Posted by On a single physical machine, a web hosting can house hundreds of websites, but depending on how they are housed, one hacked website could spell the end for all the websites on the server. As more clients rely on your cybersecurity top practices and monitoring to discover continuing threats, server security for web hosts is more crucial than ever. Web servers frequently host multiple commercial websites that store client data, making them popular targets for hackers.
To ensure the security of web hosting, we’ve compiled a list of best practices and the importance of server security.
Web Hosting and Server Security Importance
A hosting provider has to provide solutions for trustworthy and cost-effective internet security at a decent price for the most bandwidth. To get the greatest value for your money when choosing a web host, consider these security options:
- A protected data center. Your data is physically stored somewhere, so that place should be safe against natural disasters and have backup power generators. To stop hackers, security should be given top priority.
- To ensure that hackers cannot access and read your files, Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), uses encryption techniques. FTP is less trustworthy than SFTP.
- To ensure security, a good web host will perform routine maintenance and upgrades on their system.
- Your website must always be accessible to web users. Even while there are times when uptime is just not possible because of network congestion or power outages, these downtimes, should be minimized to a minimum.
- Regrettably, there are no assurances that your website won’t go down or get hacked. However, a website host who has taken precautionary action in advance can assist in quickly restoring your site and your files. When researching a certain web hosting service, ask about backup schedules.
Top 6 Practices for Securing Web Hosting Servers
Protection Against DDoS Attacks
For web hosts, preventing DDoS assaults is the most challenging duty. These assaults may originate from numerous IPs around the world. Because it interferes with customer sites, web servers are unable to prevent valid traffic.
But accurate monitoring and technologies are necessary to distinguish between fraudulent and genuine online queries. It is essential to set up monitoring systems that can identify and stop DDoS attacks.
Attackers will initiate a DDoS without warning, therefore mitigating tactics necessitate the correct tools to stop it before it affects the performance of all sites on the hoster service and causes downtime. Effective technologies will warn administrators, lessen the impact of the assault, and guard against resource fatigue and crashes.
Use SFTP rather than FTP
Due to the cleartext nature of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) transfers, users are vulnerable to data eavesdropping. And man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks. Use SFTP to send any files through an encrypted channel rather than running an FTP server for users to upload and exchange files.
Data Backup on Servers
When website owners make mistakes, their websites must be restored to a specified date. Customers of web hosting services depend on web hosts to have reliable backups and an appropriate retention policy.
Backups are a crucial part of disaster recovery. And can utilized to restore a server in the event of a sophisticated assault or to recover data upon customers’ requests. For instance, a successful ransomware attack on a shared hosting server might obliterate all customer sites’ data. Instead of facing a critical security event that can’t be swiftly resolved, backups could be used to recover.
Protection from malware and viruses
Hundreds of websites can be hosted on a single server, and this enables website owners to upload any content to their hosting accounts. These files might, knowingly or inadvertently, contain malware. If a hosting server administrator unintentionally executes a file that contains malware, or if an attacker gains elevated rights on the host and executes a file that contains malware, other websites on the server may also be affected.
The host can quickly identify harmful files using antivirus for servers and antimalware programs and either clean the file or prevent it from being uploaded.
Remove any applications that are no longer in use.
The default settings, plugins, and maybe additional third-party applications are often configured. When the hosting application is set up on the server. Any additional program running on the server increases the possibility of security holes arising from coding mistakes. Or by letting the application run without patches. Any application not required for hosting client sites should be removed from the server rather than left there.
Change Passwords by Force
Users should often update their passwords, mostly those with high-level rights. If users continue to use the same password, an attacker who obtains those credentials may have access to the account for years. Accounts are required to reset their passwords, which narrows the attack window. For instance, requiring users to update their passwords every 45 days limits the amount of time an attacker has to infiltrate and access the account to 45 days.
Conclusion
Although protecting thousands of user websites from assaults is a difficult endeavor, the correct eTechSupport web host security settings. And technologies can prevent many attacks that could harm thousands of users. With the help of these 6 best practices. You can protect client information and avert a serious cybersecurity event that can result in downtime and hurt your bottom line.