Five ways to get secured web hosting

Posted by Inna in Blog

Dec

2015

As the internet gets more popular every day and now with smartphones more than ever the security risks increase. If you are starting your own website or already have your own website you might be vulnerable to cyber attacks, data theft and a lot more. There are new threats every day as hackers are constantly trying to find new ways to penetrate the servers. No matter how much security features you have their tactics are getting smarter every day.

You can try and keep your site safe but a lot of it starts at the server of your web hosting company. The question remains, which web hosting companies provide secured web hosting and what do they do to make sure to keep your site safe?

Let’s understand the risks:

When you host your website on a server with a web hosting company it is vulnerable to hacker attacks. There is no way around this. These hackers upload malware (malicious software) or malicious sites or sometimes just code onto the server. When their code is uploaded they are a danger!

This malware or code can be used from stealing credit card information or even erupt a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack which can actually allow the hackers to hijack the whole server and gain control over other servers as well. Yes this all sounds very vicious…. so let us learn a bit about secured web hosting and what type of security you should be looking for when choosing a web hosting service.

Here are five things to check with the web hosting company in order to evaluate their security

How well do they check their clients? Do they let just anyone sign up?

When you originally start the registration process, the website hosting company has a chance to get to know who is registering and which IP address they come from. Do they request proof of identity? Do they contact the clients before activating the accounts? Do they screen accounts?

These actions are taken in order to deter hackers or other malicious parties from registering accounts.

Who do they offer their services to?

Free hosting, open access hosting, or advertisement sponsored accounts can be a red flag. The hackers love the free hosting accounts. Free hosting normally does not have all the security measures in place and you may by mistake download malware or malicious programs.

This can be a danger to your site or network of sites and can create issues for you and your visitors or customers.

Does the web hosting service have a reliable firewall?

Your web hosting company should have a very powerful firewall that can configure denying traffic and block threats to the server and the sites hosted on it. The hosting company should be running frequent check ups to test their security controls from inside and also outside of their network.

You can feel free to ask them about how well their network, administrative, and security staff are trained in order to handle any security issues that may pop up.

Do they Monitor?

The servers and network of the hosting company should be monitored 24/7 internally and externally to make sure that no malicious code has been uploaded on any sites. Even if a site is 99% legitimate it can have a few rows of malicious code and they should be able to recognize this.

If a site is compromised, the hosting service’s monitoring system should be able to detect it straight away, and their team will need to isolate it or remove the site until the threat has been neutralized. Most companies will be able to automatically filter out the malicious code and correct your files so that your visitors will not be exposed to anymore Malware. This helps to instantly remediate problems without disrupting the experience of your visitors.

Will they back up your website daily?

Your website host should be doing daily backups just in case they need to restore data not only to your website but to their entire network. This can be used in case of security breaches or any other technical issues that caused loss of data.

What damage can hacking cause?

Loss of site information - parts of your site can totally disappear
Data theft - they can steal client information and credit card or PayPal information
Data deletion- they can delete data and monitoring information
You may be banned by search engine results for being a malicious site
They can use your email lists for spamming
They can inject viruses or worms