I am working on revamping my wordpress site security, hosted via cloudways. Cloudways is generally great. I was working on installing WP Fail2Ban Redux: Which requires editing some files in root linux directories (in order to set this up, it is required to edit files in /etc/fail2ban/)
Here is where the issue arises. Turns out cloudways has fail2ban installed on their servers by default (good), but they disallow you from accessing any root linux files (bad). Any attempt to modify files above the home/applications directory is denied (confirmed by a cloudways rep). So I can install the plugin, but I can't pull over the plugins custom .conf and jail files into fail2ban.
So the core of my question is:
- How big of a difference is there between out of the box fail2ban, compared to WP fail2ban redux? Is this a security issue large enough worth changing my host over?
- Is it possible I am misunderstanding the installation directions of wp fail2ban redux? Since native fail2ban is already installed on the server, will I still benefit from having this plugin installed even though I was not able to modify the .conf and jail files as per their directions? Or should I just uninstall the plugin entirely at this point?