Soon after the Internet became a household word, so did “virus”. People learned that they had to protect their computers and email inbox or risk data loss, identity theft or malicious activity to their home machines. Over the last decade the internet has grown by leaps and bounds, and companies of every size now conduct business online.
While the software world has fought diligently to reduce the number of affective attack on the personal computer at home through anti-virus programs, hackers have turned their attentions to that which is most vital, but often not very well protected – the hosted website. A variety of tactics are being used by hackers against websites without regard to the size or industry of the business or organization. An American-based Internet security agency recently reported that Internet threats rose by two-thirds in April of 2009.
Many of these attacks are related to phishing - the attempt to illegally acquire sensitive information from site visitors and internet goers. With login credentials and other information, hackers can mount attacks against an organization’s intranet, their website or their data with valid, stolen information. In some cases information can be solicited from the web hosting company itself, with a hacker posing as an employee of the company.
Also on the rise is a form of attack known as Denial or Service (DOS) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. With a DDoS attack, unknowingly, users’ computers across the world can be under the control of a hacker. A hacker can cause hundreds to thousands of computers to hit servers that are hosting websites. This mass attack can cause servers to stop, crash or restart resulting in one to hundreds of websites going down. Most recently, there were 4 major attacks against web hosts. This strategy affected thousands of web hosting companies’ clients, taking thousands of websites and web applications offline. The affect of having your lead- or revenue-generating website offline for an extended period of time can be devastating.
Protection from human manipulation, DDoS attacks and other common Internet attacks can and should be handled at the hosting level by a secure hosting company. Human manipulation can be mitigated through change management protocol. Change management protocol requires a level of interaction to help prevent unauthorized access to hosting information from falling into the wrong hands. A secure, redundant network infrastructure, top-tier equipment and superior data centers will mitigate Denial of Service attacks from effectively bringing servers down.
Industry-leading, web host security means much more than just a firewall, more than just a system monitor that tells you when something goes wrong after the fact. Contact a FireHost agent now to see how FireHost‘s managed, proactive, secure hosting can protect you against a new rise in Internet attacks.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Web Hosting. 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.
