we’ve included the option to enable ‘Handshaking’ within the iControlWP App service.

In this article I’m going to explain more about what ‘handshaking’ actually is, and how you can turn on for all your sites.

What is iControlWP ‘Handshaking?

Handshaking ensures that all communication sent to the iControlWP plugin on your WordPress site has originated from iControlWP App.

What does that mean?

Simply put, no-one can spoof your plugin.

Don’t forget, before anyone can actually send commands to the iControlWP plugin in the first place, they’ll need your secret key and PIN combination.

This alone ensures communication is legitimate, but we know there are clever people out there that when determined, can overcome some of the most seemingly secure systems.

Handshaking is another layer that we added to prevent any compromise to your WordPress sites.

iControlWP Communication With and Without Handshaking Enabled

To fully understand the flow between iControlWP servers and your WordPress website, please read carefully the 2 flow charts below.

There’s a lot of writing here, but we’ve provided details so you have the option to fully understand our communications process if you desire to.

 

How to turn on Handshaking for your iControlWP WordPress sites

iControlWP is all about making managing your sites easy!  The effort to perform a task for one site should be equal to the effort to perform the same task for 100 sites.

Enabling handshaking is no different.

You can turn-on handshaking for 1 site:

1. From the Site screen, click the ‘Manage’ button for the site you want to enable Handshaking on.
2. Click the ‘Extras’ tab menu and open the ‘Environment’ section.
3. Click the slider to ‘Active’ for the Handshaking feature.

To turn-on handshaking for all, or many of your sites at once:

1. Click the Bulk Action menu at the top of your iControlWP Dashboard.
2. Select the group of sites for which you want to turn handshaking on.
3. Then select ‘Turn-On Handshaking’.
4. Enter your account PIN, and Click ‘Go!’

Why can’t you turn on handshaking on some sites

Handshaking requires that your WordPress site opens an outgoing web connection to our iControlWP server.

This is done using CURL on PHP and some shared web hosting service providers have restricted this ability – they see enabling this option as a potential for security breach.

If this is the case for you and your web hosting, it’s no problem. iControlWP will continue to function securely, but you’ll not be able to add the extra handshaking security layer.

Start managing your WordPress Websites today with iControlWP

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Sign up today, you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.