Shared hosting has its own sets of PROS & CONS that occupies major concerns in the heart of peoples having either a shared server or thinking to get one. One of the biggest concerns levy on exposure to security threats that lots of websites are hosted on the same server. If you too have a website hosted on a shared server it could affect another website too.
Need not worry! Because there are some prevailing methods by which ensures complete protection of your website from attackers, hackers, and other malicious activities.
In other words, ensure that your website kept safe by all possible reason. Make sure you are not using FTP accounts, email accounts, and other application. If using, please remove them in all. What about the extra unwanted files? Why create backups. Are there any older scripts running on the website that are not used now. Removing them manually would prevent hackers from eavesdropping.
Although the post is not about finding CONS of a shared web hosting, a quick overview of “How to secure your shared hosting account”. Anyway for those who always live in fear and being scared or concerned about security in general? Let’s look the other way to make your shared hosting account more secure.
Make regular backups
Every other web hosting provider advice to take backups in the various interval. It’s better to find a way out to DIY (do it yourself) and not relying on the hosting company.
Considering every other web hosting company provides automatic backups feature. In addition to that make a point to maintain your own backups too. For this purpose, you can either use a 3rd party plugin or directly visit Cpanel > File manager for creating backups.
How about restoration?
Backup is generally taken because of quick and predictable restoration. It is likely that a shared hosting provider has a restoration option? What if there is no restore button, are you aware of setting everything back up? There you collect an enormous amount of data for restoration over time. And more likely you don’t find the energy or have the proper skillset to get involved in this.
If you desire not to, I recommend you to get help from the management service that will help you out in the process of the retrieving the old data on the website. If you are looking for a reliable, affordable shared hosting to build WordPress, Joomla, Magento site who takes periodic backups then consider trying a reliable web hosting.
Frequency
What is the frequency of taking backups? There are 2 things to consider such as the size of your collected data, and the criticality of your business. For instance, if you plan to create backups daily soon server space will get occupied fully. And by the end of the first quarter, you soon have to either upgrade the server space or delete the older backup to create new.
The 2-Step Authentication factor
For most of us the 2- step authentication factor is not important but for some 2-step authentication is vital where a user safeguards personal identity by using an OTP sent over SMS or email. It is best to put a 2 step authentication factor in place when not using a strong password that is easily guessed by the hacker.
Avoid Untrusted Sources
We often get enchanted towards feature full UX and mind-blowing design of websites created by third-party sources. This is the source for several nasty problems occurring from stealing of saved passwords or credit card info or injecting malicious code that results in a weak link of your website security to compromise. There are mostly websites developed through codes with incredibly crafted attacks through PHP functions gets manipulated for remote code execution.
Therefore it is better to purchase plugins, themes, and libraries from trusted sources. For WordPress users here are some WordPress themes providers that have good online reputations who provide themes, plugin and can be the good reliable source.
Strong Passwords
How do you set a password? Probably something is taken out from your personal life, an aid of dictionary attack could crack the shell out open and leave your website venerable. We recommend using a free and reliable password manager LastPass password generator that allows you to pick a random strong password and save them in the vault.
Forget about remembering the password or writing down somewhere. Passwords that can be remembered are easy to crack. Instead, use a sophisticated password generator to make it hard for the hacker to guess.
Update software regularly
If your shared hosting account permits you to upgrade the administration panel or install software then ensure all software are upgraded properly. When new software are released new patches and security loopholes are discovered from time to time. There is no telling how many installations, apps, and server and are running in old software. Upgrading them when new updates are available makes the whole process a lot easier.
Choose a safer hosting provider
Mostly all web hosting providers are acquainted with aggressive advertising on the web for grabbing customers. So how do you decide which hosting provider is “better”. Hosting infrastructures are complex and tricky to understand other than reading reviews of others, While website design or customer friendliness is one of our top priority. But if you are facing issues with existing hosting don’t be shy to try other web hosting and feel free to go with a younger hosting they may be early in business and might have to provide quality services to customers to prosper in hosting arena.
Use DDoS protection
Why use DDoS protection? World Wide Web is an access point to a plethora of websites. Now there are thousands of websites receiving a heavy amount of traffic worldwide. Whereas 99% are bots trying to find a way in, Not only these useless requests eat up the system resources but consume the valuable bandwidth from your Quota.
Mostly shared hosting claims to offer unlimited Bandwidth but believe it or not, there is nothing unlimited. For instance, if they offer unlimited everything lately, the physical networks that connect everything have a limited capacity. In a different scenario, your website can serve limited if you go beyond the allotted quota or monthly usage than the site will tend to slow down.
And, who visits a slow website? Right
Often we do see an attack is operated through controller by controlling several computers to the targeted website. This means you can be the victim or an unwilling participant in an attack like this.
This type of attacks from the adjoining computer system is collectively known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that remains one of the most dangerous virtual attacks from a large pool of request sent to a specific website.
That said companies like CloudFlare, SUCURI have built a defense system around that intelligently measure the potential risks associated by matching attacks based on patterns of traffic.
List of 3 Best Online DDOS Protection Service Agency/alert-note]“Prevention is better than cure” we almost heard it everywhere and for all those have to decide among themselves if risking losing all your business is worth it.
Cloud Firewall
What exactly is a firewall? Is it a piece of software that runs on your computer that blocks or allow traffic by a set of rule. Now, it somewhere clears the concept behind the cloud firewall. Cloud firewall helpful when it is set to protect the digital properties by aggressively filtering out all the incoming as well as outgoing traffic. If a hacker attempt to penetrate the wall the result is instant blacklisting which makes it hard to break in.
Take the advice of using a cloud firewall at any cost. This goes especially with the WordPress users, WordPress which is not seen as a sure platform by design. Even if you start with a plain HTML website DDoS attacks can potentially harm or may wipe out all your website data in a fraction of seconds.
Antivirus and Malware scanning and/or removal
You should think about the protective actions used by your hosting provider but what you can do is to protect your website such as occasional malware scans and can you see the reports? If the account becomes infected try identifying and removing the infected malware as soon as possible.
But why can’t malware automatically be blocked? It is due to malware being the script like PHP make it hard to block. PHP is a scripting language that runs under your account username. PHP alone can make changes to your account. Malware can change a file, inject something while unloading a file on your site.
There are few Interserver shared hosting such as web application firewalls but not all can defend or protect against possible security issues. Make sure the web hosting you are willing to purchase scan potential harmful substances on the server even at the time found some malware signature.
Mostly high traffic website fall in this spectrum ranging from shared hosting to dedicated server hosting. Ensure the hosting provider taking care of many security measures that potentially put a threat to your website. All you need is to learn exactly which features the hosting company provides.
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