Cloud Hosting

Steps to Staying Secure Online | Storm Internet

13 October 2017

By fishtank

- 4 mins read

Storm Internet offers total security with up-to-date protection and over 45,000 security checks and scans. We’ve also recently partnered with Cloudflare to bring the best security features on offer.

Here is our quick guide to securing your hosting environment:

Passwords

We all know the importance of secure passwords. It is really important to periodically change all passwords on all levels. Both the hosting company and the user of the hosting facilities should ensure this is done regularly to ensure the best security. Of course, if a breach is detected then always change passwords. Or even if any updates or new software is added.

Firewalls

A firewall is protection barrier keeping malign forces away from online data. It works by filtering any information coming in to your private network or system through the internet. If anything is flagged up then it is prevented from coming through. So this protection is key. At Storm, as well as providing you with a highly available service we also utilise our knowledge and experience in securing this to the highest Payment Card Industry standards and manage and monitor 24/7.

Use plug-ins that offer extra security

We’ve mentioned Cloudflare. You can now protect all your web sites from common attacks including common spam and excessive bot crawling to more malicious attacks such as Cross-Site Scripting and SQL Injection as well as denial of service (DOS) attacks. These types of attacks can allow a hacker to deface web pages using legitimate functionality of your site by inserting malicious code into it. WordPress sites can be particularly vulnerable to this. An example of this would be when your site requests information be submitted in an online form. Hackers can use code to access your site via these simple forms, causing chaos for your website. The reasons for hackers vary. Maybe they want to access your data and sell your information on for profit. Or perhaps redirect traffic to sites that make money for them. Or maybe they just want to cause problems. Whatever the reason, Cloudflare provides protection against these types of threats and more, to help keep your website safe from defacement and data secure from theft.

Be aware

This sounds obvious, but simply being aware of any potential threats and newsworthy breaches is a good place to start. Being equipped with the knowledge and information can help you stay one step ahead and protect your data from threats.

Risk resilience

Even having basic security protocols in place is not enough. The problem is that you can only protect against the known risk factors or opportunities that already exist. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving and moving at a faster pace than the level of security measures in place. This is where risk resilience comes into play. It means responding to or reducing any damages caused by cyber attacks. Essentially it works before an attack happens. Storm Internet’s partnership with Cloudflare uses the collective knowledge of 6 million websites powers intelligent security that protects against anything from nuisance comment spam and excessive bot crawling to potentially fatal Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL injection and denial of service (DOS) attack.

Business continuity and disaster recovery makes up an other element of risk resilience. We wrote a blog about this some time ago which you can read here. Both involve having in place decent back up and management of the entire system should a disaster occur.

Cyber attacks will happen, and the best thing a business can do is be prepared. It is like buying insurance – you are protecting your business against what may happen. Risk resilience is like insurance. It is in place to ensure the organisation is sustainable before, during and after an attack.

Backups

Backups should be performed regularly in order to protect your data in case of a problem or disaster. Storm Private Cloud offers this facility to all customers so that should a disaster occur, you’re covered.