Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are susceptible to attacks and various other issues like open peer-to-peer network topology, shared wireless medium, stringent resource constraints, and a highly dynamic environment; hence, it becomes critical to detect major attacks against the routing protocols of such networks, and also to provide good network performance. In this paper, we address two severe packet dropping attacks, which cause serious performance degradation in wireless mesh networks. They are misrouting and power control attacks. To mitigate these attacks and to enhance the performance of WMNs, we propose a new secure and efficient routing protocol called Secure Efficient Routing against Packet Dropping Attacks (SERPDA). An extended local monitoring system based on the observing patterns in the behavior of neighboring nodes and checking capacity of the neighboring nodes is implemented to defend against packet dropping attacks. To improve the performance, we use additional metrics besides the usual ones for the selection of routes. With the help of a network simulator, we prove that the proposed protocol efficiently mitigates the attacks and also provides a more optimal path by considering load balancing, link quality, successful transmission rates, and the number of hops. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.