Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Hacking. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Hacking. Afficher tous les articles

samedi 12 novembre 2016

7 Tips to Help Secure Your Website Against Hacking Attacks



alt="7 Tips to Help Secure Your Website Against Hacking Attacks" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/data-transfer-500x200_c.jpg" />

The Web is not just about business. Billions of pages and blog entries are written every day, every second, by small website owners and bloggers looking to share their views with the world. That’s the charm of the Web: it provides a space for everyone, and for any kind of project.

Endless possibilities.

But the Internet is also a wild jungle: it hides dangers at every corner and nothing you make use of is even merely close to foolproof magic. If you run a non-profit or a solopreneur business online, in particular, you realize that moving all transactions to the Web can translate into extra caution in regard of your services.

Security is a truly crucial aspect to take in consideration when you plan your website: how can I secure my content and hard work against attackers? How can I provide the best possible user experience? These are questions you should ask yourself every time you update your website.

Why This Article and Why 7 Tips

Securing your site in an easy, n00b-ish way can be more utopia than reality, but that doesn’t mean someone who’s not a programmer or a computer scientist can’t add some security to their website. I chose seven tips that are both easy to apply and in-depth enough to tickle your curiosity on security issues, so that YOU will become — slowly but relentlessly — your own web security expert. All tips are specific to web hacking and I will also introduce techniques you can use to test your website for security holes. Don’t worry: nothing too hard to do, but it’s important that you become acquainted with the simple tools and techniques that can ward off attacks, for your projects’ sake. :)

Have fun!

Tip #1 — Spend A Little More Mind Power On Your Passwords

Number one web security hole is the use of the same password across more websites/webservices. A hacker that gets to figure out one password will have figured out all your passwords and will have easy access to all of your data, whether it’s your blog or your PayPal account. Keeping a list of your password(s) on paper or file isn’t a safe alternative either (unless you password-protect your files) because someone who hacks your computer will get easy access to your database.

But what if you can’t come up with a decent password?

  1. Use href="http://www.safepasswd.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a strong password generator to generate a hard-to-crack password, inclusive of alphanumeric and alternative symbols. The more random or pseudo-random a string of symbols is (i.e. the password’s symbols have no internal memory, they are unrelated with each other, so every symbol has equal chances to come after another), the safer it is.
  2. Use href="http://www.schneier.com/passsafe.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Password Safe to save and encrypt all of your passwords, which you can unlock by remembering a passphrase. The program uses the href="http://www.schneier.com/twofish.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Twofish algorithm to encrypt all passwords Password Safe is a Windows open-source project developed by Bruce Schneier. If you don’t use Windows, href="https://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Password Gorilla is a valid open-source alternative to Password Safe.

Here’s a front view of Password Safe with a database named ‘Websites’:

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1216-1.jpg" alt="Password Safe Program View" width="750" />

Here’s the details of a file inside of the ‘Websites’ database:

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1216-2.jpg" alt="Password Safe File View" width="750" />

 

Tip #2 — Take Good Care Of Your Scripts

It’s well known that website scripts and CMS platforms are the primary vehicle of hacking attacks. If you host scripts written in PHP, ASP and JavaScript, know that they may have security holes and bugs that their developers might have overlooked. Aside from contacting the developer immediately upon discovery of one of the above-mentioned issues, there are non-technical methods you can use to ensure your scripts won’t damage you:

  • Read your script’s version document thoroughly: it often contains details on patches and bug fixes
  • List to your software installer’s or administration panel’s or even Google’s (through Webmaster Tools) warnings: if you need to update or edit/remove a file, do it
  • Don’t install every existing plugin: check compatibilities and security notes first.

Also — and this is perhaps the most important factor — always, always keep your scripts and CMS’s up to date. The latest package of a software usually contains patches for the previous version’s bugs and security issues.

Example: WordPress upgrade warning from Softaculous

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1216-3.jpg" alt="Softaculous Upgrade Warning" width="750" />

Tip #3 — Perform Regular Folder And Administration Panel Checks

Sometimes hackers intrude into your site quietly, sneaky as cats, but they leave disasters behind: site spoofs, media files containing virus, executables and recoded webpages. Check your folders regularly, at least once every two weeks, to make sure nothing’s wrong with your files. Should you spot files you don’t recognize, remove them immediately. If that doesn’t work, contact your web host and get assistance (this is when you need a href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/compare-best-five-hosting/">good web host the most). In such cases:

  • Change your administration panel password (and username, if possible)
  • Perform a check of all files to see if they have been damaged
  • If you have an antivirus installed, run it.

Tip #4 — Secure Authentication

Web Security experts make use of a lot of methods to provide optimal safety to the systems and web transactions they work on: public key cryptography, chains of trust, signatures, SSL and TSL (Transport Layer Security). While you should definitely learn something about cryptography, it’s important that you start with learning how to use simple multi-factor authentication tools readied for you by experts:

  • href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/shieldpass-two-factor-authentication/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ShieldPass
  • href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-authenticator/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Google Authenticator
  • href="http://blog.duosecurity.com/2011/07/duo-two-factor-authentication-for-drupal-sites/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Duo Drupal

Why do you need href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-factor_authentication" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">multi-factor authentication? Because it will take to know your username, password AND your use-once-then-dispose token to gain access to your content; otherwise, access will be denied.

If you can, find an expert to tutor you as you learn about web security, or use online tutorials and courses.

Tip #5 — Beware of DDoS Attacks

Denial of Service attacks are fast-evolving and dangerous, together with server hijacking and the replacement of your services with spoof ones.

A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">DDoS attack forces the server in a state where its normal services don’t work, and the whole system is no longer available to end users.

What could cause a DDoS attack?

  • An open network configuration
  • Bugged, non-upgraded applications
  • Unsecured server configuration
  • No maintenance and/or monitoring of network activity

Inform your ISP about this form of attack and get informed, too. What your website host can do is to configure each server with a list of alternative DNS addresses, so when the default DNS becomes unavailable, the whole website will still work. A hacker can only have success in his actions when he gets to block ALL of the servers on the list — tough job, don’t you think? Another counter-measure can be the filtering of all incoming packets with unusual timings and/or from high-risk IP addresses. Your host should be knowledgeable about Denial of Service attacks, so discuss with them on DDoS prevention.

Tip #6 — Secure FTP Access With SFTP

Nothing changes for you, it works just like normal FTP, but SFTP, or Secure FTP, comes with a lot of benefits, security-wise:

  • It uses SSH to encrypt data and commands during file transfer
  • It uses the client’s server’s public keys to validate the server upon connection, to ensure it’s not an intermediary
  • It makes it impossible to a hacker to listen to your network traffic

The problem with the ‘regular’ FTP command is that it’s not encrypted: all uploads and downloads to and from the server are transmitted as clear data.

To access FTP via command line (if you’re a Unix/Linux/Mac OS user) you can use

sftp username@host

or just download a free FTP program that supports SFTP, such as href="http://filezilla-project.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">FileZilla (open-source).

Tip #7 — Learn About SQL Injection To Protect Your Site Against It

Beware of this nasty hacking method, keep your scripts up to date and immediately contact the script developer if you run into a security breach. Here’s how to run a simple test:

  • Enter the following SQL code into your web form (username and password):
    ' OR 't'='t'; --
    which becomes, at SQL level (see my previous article on SQL database management via phpMyAdmin for reference):
    SELECT * FROM users WHERE userid='admin' AND password='' OR 't'='t' ; -- '
  • Does it return your database content?

The code might work (I say ‘might’ because you could be lucky to have installed a very safe script) because ‘t’=’t’ is a mathematically true statement, so the SQL request will be always executed. A knowledgeable hacker could construct very elaborate SQL statements to achieve his goals, so make sure to contact the script developer and get assistance if the script you use is easily attackable. Or change script.

BONUS Tip #1 — Regularly Check Your Administration Panel Logs

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1216-4.jpg" alt="cPanel Logs Section" width="750" />

Your administration panel (cPanel, Plesk, etc.) comes with built-in tools for traffic analysis, access and security logs that you should keep an eye on at least once a week.

If you use cPanel, I recommend you check your style="text-decoration: underline;">Analog Stats tool every two days, as the tool shows detailed reports one:

  • HTTP requests
  • Monthly/Daily/Hourly reports of traffic activity
  • Referrers, Browsers and OS’s your traffic came from

Logs tools are the first your should look into when you believe your website has been attacked.

BONUS Tip #2 — Perform Bi-Weekly Backups

Backup every two weeks, or every week, if you can. With plugins like href="http://honey-babe.net/2011/online-backup-for-wordpress/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Online Backup for WordPress, you could even backup every day or every three days. What counts is that you constantly download fresh copies of your content, ready to be restored if something bad happens along the way. This article showed you what kind of attacks your website could undergo, and how to fight and prevent them, but your strongest weapon is really this: style="text-decoration: underline;">Backup. It’s the only way to return your website to its original state, as if a hacker could never play his dirty tricks.

Summary

So, what do you need to do, essentially?

  1. Learn. Knowledge is power! Learn about cryptography, DDoS and SQL Injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) and other types of attacks. Everything and anything that can help you develop a complete sight of what’s going on when your website gets hacked. The more you know, the more you can do to counter-attack.
  2. Keep up to date. With discoveries, tools and scripts upgrades. This article has stressed the importance of upgrading and updating your site software to ensure a more solid protection against attackers.
  3. Perform regular checks and backups. If you backup, you can restore!
  4. Report. When things go out of your control, report issues to script developers, authorities, and your host. They can do what you can’t.

Security Tricks From Software Engineering

Software Engineering is a charming field that every good engineer and computer scientist must learn about to apply when they develop software. But did you know it works the other way round, too? You — the user — can use Software Engineering concepts to make intelligent choices among site software offered to you from developers. You can:

  1. Understand that a bug can bring to severe hacking of your systems and data loss
  2. Learn about the 4 dimensions of dependability and use them to your advantage: availability, reliability, safety, and security
  3. Identify all your possible security concerns: loss of sensitive/important data, failure of certain services, high reconstruction costs (time, money).

What Should You Ask Yourself Before Installing and Using a Script?

DependabilityCan I trust this software?

width="100%">bgcolor="#dddddd">AvailabilityIs the script easily available to me? Is its developer contactable to get help from?bgcolor="#dddddd">ReliabilityDoes the script perform well? Does it have bugs or give me problems when I perform relevant actions to my goals?bgcolor="#dddddd">SafetyDo malfunctions and bugs severely affect security and performance?bgcolor="#dddddd">SecurityDoes the software have a built-in security module? Is it something I can manage?bgcolor="#dddddd">RepairabilityIf something goes wrong, can I manage it?bgcolor="#dddddd">MaintainabilityAm I able to maintain this software on my own?bgcolor="#dddddd">SurvivalWill the software still work under attack? Can I recover well from the attack?

Table of Vulnerabilities

width="100%">bgcolor="#dddddd">Softwarebugs; transparent data transmission; errors; public logsbgcolor="#dddddd">Humanlow strength passwords; unprotected directories; disclosure of
sensitive data; lack of system maintenance and update/upgrade

Resources For Further Reading

In April 2012 SourceForge.net released a white paper about href="http://resource.sourceforge.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=x8pb08,ywa8,54g,8lfr,2z5a,9nsl,kq37" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">10 Web Security Tips for its newsletter subscribers, an easy-to-read document you can use to develop further knowledge of the whole web security matter. It contains ten in-depth web security tips, which fueled inspiration to write the article your about to finish reading. Another good resource is Steve Gibson’s href="https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">overview on password security, a nice introductory article to the secrets behind safe password usage. If you’re interested in Web Security in all its aspects, Google Code put up a wonderful, easy-to-follow href="http://code.google.com/intl/it/edu/security/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">online course on the subject. :)


Page 22 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed




The Pitfalls of Hacking and Spam: 7 Ways to Protect Your Blog



alt="The Pitfalls of Hacking and Spam: 7 Ways to Protect Your Blog" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/better-wp-security-500x218_tr.jpg" />

Blogs are a great way to build up a business, share your talent for crafting or cooking, or educate a common audience. But they are also vulnerable to attacks from spammers and hackers. So, just like you protect your computer and your email with software, passwords and spam flags, you should also protect your website from hackers and spam. Here are 7 ways you can protect yourself and your blog.

1. Content Theft

The content you write and the photos you take are protected by copyright, but that doesn’t ensure they won’t be stolen. In addition to stealing your work, people will publish your content and RSS feeds without giving you credit. You need to put safeguards in place to protect yourself. We already href="//localhost/blog/blogging-tips/10-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-i-started-blogging">discussed image theft a few weeks ago. Continue to safeguard your photos with watermarking and keep searching for stolen images online.
Can you also protect your written content? Certainly! One great way I recently discovered uses a search engine optimization plugin, WordPress href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/">SEO by Yoast, which some of you may already have enabled. This is a great tool for SEO, but it will also, by default, set up a line of text for your content that you can search online. Once installed, go to the SEO menu in your blog and click the RSS link. Under Content, you will see this:

“The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.”

%%POSTLINK%% is code for the page name and %%BLOGLINK%% stands for the URL of your blog.

You can then Google “appeared first on Yourblogname.com” and it will show places your content or RSS feed appears. Some may be legitimate links, some will not.  I recently found someone using my RSS feed on a questionable. If you wish for someone to remove your data, the first step is to email them and politely ask them to remove it. Many will gladly comply.

However, you may get more pushback or no response.  Remember that your content refers back to you and therefore if it is published on a spammy site, you can pay the consequences. In that case, you’ll need to find the web host and write a letter of complaint to them.

href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/copyright.png">class="alignright size-full wp-image-6925" alt="copyright" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/copyright.png" width="300" height="70" />You can also do a page-by-page search using href="http://copyscape.com/">Copyscape.

There, you can enter the direct link of a URL you suspect may have stolen content or your general URL and you’ll come up with a list of sites that are pulling your content. Copyscape is a reliable tool that’s been around for years and is used by web professionals, so I highly recommend it if you are concerned about your content.

Finally, it’s very basic, but while you are protected legally, a copyright message on the bottom of your blog, with the current year, is a gentle reminder to not to steal content.  You can also set up a content policy to clearly lay out what people can and can’t do with your content.

2. Use Anti-Comment Spam Plugins

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6904 border" alt="akismet" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/akismet.jpg" width="750" height="339" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/akismet.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/akismet-300x135.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

I covered href="//localhost/blog/wordpress-blog/6-must-have-plugins-for-new-bloggers">this topic last week: you need to have plugins that protect you from spam.

href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/growmap-anti-spambot-plugin/">Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin requires commenters to check a box thereby eliminating spambot attacks, and href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">Akismet will sort through its spam database and flag suspicious comments as spam. If, like me, Akismet makes your site run slowly, another good one to try is the href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/stop-spammer-registrations-plugin/">Stop Spammers Plugin, which functions similarly. This is a highly aggressive plugin, so if you do activate it, make sure you immediately go to set up and select “Check Your IP” address to ensure you are not flagged as a spammer. In addition, it integrates the API key you get from Akismet so if you are signed up with them, so are still employing their database.

3. Use Security Plugins

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6969 border" alt="better wp security" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/better-wp-security.jpg" width="750" height="328" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/better-wp-security.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/better-wp-security-300x131.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

style="line-height: 1.5em;">Security plugins are a great way to not only safeguard your blog, but to have one tool that handles multiple functions. There are a host of these available, but one of the most popular ones is style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/">WordFencestyle="line-height: 1.5em;">. This comprehensive plugin is free of charge and walks you through a tour on startup. WordFence is designed to help things like IP changes. Ever get spam comments that look the same, but the IP address keeps changing so that you can’t use your black list properly? WordFence helps with sinister security issues like this, plus it patrols your blog for invalid logins, enables firewalls, and scans for latest software versions.

style="line-height: 1.5em;">Other security plugins that provide similar services are style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/bulletproof-security/">Bulletproof Securitystyle="line-height: 1.5em;">, style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/secure-wordpress/">Acunetix Secure WordPressstyle="line-height: 1.5em;"> and style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/">Better WP Securitystyle="line-height: 1.5em;">. Find the one that works best for your blog.

4. Protect Your Admin

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6970 border" alt="stealth login" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/stealth-login.jpg" width="750" height="346" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/stealth-login.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/stealth-login-300x138.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

style="line-height: 1.5em;">Having an unknown “admin” account appear on blog means you’ve been hacked and a faked admin account has been set up. To make this more difficult, you need to set up your administration properly. The first step is to stop using “admin” as your username.

style="line-height: 1.5em;">Come up with a creative username that no one will guess. For new blogs, WordPress allows you to create an alternate name.

style="line-height: 1.5em;"> What do you do if your blog already has “admin” as its username? You can fix this issue yourself. First, create a new user by going to Users, Add New and put in your  new username. Select “Administrator” under role. Create a complex password with letters, numbers, and characters. Login with the new username and delete the old “admin”, remembering to re-assign all the former posts you have written to a new user (the name you just created). Finally, visit your profile and select an option for “Display name publicly as” other than the username you just created. This will give an added layer of protection against hackers logging in.

Another good idea is to protect your login URL. The plugin href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/stealth-login-page/">Stealth Login Page adds another layer of protection by assigning you a unique authorization code that you must enter when you login and will redirect those who do not enter.

5. Keep Up To Date

style="line-height: 1.5em;">Plugins, themes and WordPress itself are regularly updated, much of the time to prevent vulnerabilities and security breaches from taking down your blog. WordPress gives you a reminder when anything needs an update right in your dashboard and its critical to keep on top of those updates. Do remember to have a backup before you do an update, in case things go “wonky.”

6. Set Safe Commenting Options

style="line-height: 1.5em;">In WordPress, under Settings, Discussion, you’ll see a page where you can select your Discussion Settings.

style="line-height: 1.5em;">This page contains basic options that you can set for your articles and comments, such as automatically closing comments on older articles, getting emailed whenever a comment is posted and how comment approval is handled. This section also contains comment moderation and blacklist queues. Simply add the words or IP address that will either put a comment into moderation or on the blacklist. A good example is “gold” or “ poker,” as these words typically come from spam commenters. Finally, check the settings of any plugins that deal with comments, such as CommentLuv.

7. Be a Smart Blogger

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6971 border" alt="Last Pass" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/lastpass.jpg" width="750" height="453" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/lastpass.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/lastpass-300x181.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

style="line-height: 1.5em;">Smart and safe blogging means take simple steps to protect yourself from hackers. For example, don’t store your password and logins electronically or on paper without a secure system in place, or store it in your browser. You can use password protection software or services to generate complex, safer passwords and securely store a number of them. Keep in mind that while online services are more convenient so you can access wherever you are, they are also more vulnerable that software you can store on your desktop. 

style="line-height: 1.5em;">For a competent online service, try style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://lastpass.com/">LastPassstyle="line-height: 1.5em;">, which comes free or in a Premium version for per year. For desktop, style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://keepass.info/">KeePassstyle="line-height: 1.5em;"> is both open-source (free) and has received lots of awards. Designed for Windows, the website links 3style="line-height: 1.5em;">rdstyle="line-height: 1.5em;"> party resources that have configured KeePass for Mac and mobile devices.

No blog is full proof and a determined hacker can break into anything.  However, as a new or up and coming blog, putting up these roadblocks will keep the average hacker away. A little bit of common sense security can go a long way toward protecting your blog.


Page 17 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed




Web Hosting News Update: Google’s Quantum Computing, Hybrid Cloud Backup and Celebrity Photo Hacking



alt="Web Hosting News Update: Google’s Quantum Computing, Hybrid Cloud Backup and Celebrity Photo Hacking" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/quantum-500x337_c.jpg" />

Keeping up-to-date with the latest hosting industry news can help you have a website that covers any back-end needs as well as front-end preferences from your visitors. While we can’t cover all the news at one time here at WHSR, we will try to keep you up-to-date on the latest advances, security concerns and research.

Quantum Computing

Quantum computers gain their power from atoms to complete tasks.

If your thirst for more speed and more memory has not yet been quenched, then you’ll be happy to hear that Google has announced plans to build quantum information processors at its artificial intelligence lab. The project is called “href="https://plus.google.com/+QuantumAILab/posts/UcWGvc9Y6dU" target="_blank">Hardware Initiative”. The possibilities for this initiative are endless. Not only might we see faster computers that run a bit differently than today’s models in the near future, but the impact will eventually trickle down to Internet servers as faster, more powerful computers work from the back-end of web hosting companies.

Hybrid Cloud Backup

If your company uses a hybrid cloud, or you back up any of your data (website or otherwise) on a cloud-based system, then you’ll be interested to hear that iDrive, the online backup storage provider, recently released an upgrade that allows users to back up data not only off their local drives but also to href="http://myhostnews.com/2014/09/online-backup-provider-idrive-launches-hybrid-cloud-backup-functionality" target="_blank">backup data in the cloud. While your server may provide a restore option, it is always smart to have another backup available. Files can get corrupted and then you’ll be in serious trouble if you don’t have important data stored. The hybrid backup feature allows website owners to back up SQL, Exchange, Sharepoint and Oracle data.

To learn more, check out Jerry’s recent article:  href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-tools/everything-you-need-to-know-about-cloud-storage/">Everything you need to know about Cloud Storage.

Internet Slowdown Day

id="attachment_10792" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright">class="size-full wp-image-10792" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/loading.jpg" alt="Image credit: Mathias Klang" width="300" height="169" />class="wp-caption-text">Image credit: href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wrote/1405887615/in/photostream/">Mathias Klang

Have you heard of href="http://www.cnet.com/news/top-websites-join-internet-slowdown-day-in-symbolic-protest-of-fast-lanes/" target="_blank">Internet Slowdown Day?

I hadn’t heard of this either until it popped up in my news feed one day and I went to research it a bit more. Apparently, on September 10th, some net activities will join together to show people how slow the Internet might run if fast lanes are allowed under the new Net Neutrality rules that the FCC is considering implementing. The goal is to make Internet users aware of the potential change and why those for a free and fair Internet should protect Net Neutrality.

Some of the sites participating include:

  • Reddit
  • Vimeo
  • Foursquare
  • Boing Boing
  • WordPress

The issue with the new rules is that it would allow Internet service providers to offer premium services so that some users would have even faster access than others. This could be bad for other users. As a website owner, you should be concerned because it could impact the traffic your site receives or the speed at which some users are able to access your site and services.

 Celebrity Photo Hacking

If there is one thing that is certain in today’s tech-driven world, nothing is ever entirely safe from hackers. This was proven yet gain the recent celebrity hacking scandal, where hackers were able to gain access to the private photos celebrities had on the cloud. In response, Apple has announced that they are beefing up their iCloud security features and users will be notified of any changes, particularly password changes.

Apple CEO Tim Cook href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/tim-cook-says-apple-to-add-security-alerts-for-icloud-users-1409880977" target="_blank">said to the Wall Street Journal:

“When I step back from this terrible scenario that happened and say what more could we have done, I think about the awareness piece. I think we have a responsibility to ratchet that up. That’s not really an engineering thing.”

Website owners should take heed of the occurrence, however, and make sure that any cloud where they store important data has security in place and also updates that security regularly. Hackers may be a pain in the neck, but they are smart. They eventually will figure out a way around most security patches. The only way to continuously protect your website and your clients from an attack is to continuously add new and more advanced safeguards.

WHSR brings you the latest tech news so you can keep your site functioning at top capabilities. We also share href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-reviews/" target="_blank">hosting reviews each month to help you make sure you are using the absolute best web host possible for your needs.


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