Why Security’s Very Important

Your website is a crucial part of your business. It’s created to support customer relations and company objectives. Secure web hosting warrants that your site keeps doing what it’s intended to do. The difficult (almost unthinkable) reality is that once your web hosting server has been attacked, your business reputation can be seriously tarnished. Security attacks can result to loss of huge amounts of money; decreased customer trust; proliferation of wrong information about your business; and partial or complete damage of your web platform.

The internet is truly an amazing tool of convenience and web hosting services make this tool more accessible to potential markets. Unfortunately, the web also provides opportunities for terrible acts. Web hosting security is not something you should take lightly, especially now that cyber felons and criminals operate in more cunning and wily ways.

Web Hosting Security Features to Look Out For

When considering options from the vast sea of web hosting providers, take into account the completeness of the package they are offering. First, make sure that they include daily malware detection in their services. Malware (thousands of which are spreading on the internet) can come in form of scripts, viruses, worms and just about anything that comprises your site’s integrity. It is imperative that the web hosting service that you choose is keen on consistently protecting you from any kind of software that can disrupt your computer systems.

Secondly, your web hosting provider should have accessible and regular backup schemes that are free of charge or that come at a reasonable cost. Daily, weekly or monthly backups help ensure that in the event your system is compromised or when natural disasters occur, you’ll have a way to retrieve your information. Most web hosting providers ask you to pay extra for this service because it requires the use of secure, off-site data centers.

Thirdly, your web hosting package must include reliable encryption methods and access management. Encryption keeps your data safe during transit amidst prying and suspicious eyes. Access management is essential in web hosting because it keeps unauthorized individuals from gaining control of your entire site.

Don’t worry. Despite how it sounds, this is a good thing. It means those who use Ubuntu at the server level are not up a creek if something goes wrong. Most server-ready Linux distributions are backed by companies that will offer support for them. Ubuntu offers a service called Landscape that helps you monitor and manage your server.

Landscape has two versions: Hosted Edition, which is hosted remotely and accessed over the web and Dedicated Server Edition, which you install directly on your dedicated server. Canonical currently offers a free 60 day trial, and a subscription to Landscape is $150 per node per year.

Source: Canonical

Answer: By default, remote management is turned off. Therefore, you must turn it on before you can use any of its features. Although IIS is available for Vista and other versions of Microsoft Windows, remote management only works on Windows Server. You can install remote management with three easy steps:

1. Install the service called Web Management Service (WMSVC)
2. Turn on remote connections.
3. Set any other configurations you desire, such as ports, IP address and domain settings.
4. Start the WMSVC service. You can also set it to start up automatically at boot.

A full detailed description of each step is available on the Learn IIS website.

Tomorrow, we will learn about using the remote management software.

Photo: Flickr