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It’s not fun to go through your server and close every opening that a malicious web user can take advantage of. Nevertheless, it is completely necessary to keep your web site running and free of harm. To get started, you should be open your control panel and forage around your options menu.

Any time you give someone access to your dedicated server, you are allowing one more way into your secure information. Even if the person is trusted, things such as social engineering can pry passwords away from someone quite surprisingly. Essentially you want to limit anyone who has access to not only your server, but to any serve your server offers to others.

A server straight out of the box will be near useless to you. If you want to provide your back end and the front end functionality, you will have to install modules. Modules are small scripts and programs that allow you to do things such as use a language or program to run your server. Update are frequent, and should be downloaded to avoid certain security risks.

Although you won’t ever run into a security concern coding in straight HTML, as soon as you turn to another language, the odds are you will face security concerns. In the right hands, every language can do something drastic and harmful if it has access to the back end of the server. An example would be with Ruby on Rails, which works closely with MySQL, which can easily be manipulated to delete an entire database in seconds.

Any services you are not using should be disabled promptly. Sometimes your server will come with ports and programs running that you not only don’t need, but won’t be monitoring as a result. Telnet is an example of a service that few have a real need for, and can be used to gain entry into a server. Find out how to change and close ports to avoid destruction that could be otherwise avoided with a few minutes of time.

A back up of your files and database will be the cure for when something does go wrong- and odds are it will. You don’t even have to go face to face with a bad user to have this happen- a simple accident of deleting something can turn your entire server awry. It’s best to back up on a regular basis, such as every Friday, to keep up the routine and not slack off on this vital part to your server administration.

Final Thoughts

Web hosting is a business that requires attention to detail. You can tackle your security problems by updating all your modules, cutting those you don’t use, and carefully programming your website to be free of bugs. Nothing is 100% secure, so also make use of backups in the case of an accident.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Computers, Home And Family, Society, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.