Fri 23 Mar 2007
You don’t leave your homedoor open while you shopping write ? So if you’re a site owner you don’t ignore security features either . Most of the people are mostly concentrated on getting a good price for maximum bandwidth when it comes to hosting . But if something goes wrong , then they suddenly realise that they should have invested more time and effort into security . Just because you are paying for a hosting service , doesn’t mean that you are automatically secure . Most providers will offer you a great security together with your server , but that doesn’t mean it’s all set up with the correct settings right from the word go . You should look for a hosting supplier that has a firewall protection as a standard , but which also has the capabilites to configure the firewall in line with your business needs . Also you have to make sure that the company you choose works with the ISO17799 standard , which promotes best practice in IT security . Obviously , a server should always be behind a firewall , and as few people as possible should have access to the settings . You should also only open the ports that need to be open to make the firewall work , and make sure your applications are designed to exposed the minimum number number of ports . Use different passwords and change them often , to prevent haskers guessing your logins . Patches are crucial element to server security . Make sure you know if your host has a so-called ‘reactive’ approach to patches . Many servers has been destroyed in the past because a patch did more apperent harm than good . Paul Newaj , systems manager at Hostway (www.hostway.co.uk) , says that there are also a number of systems administrator tasks that users can complete to make servers even more secure .
