As the world gets more digitized every passing day, online threats also keep on increasing. The cyber world incessantly buzzes with news of newly found vulnerabilities and brutal attacks on websites. For instance, the recent exploitation of plugins in WordPress, the disclosure of SQLi vulnerability in Magento & increasing credit card hack cases in OpenCart is making cyberspace subjected to skepticism. We got a chance to review Astra Security Suite and learn what they have to offer in today’s world of ever-increasing threats. Here’s an honest Astra Security’s Review.

What is the need for security?

Hackers are smart people, and they are constantly trying to make past every security solution. Therefore, we can’t even rely upon the security solutions that worked fine just six months back. This is to say website security is an ongoing process. Cisco’s CTO Bret Hartman, in an interview, said that

“The trend around breaches and cyber threats is that it just grows year after year.”

This point is further proved by the following, rather scary statistics:

• More than 40,000 websites are hacked daily
• At least one serious vulnerability was found in 86% websites
• Around 33% of the Shoppers hesitate to shop because of lack of trust on websites
• 1 Million new malware threats released every day

Security is not a choice anymore. Security, now, is a dire need. But, website security is easier said than done. Moreover, not every website owner is a coding expert. And you, even though aware of its importance might not be able to do everything on your own. You sure need continuous & comprehensive security monitoring software at your fingertips. That is when solutions like Astra Security come into the picture.

What does Astra do?

Astra Security Suite is an all in one security solution for a website. Right from a firewall, on-demand malware scanner, security audits to community security (to run bug bounty programs) you get it all under one roof. The solution looked promising from the first look, hence we decided to take a deep dive.

Astra’ Website: www.getastra.com

Main Features of Astra – Astra Security Review

Malware Scanner

One thing that I absolutely love about Astra security Suite is its quick and intelligent Malware Scanner. While the first scan I did took 20mins, the subsequent scans literally took under 3 minutes! A few features that I was given exclusive access to by Astra’s team included:

• On click hack cleanup: It automatically cleans the website of malware on just one click. Astra intelligently identifies malware & replaces it with a clean version of the core website file
• Machine Learning Powered: Astra’s scanner learns with each malware cleanup & next cleanup is more intelligent than the last one. In other words, Astra’s malware scanner keeps evolving on its own
• Super-Fast: The first scan takes around 20 minutes and once Astra learns more about your website, subsequent scans take less than 10 seconds

WAF (Web Application Firewall)

The Web Application Firewall by Astra saves you from SQLi, XSS, LFI & 100+ threats in real time. It also reports about potential infiltrations trials with little to no false alerts. The good thing being Astra’s security engine scales with your infrastructure and does not require DNS changing. Firewall installation is pretty straight forward and could be easily installed even by a novice.

VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing)

The VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing) in Astra is a facility to get a detailed and thorough security audit of your website. It is done by an optimized mix of manual & automated techniques. Security audit includes Static & Dynamic Code Analysis, Black box & White box testing and OWASP Top Ten and SANS Top 25 testing.

Other Features of Astra

Dashboard & Reporting

Astra’s Dashboard is user-friendly and easy to use. Further, it provides stats of attacks in the form of ‘Threat Analytics‘. It also keeps track of admin area login and emails you the hourly summary of logins in your dashboard. In addition, Astra’s Dashboard is available in all the major languages.

Community Security

Not all hackers have to be bad persons. Astra understands this fact and lets you acknowledge those who find a vulnerability in your website. It also gives them a legitimate platform to report this vulnerability. This is possible under the community security program. Under the program policy, hackers do not make any bug of your website public instead they report it to you.

A detailed feature list can be found right here.

Comparing: Astra vs others

In order to have a successful review, let us now compare Astra with other leading Security solutions and how they are superior/inferior to Astra.

Astra vs Sucuri

The first one up is Sucuri. Sucuri is a Godaddy owned Security solution, it is the oldest in this space. It is loved for its DDoS protection. Although it is the leader, Sucuri is not free from drawbacks. One of them being, it requires DNS changing. As a result of which, all the traffic of a site gets transferred to Sucuri first and the website later. People generally don’t like their organic traffic being diverted.

Astra vs Sitelock

Another in the race is Sitelock. It also requires DNS changing, while Astra requires no such change. Also, Sitelock charges very dearly for its service. Its monthly subscription comes for $30 for the basic version ( & the cheaper ones are remote monitoring plans). Astra, whereas, comes in different packages starting from $9 for its basic plan.

Astra vs Wordfence

Last but not least, Wordfence. Wordfence security offerings are exclusively tailored for WordPress. Moreover, it offers free as well as premium ones. Astra Security Suite, on the other hand, offers no free services. But, whereas Wordfence is limited to WordPress, Astra is efficient with many other CMS(s) such as Magento, PrestaShop, Joomla, WordPress, etc.

In addition, Astra comes as a complete suite offering additional features like community security & security audit with a malware scanner which we found to be more efficient than Wordfence.

What Astra customers have to say?

Astra Security’s Review on Trustpilot by its customers shows the following results:

• 100% five-star ratings on Trustpilot
• Customers have appreciated Astra as being “extremely responsive”, “fast”, “competent” and “enthusiastic” on Trustpilot

Notable Astra Customers: Ford, Gillette, TV21, African Union, NIIT, Oman Airways etc.

Final Verdict

After analyzing each point in this article, we can conclude that Astra is one trustworthy security solution for a website. If we overlook a few points such as price (no freemium), Astra is fairly good in most aspects like accuracy, quickness & customer support. Surpassing each competitor with its steady growth, we can safely say it is heading in the right direction. With each step, it is securing the web a bit more than before.