Today, we happily announce SSD Storage & Zeus Powered Virtual Load Balancer add on features to you.

FireHost SSD Storage

Solid state drives (SSD) offer preferable I/O (input/output) rates and access times that you just can’t achieve with a traditional, disk based storage system. Database and web application response times can increase by up to 60%, improving your users’ experience. A new concept in cloud hosting, early adopters of SSD storage enjoy the following benefits:

• Enterprise-grade Dell EqualLogic SAN
• Higher IOPS with 1/4th the latency of a SAS solution
• Configured with RAID 50 Redundancy
• Daily Snapshots
• 30-Day Backup Retention
• Configure a secure cloud server

FireHost Load Balancers

New Load Balancers powered by Zeus Technologies replace traditional hardware versions, to provide high-availability with more flexibility. Equipped with 1GB RAM, 1 processor, and 10GB hard drive (standard), virtual load balancers allow businesses to more effectively predict future capacity by analyzing the comprehensive historical data and usage trends through a convenient web-based interface. Other great load balancer features include:

• Real Time Scalability
• Session Persistence
• Clustering
• Content Based Routing
• Health Monitoring
• Learn more about load balancers

It’s our passion to provide the most secure, scalable, and high performance cloud hosting solution available. We strive to stay on the forefront of technology, to better serve you everyday, and we hope you enjoy these new features.

FireHost lets businesses combine SSD storage and virtual load balancers, to achieve a level of performance unmatched in the cloud hosting space. To add SSD storage and load balancers to your secure cloud servers, contact us via ticket, live chat or call 877-262-3473.

Consumers may not know the term SSL certificate, but they do increasingly recognize “secured by”, “protected by” and “verified by” badges on the eCommerce websites they visit.

Unfortunately, each web browser has the ability to determine where and how SSL certificates display, and some of the most popular web browsers suppress SSL badge visibility by decreasing the opacity or moving them to an inconspicuous location on the web page.

Extended Validation (EV) certificates (aka “The Green Bar” to consumers) combat browser suppression because they’re displayed front and center on every page where the SSL certificate has been installed correctly.

Compared to basic SSL certificates, EV certificates take longer to obtain because they include physical and legal validation of your business. EV certs provide the same level of encryption as regular SSL methods, and they tend to be a little more expensive to maintain, but they are the most trusted and recognizable way to reassure shoppers.

SSL badges offer more than just “feel good” reassurance to shoppers. The encryption provides real protection for PII transmitted thru an eCommerce site, and SSL certificates purchased from a reputable and accredited, business-grade provider come with insurance ($250,000 for a single site EV for example) that provides financial backing for your business and consumers should the encryption fail.

With all the risks facing eCommerce websites, SSL certificates are an affordable “must-have” costing approximately $40/month for entry level protection.

SSL encryption and validation is a wonderful and necessary technology, however it comes with a few “special considerations” that could have negative repercussions if they’re not handled in a professional way. For example, SSL products are useless if they’re installed incorrectly, and the encryption / decryption process can slow down your application’s server.

For eCommerce websites requiring high availability, we provide expert installation and a process called SSL Acceleration to prevent these caveats from negating the SSL product’s wonderful benefits.

Expert SSL Installation involves knowing where to install an SSL certificate, not just how to technically enter the code on the page. Every page with user input should be accompanied by https:// protection. “My Profile”, “Your Account”, “Checkout Here” and “Login” pages accurately described by those handles should always be protected by SSL encryption.

It’s not as simple as that however. eCommerce websites in particular have a unique set of SSL certificate installation requirements. For example, the shopping cart should be protected, but not necessarily product pages. An SSL certificate must be installed in such a way that it’s encryption resides within the page not the user’s session. If these intricacies are left unattended, your SSL has a higher chance to fail and/or make your site load improperly and with errors.

SSL Acceleration is a Cadillac solution for high traffic eCommerce websites that want to maximize SSL capabilities. In simple terms, acceleration means offloading SSL validation to a load balancer instead of using the web application server’s valuable resources to deliver the SSL encryption/decryption process.

For eCommerce websites, SSL acceleration helps ensure optimal load times during peak traffic days (and weeks), but acceleration should not be considered a seasonal “nice to have”. On calmer shopping days, SSL acceleration allows eCommerce site administrators to protect more page content (perhaps even proprietary non-public facing page content) and use SSL technology in the way it was intended – to protect all (or as much of) the content located online from being intercepted and misused by malicious cyber criminals.

Months in the making, our new corporate office embodies FireHost’s stance on security and takes our commitment to secure, contiguous support a step further. The following precautions contribute to the facility’s mission critical infrastructure and hospital-grade redundancy, designed to help us serve our customers to the very fullest under a variety of circumstances.

• Fully operational internal data center
• Backup generators
• Multiple Internet providers
• Secure keycard access with role based control
• Video surveillance

The new headquarters provides a solid foundation for us to provide unwavering, managed support 24x7x365. “This space is locked down tight and impervious to power outages. It’s comfortable, functional, and it will help us serve our customers more reliably,” explains Chris Drake, FireHost CEO.

Demand for a larger, more industrial corporate office is driven by our recent growth. The new facility has capacity to accommodate our current team and the new, FireHost employees we anticipate hiring over the next several years.

Here’s a few pictures of the new FireHost HQ.

At FireHost we are continually striving to make the secure hosting services that we provide to our customers even better, so that they can have the luxury of running securely and worry-free around the clock.

We are happy to announce our latest addition to the MyFireHost customer portal – Security View. Today is just the beginning of an impressive line up new features and enhancements that we’ll be integrating into our service in 2011.

Through Security View, you will have a front row seat to monitor your blocked attacks, in real-time with charts and graphs that help you visualize how frequently hackers attempt to breach your secure servers, websites and web-based applications.

Founder and CEO of FireHost, Chris Drake voices his concern for web security and the fundamental need for the new enhancements, “Most companies don’t realize how many attackers attempt to breach their websites and applications on a daily basis. We are so confident in our ability to block cybercrime that we’re opening the curtain and inviting our customers to see how well we protect their websites. Security View exposes the reality of cybercrime and lets our customers know we’re really looking out for them.”

Here a few of the key features Security View provides:

• View blocked application layer attacks (SQL Injections, XSS Attacks, Email Hoarding Events, Directory Traversals, and more)
• Sort and filter malicious activity by hour, day, week, month, or year
• View attack origins by region in real time, for each of your IPs
• Customize views to see attacks on your entire network, all the way down to an individual IP

Security View is a standard feature available to all customers with Secure Servers virtualized with VMWare. The next time you login to MyFireHost, simply navigate the tab labeled “Security” and check it out.

The website’s intended facade was replaced with a tearful picture of Maradona under the caption “We made you cry” after the Argentine team defeated Peru 2 to 1 on Saturday.

Under Maradona’s image, the hacker included a Peruvian team photo proclaiming “For the biggest cry baby of all time. We didn’t win at the football, but we did on the web!” And as a final insult, Elite Peruvian threw in a soundtrack of Peruvian folk music playing in the background.

Details on how the hacker accessed Maradona’s website are forthcoming, but you can see images of the defacement on Graham Cluley’s blog. Referring back to Maradona’s 1986 FIFA World Cup quarter finals match, Mr. Cluley suggests Maradona seek a more concrete website security solution than the “Hand of God.”

We agree. For website security, FireHost may be the best option.