If you’re aware of a plugin or service that provides a user-friendly interface that shows and explains the attacks it’s protecting against a site, please send me a link in the comments.

Wordfence Wordfence Wordfence Wordfence Wordfence.

Even the free version is fantastic, the caching engine alone makes it worth the install. It blocks brute force attacks, logs every failed entry, can completely blacklist an IP when they attempt logins like "admin", it logs countries where attacks originate from, and with the paid version you can even whitelist certain countries (or specific IPs) that are allowed to log in. Oh, and malware scanning! (Paid version)

Ok, no, it's not super user friendly - it's very much a power user plugin, I usually tell my clients not to mess with it - but anybody who actively manages a Wordpress site will be able figure it out. This is very much a must-have plugin.