Archive for March, 2009

Get Rid of Hackers Once and For All

by FireHost Evangelist on March 31st, 2009

You’ve probably heard of the blog software WordPress, or content management programs such as Drupal or Joomla. These open source tools provide phenomenal access to a better managed, more vibrant, and productive visitor experience on your website. They are called open source because their source code is freely available for anyone to use or adapt. Unfortunately, this means hackers have access to the code too, giving them an opportunity for exploitation.

applicationprotectionModern hackers have highly advanced tools at their disposal which can cripple your website, or worse, steal your data. Hackers have started exploiting vulnerabilities in open source platforms, and if your CMS is not properly secured, hackers can ruin your web reputation, or worse your business.

Having a security-focused web hosting provider can help prevent attacks. Before you trust any hosting provider with your website, ask them how they handle security for your website. Most hosting providers have an intrusion detection system (IDS), which simply notifies you after an attack. By that time, the damage has been done. This reactive approach does not provide real security, putting your website, your data, and your business at risk.

At FireHost, we use three layers of application protection to catch, stop, and prevent attacks. Our first priority is providing security to our clients, which we deliver through dynamic intrusion prevention. This is proactive security you can trust and rely on.

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Geographically Redundant Email – Never Miss a Message

by FireHost Evangelist on March 27th, 2009

redundant_email1How many times has an important client or co worker asked “Did you get my email?“, and how many times has your answer been, “No. I did not receive it! Could you please resend?”

FireHost wins and retains hosted email clients because we do a very effective job of scanning all incoming email for viruses and spam, then preventing any infectious or offensive messages from reaching your inbox. Comparing our hosted email service to competitors, we should be satisfied knowing that we provide unrivaled anti-spam and virus protection, but we’re not. We’ve taken hosted email one step further and built a better email “mousetrap”.

Effective today, every FireHost email customer’s service has been upgraded to our shiny, new, redundant email environment. <Non-technical readers should skip to paragraph 4. The bullets below will really only be interesting to “geeks”.>

  • FireHost configures your domain with our Dallas facility as the primary mail exchange (MX) record, and we’ve made a secondary, backup MX record for your email in our Scottsdale, AZ data center.
  • Should the Dallas data center become unavailable for any reason, your incoming and outgoing email will be routed to and queued in the Scottsdale facility until Dallas comes back online.
  • At that point, all queued email is delivered to you or your recipient’s inbox.

We’ve taken this extra step to ensure you never miss a message because we recognize that missing an important email is more than just annoying and embarrassing. It costs you business! Continuing our commitment to be your secure web hosting provider, FireHost is redefining the standard for hosted email service providers by squelching the potential for losing email due to service outages.

If you have any questions at all about the changes to your current email service, please contact Sales so we may find out more about how to fulfill your email needs.

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Is Your Website Ready for the Digg Effect?

by FireHost Evangelist on March 24th, 2009

1 Million HitsAttracting more than a million interested visitors is becoming common, especially when you launch a new brand identity or a new product. This is great, as long as you have a secure hosting provider who can keep you online and ready for business.

Handling the Digg effect requires a worldwide content delivery network, in addition to massive processing and bandwidth resources. Typical hosting providers aren’t up to the challenge, and it’s common for websites to shut down and remain offline for hours at a time simply because their hosting provider isn’t properly equipped with reliable CDN technology.

Website downtime due to visitor traffic spikes doesn’t happen to FireHost CDN customers because we have an extensive content delivery network and bandwidth flexibility to deliver your videos and downloads worldwide. Spanning five contents with 45 points of presence in 23 cities around the globe, our worldwide content delivery network ensures your website’s content is consistently and quickly accessible, especially when the Digg effect is in full force.

Additionally, FireHost does not subscribe to bandwidth throttling practices. We allocate resources to web hosting customers in accordance with each individual website’s traffic, providing precisely what every client needs, when they need it.

Look to FireHost’s content delivery service to ensure your website stays online and available to potential customers when you need it most.

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USA Today: “SQL Injection Attacks Hit 450,000 a Day”

by FireHost Evangelist on March 20th, 2009

Modern cybercriminals are out to do harm. Simple as that. They penetrate vulnerable websites, steal private customer information, and commit identity theft every day. Hacker tools and methods of attack have become more sophisticated and wider in scope in recent months.

USA Today reports:

SQL attacks take aim at the database layer of websites. They typically were manual attacks designed to pilfer customer data from merchant websites. But last June someone figured out how to automate the attacks, and use them to plant infections. By mid-June, daily attacks spiked to 25,000; by October they topped 450,000 a day.

Holly Stewart, IBM ISS threat response manager, says the infections take advantage of security flaws in cool website features, such as online-delivered video, music, photos, documents and work files.

Giant financial institutions and online merchants have put up strong defenses, says Phil Neray, vice president of security strategy at Guardium, a database security firm. “The same is not necessarily true of regional banks and credit unions, smaller online retailers and state government agencies.”

FireHost is in business to address website security needs of the “smaller guys” Mr. Neray mentions above. It’s imperative your company respond to the threat of cybercriminals swiftly and effectively because SQL attacks strike governments and credit card companies every day. FireHost can help your company avoid the negative spotlight.

SQL attacks are preventable when your website, email, databases, and other applications are hosted with a security-focused web hosting provider. We’ve taken industry-leading measures to make enterprise-level security attainable for every business because we know that the last thing you need to do with your time is mitigate a high-profile website attack on customer information.

Most hosting providers don’t invest the resources required to maintain a prevention-focused, secure hosting environment. If your company does business online however, you owe it to your customers and employees to make sure their most important information is protected.

Here’s just a sample of what puts FireHost secure web hosting in a class of its own:

Network Layer Security
FireHost runs dual Sonicwall internet security devices, providing firewall redundancy for every client. This layer safegaurds websites, emails, and databases from unauthorized intrusions, like SQL attacks.

Application Protection
We also run a web application firewall to close the holes within your website’s applications, the entry-point for SQL attacks.

Vulnerability Monitoring
FireHost partners with McAfee to provide you with web-based website vulnerability auditing and remediation mangement, completing scans every fifteen minutes.

Register here to have a FireHost Security Agent perform a vulnerability report for your website. We will contact you shortly with the eye-opening results.

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