Automattic, the company behind WordPress projects has acquired BruteProtect, a security and performance enhancement tool for WordPress. In the announcement post Matt confirmed that they plan to merge the functionality of the plugin with Jetpack.

Another good news is the plugin will be free for all BruteProtect and Jetpack users. Though the new acquisition won’t drive any revenue, it will diffidently provide more than 20% of world’s website a chance to make it safer.

According to the site the plugin has been installed on 113,490 sites and defended against 140,628,385 brute force attacks worldwide and with this acquisition the number are expected grow real fast.

How the BruteProtect Plugin Works?

BruteProtect is a cloud-powered Brute Force attack prevention plugin. We leverage the millions of WordPress sites to identify and block malicious IPs.

BruteProtect tracks failed login attempts across all installed users of the plugin.  If any single IP has too many failed attempts in a short period of time, they are blocked from logging in to any site with this plugin installed. Once the plugin is installed, you’ll need to get a free BruteProtect API key, which you can do directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Integration with Jetpack

The BruteProtect team is based in Portland, Maine and they’re long-time contributors to the WordPress community. We’re excited to see them join forces with the Jetpack team and up the level of security, protection, and peace of mind we’ll be able to bring to the millions of sites already using Jetpack.

Matt Mullenweg

Now, the BruteProtect team will join Jetpack forces to take this security tool ahead which as mentioned will be a part of the core Jetpack in the time to come. So, if you are not using Jetpack  yet here is another reason why you should start using the plugin now.