Disappeared from Google

@eic2010

There is no need to change any of the default settings.
So return these (and any others) to their default values.

Blacklist Threshold – 3 Lockouts

Lockout Period – 15 Minutes

Max Login Attempts Per Host – 5 Attempts
Max Login Attempts Per User – 10 Attempts

The iTSec plugin Brute Force Protection feature may affect your sites performance (through large amounts of IPs banned in .htaccess) causing your site to drop in google rankings. Simply prevent any login attempts from happening. Whether this is feasible for your site depends on the site offering login or not and other settings.

That said it is normally the iTSec plugin 404 Detection feature that causes trouble for the googlebot.
So is this feature enabled ?

The two plugin features that potentially impact site performance the most are Scheduled Database Backups and File Change Detection.
If enabled it would be best to let WP Cron handle these tasks instead of at page load/site access.
This can be achieved by defining certain constants in the wp-config.php file.

Scheduled Database Backups -> ITSEC_BACKUP_CRON

File Change Detection -> ITSEC_FILE_CHECK_CRON

For example:

define('ITSEC_BACKUP_CRON', true);
define('ITSEC_FILE_CHECK_CRON', true);

If the iTSec plugin is causing trouble it’s often because it was not configured properly. One-Click security does not exist …

dwinden

@eic2010

To restore all the default settings simply deactivate & delete the iTSec plugin. Then reinstall the plugin.

If an iTSec plugin feature is causing problems for your site you can disable the feature while trying to figure out a solution. Use the iTSec plugin Logs page to get an idea of what effect/impact enabled features have to your site.

The idea behind the iTSec plugin is to enable only those features that won’t cause your site any troubles.
But keep in mind with every feature that you disable your site becomes less secured. So ideally you would want to enable as much features as possible. For some features not to cause troubles for your site you may need to do some required tweaking first.

Yes, in case you are not allowing visitors to login (like not providing a login link on the frontend) Hide Backend is a very effective feature to prevent bots from doing automated login attempts.

dwinden

@eic2010

Keep in mind there are 2 brute force attack vectors.

The most common one is wp-login.php. Enabling the Hide Backend feature will not only make your login slug a secret but it will also block wp-login.php login attempts.

The other one is xmlrpc.php. You can disable xmlrpc from the WordPress Tweaks section on the iTSec plugin Settings page.

Ideally you should have a look at the Apache web server error_log to determin which of the 2 above mentioned brute force attack methods is used to attack your site (perhaps even both).

If there are many many wp-login.php request entries in the error_log enabling the Hide Backend feature will protect you against the current brute force attack(s).

If there are many many xmlrpc.php request entries in the error_log disabling xmlrpc will protect you against the current brute force attack(s). Note there is also an advanced xmlrpc brute force attack where there is only one xmlrpc.php request logged while in fact that single request contains a multiple login attempts payload.

What I’m trying to say is that it is best to analyze how these brute force attacks are currently being executed upon your site. This will help in determining the best way to counteract the current brute force attacks.

Once you are back in control you can decide to further strengthen your site’s security.

dwinden

@eic2010

Yes, disabling XMLRPC may (or may not) break some functionality of your site.
It will depend on whether you are using any features that require XMLRPC.

dwinden