Web hosting to help you secure your website
Online security is becoming more critical than ever. The Identity Theft Resource Center stated that 2021 was a record year for data breaches. Ransomware payments reached nearly $600,000,000 in the first half of 2021, and the White House hosted a summit to discuss how to counter these attacks. These concerns don’t only affect large corporations; they also affect everyone who has a website.
Security gaps in web hosting can lead to the compromise of personal information. Site owners can lose revenue if cyberattacks are used to exploit these vulnerabilities. Your web hosting plan will determine the exact risk to your website. Many web hosting companies offer a variety of cybersecurity tools that will help you keep your site secure.
You should look out for seven security features when looking at web hosting services.
SSL certificates
Secure socket layer (SSL), certificates are cryptographic protocols that encrypt data and authenticate it between machines, servers, and applications within a network. These certificates protect sensitive information such as credit card numbers from being intercepted, altered, or recorded by third parties.
These certificates can be compared to the secret language your best friend and you created when you were young. Your friend may say the teacher is the worst but the teacher is curious why you are discussing how many banana puddings it takes to fill a football field. SSL certificates ensure that all information sent to your visitors is encrypted.
Secure File Transfer Protocol
File transfer protocols (or FTPs) are used to transfer large quantities of unencrypted data from your web hosting server. This is useful if you want to upload multiple files or a video. FTP doesn’t provide users with a secure transfer method and leaves your data open to third-party interception.
Many web hosting providers offer FTP access as a default feature. However, some web hosts, such as Ionos offer secure FTP access instead. Secure FTP encrypts your data when you transfer it for increased security. This ensures that sensitive data is not lost or misused.
Web Application Firewalls
Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) protect web applications by monitoring, filtering, and blocking malicious traffic. These web traffic are meant to record information about site visitors or site owners. Before any web traffic can reach your website hosting server, it must pass through a WAF. The WAF blocks suspicious traffic that attempts to access the server. These firewalls can also block unauthorized data from leaving the web app. These firewalls act as security checks for web services and prevent malicious or important data from being sent.
Web Application Firewalls act like bouncers at the bar you and your friend were in over the weekend. Both of you were allowed in by the bouncers, but the one behind you was denied entry because they were already speaking slowly and acting as if they owned the place.
Some web hosting companies, such as A2 Host, offer WAFs with all web hosting plans. Imperva or Cloudbric provides WAF plans that include additional security features to help you choose a hosting plan without WAFs. Even if you have WAFs, some of these plans can help improve your web hosting security. Many WAFs offer analytics and report to identify and fix vulnerabilities.
Protection against malware and antivirus
Shared hosting plans that allow you to share a server with hundreds of users are a good option. You and others may upload files and data to your site onto the same server. However, you might not be aware that some files may contain malware or viruses. The malicious code in the file can impact all sites on the server once it reaches it. Your website could be damaged or taken down. This could result in revenue loss and vandalism. A malicious code could also steal data from your site or your visitors’ data.
The server is like an apartment building and the people inside it as websites. The possibility of spreading illness to other buildings is possible if someone enters the apartment building. Antivirus and malware protections can stop the virus from spreading to the building.
The web hosting provider is responsible for providing antivirus and malware protection for shared hosting plans. You might need to install your own protection if you have a VPS server or dedicated server.
Not all web hosting services offer the same cybersecurity tools, but reading through the web hosting plans can help you choose what plan is right for you.
Protect yourself from Distributed Denial of Service
Imagine that you are asking your parents a question and your little sibling isn’t interested in your answer. Your sibling gathers their classmates, friends, neighbors, and classmates, and starts screaming at the top of their lungs in an attempt to drown out all other noises. It’s impossible to hear your own thoughts, much less what your parents are saying. This is what distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), the attack looks like on your website.
The most serious cyber threat is distributed denial-of-service attacks. These attacks flood your website with traffic from a network malware-infected and connected computers, known as a botnet. Visitors may be unable to access your site due to increased traffic. This can disrupt your work and cause a server overload. No matter what hosting plan you choose — shared, VPS, or dedicated — the increase in traffic eats up resources available to your site and the server at large.
Some web hostings companies, such as HostPapa or InMotionHosting, show their DDoS prevention tools in their plan breakdown pages. You should contact the web hosting provider if they don’t have DDoS protection tools. These attacks can help you protect your site and prevent revenue loss.
Site data backups
Backups can be used as a part of disaster recovery. They are only available in the event that your site has been compromised, deleted, or defaced. You can restore your site’s glory with a backup. You have two options: you can either manually back up your data or enable automatic back-ups so that you can set a schedule for when your data will be backed up.
You can save your visitors and generate revenue by having backups that are safe and secure. Bluehost or A2Hosting offers automatic backups as part of their hosting plans. A2 Hosting, however, offers manual backups. Although lower-tier web hosting plans may only offer manual backups and automatic backups on the higher-tier plans, they do offer backups.
All backups can be saved locally to your computer, hard drive, or server. This is useful in the case that your web hosting provider keeps backups for only two weeks but your site was compromised more than three weeks ago. This means that the server’s backup has been compromised. Local backups will allow you to access an uncompromised copy of your site.
