Sunday, April 24, 2011

Maintaining a Secure Website

By Kikini Hen


The hunt for the perfect web hosting company for your site can be exhausting. With hundreds of companies boasting of being the top web host, which one should you trust with housing your site? With each company advertising low rates and what not, you need to understand that all the features the companies may offer are totally irrelevant, unless it offers excellent security. Before choosing the web host for your site, you need to make sure that they have the capability to keep your website secure.

SSL -- Secure Sockets Layer SSL: (Secure Sockets Protocol) is encryption that keeps incoming and outgoing communications of your website secure. If your site is a commerce site, your customers sends you sensitive information such as their credit card details, emails or addresses all the time. However, this information can be used by hackers or identity thieves. This is why SSL is among the most important security features. And, as a great majority of online shoppers will not shop on any site without the SSL encryption certificate, having that certificate can actually attract more customers.

(SFTP): This is an encrypting system which allows sensitive information and data to be sent over networks with security protocols in place. SFTP uses something called Secure Shell (SSH). This encrypts all information before it is sent across the network so that passwords and other personal information is not able to be accessed by others. All data and commands are encrypted.

(DDoS): Its common for calls to be "denied" at busy times. You will find when you make a call a "Denied" message will appear. This is usually apparent during peak times such as Christmas, or some evenings. This happens as the telephone service is unable to process the large volume of calls. It has reached its capacity and is unable to take any more calls.

This can also happen to a computer. A DDoS attack is done by a malicious intruder or hacker who has managed to gain access to multiple computers that have been compromised. This is commonly caused by a worm or Trojan. This affects every website on the server that has been compromised. It is very important that the web hosting service you choose has security measures to prevent these kind of attacks.

Firewall: Almost every web hosting company is protected by a firewall. But, not all web hosting companies give the user access to the admin functions of the firewall they use. If you want maximum control over the security of your website then you will need access to the configuration of the firewall, often this is only possible with a dedicated server.

Spam Filter: Spam is infectious and extremely irritating to say the least. Hackers will use spam as a means in which to infect your computer with a virus. Spam is the cause of software which steals important information such as passwords (Phishing) and can be devastating to a business. Spam filters can be a way in which to protect your computer and website from these nasty attacks.




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