Security should be of the utmost priority for companies, as they deal with sensitive information and data constantly online. Due to the continual advancement of the digital platform, nothing seems to be more dangerous than data breaches and cyberthreats.

Whether it is business data or your user information, there is always a high risk in conducting trade over the internet. No wonder companies are strict about selecting the best security practices for their websites. It is a challenging topic, especially when choosing a hosting provider for their website. Let’s explore how to identify the potential threats and critical attributes to consider while choosing the best host for your company’s website.

1. DDoS Protection

DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service attack, refers to a malicious attempt to disrupt network traffic by overwhelming the surrounding infrastructure or the target with internet traffic. Due to this unwanted traffic load on the network, the target might crash or fail to function correctly, thereby denying the services to the users. As a result, the users cannot reach their destination on the webpage, leading to a terrible user experience.

Why is DDoS protection important? It is required to save the company’s reputation and deliver excellent user interactions. Due to these malicious attacks, the company can lose sales and even its reputation in the market. The longer this happens, the greater the magnitude of the damage incurred.

How can your web host assist in DDoS protection? Your web host is your first line of defense in DDoS mitigation. They should provide protective layers to secure your website or network traffic from such attacks. This includes regular security updates, strong password enforcement, multi-factor authentication, frequent risk assessments, and the deployment of firewalls and antivirus software systems.

2. SSL Certificates

SSL certification plays a crucial role in determining the safety of a website for users. It is the key factor in ensuring the site’s security for transactions and other activities. When choosing a web hosting solution, companies should prioritize SSL certification. SSL, a protocol renowned for encrypting internet traffic and verifying server identity, is instrumental in safeguarding user data and confirming website ownership, thereby protecting the site from potential attackers.

SSL or TLS encryption, which enables sites to use HTTPS instead of HTTP, is not just a luxury but a necessity. The data file hosted on the original server contains the website’s public key and other crucial information. This encryption is vital in verifying whether the client is connecting to the correct server that owns the domain, thereby preventing domain spoofing and other cyberattacks.

Typically, the SSL certificates include information like:

• Domain name
• Associated subdomains
• Person and/or organization details
• Certificate authority’s digital signature
• Certificate’s issue and expiration date
• The public key

Public and private keys can be used for SSL certification. The data already encrypted with the public key needs the private key for decryption. Such certification helps secure users’ login credentials, credit/debit or any online transactions, medical records, legal documents, contracts, proprietary information, personal information, etc. The different types of SSL certificates are:

• Organization Validated certificates (OV SSL)
• Unified Communications Certificates (UCC)
• Extended Validation certificates (EV SSL)
• Wildcard SSL certificates
• Multi-Domain SSL certificates (MDC)
• Domain Validated certificates (DV SSL)

3. Web Application Firewall (WAF)

The next one on the list is the web application firewall. A WAF, a proactive application firewall, can monitor, filter and block HTTP traffic between the internet and the web service. It can prevent any sort of cyberattacks like file inclusion, cross-site forgery, SQL injection, cross-site-scripting (XSS), etc. It is a protocol layer 7 defense used for creating shields to mitigate the web application “zero-day” vulnerabilities.

Typically, a proxy server can protect the machine’s identity by using an intermediary. On the other hand, a WAF is known as a reverse proxy that can protect your server from any exposure by ensuring that the clients pass through the WAF layer.

The top benefits of WAF for your site are:

• Ability to automate a list of security tasks to block malicious activities and harmful traffic
• Network scanning to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities
• Send automatic reports to the control center for immediate action and detailed analysis
• User authentication is done using a token or password combination
• Ensuring that only authorized users can access the system and its resources
• Endpoint protection
• Application and network visibility
• Data collection to detect anomalies to identify new threats and attacks and flag them back to the control center

4. Malware Detection and Removal

Cybercriminals often use malicious programs to infiltrate the servers to get access to sensitive information and data. Malware refers to intentionally developed software that can cause disruption to the server, client, computer, network, servers, etc. These pose severe threats to the company data as they can leak private information that adversely affects the business. To protect your company from such activities, one must invest in defense strategies like firewalls, antivirus software, network security policies, regular patches, backups, isolating infected systems, etc.

Malware detection and removal refers to the techniques and strategies used to identify and block potential threats to secure the server network. While selecting the best web host for your company, look for advanced malware detection tools that can employ AI or artificial intelligence and machine learning to look for hidden and new malware threats without delay. Here are a few of the malware detection techniques for reference:

• Signature-based detection to identify any suspicious activities
• Static file analysis
• Dynamic malware analysis to study the malware in action
• Dynamic monitoring of operations to track and analyze the file system integrity using reactive forensic auditing as well as proactive rules-based monitoring
• Checksumming/cyclic redundancy check (CRC)
• Blocking the file extensions
• File entropy
• Application allowlist
• Malware honeypot
• AI-ML behavioral analysis

5. Automatic Backups and Restore

Still wondering how to choose a secure web hosting? Look for automatic backup and recovery to prevent unwanted data loss in case of system failures, human errors, regional disasters, espionage, etc. Data loss can severely affect your business as you rely on the user information for your business activities. During unforeseen events, you need backups to restore the lost data to conduct your online trade.

Automated backup systems are known for gathering, encrypting, compressing, and transferring data automatically from your computer systems to the backup servers. With this computerized feature, one never has to worry about data loss at any cost. Also, these automated backups are always scheduled and can be done without any input from the end user.

Some of the key benefits include:

• Reduces the company’s RPO
• Reduce the probability of losing the in-use files and information
• Recovery testing and disaster recovery readiness
• No human intervention can lessen the occurrences of human errors
• Automated syncs across the entire network
• Instant data restoration

6. Uptime Guarantee and Network Monitoring

If your website is down for a long time, it can badly affect user interaction. So, monitoring your network uptime is a key requirement while selecting secure web hosting services for your company. Uptime is the ultimate measure of system reliability. In plain terms, it means that your website is up and running around the clock without any interruptions.

Why do you need an uptime guarantee and network monitoring from your web host? That is because it helps monitor the IT network environment to ensure that your network works smoothly 24*7, even if there is any error. Constant monitoring can help detect the root cause if the service is down or the server fails to function correctly. The ultimate goal is to offer users uninterrupted access to the website without fail, ensuring an excellent user experience.

7. Transport Layer Security (TLS)

Transport Layer Security refers to the security protocol for securing privacy and data communications over the internet. It is responsible for encrypting data transference between the web applications and your servers for websites. It can also be used for messaging, voice over IP, email, etc.

The three primary functions of TLS are:

• Encryption- It hides the data when transferred from any third-party sites
• Authentication- Checking access and ensuring that legitimate parties can exchange information
• Integrity- To verify the website information and check for forged data or threats

As a company, obtaining TLS certification for your website is not just about security, but also about maintaining your brand’s integrity. This certification, issued to the domain or business with a server public key, is essential for validating the identity. By adhering to the TLS protocol, you can assure your users that their data and information are treated with the utmost confidentiality. This not only helps in establishing brand integrity but also ensures that the communication between the application and server is fortified with an additional layer of security.

8. Secure Password Policies

A secure password policy has to be one of the essential web hosting security best practices to look for. This policy refers to the predefined rules meant to enhance computer security by encouraging customers to create and use strong passwords. It is often a part of the official regulations of the company and can also be used to raise security awareness among users and employees.

One can refer to the password policy as the first line of defense against cybercriminals. Typically, it consists of:

• Minimum password length
• Minimum and maximum password age
• Multi-factor authentication
• Restriction on password reuse
• Restriction for failed login attempts
• Limit login time
• Uniquely generated passwords each time for login
• Avoid sequential or repetitive combinations
• Creating a passphrase
• Use of encrypted databases for password management
• Password managers and tools

9. Customer Support

Customer support is essential for running your website without any hassles, 24*7. In case of any technical problems or your server needs assistance, the web hosting provider must have round-the-clock customer support available via multiple channels like email, chat, phone, etc.

10. CDN Support

Apart from the essential web hosting security features, try selecting the one that offers your CDN. A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of interconnected servers that can help your webpage load instantly while handling data-heavy applications. It is critical for your website as it ensures its overall performance and user experience.

A CDN is responsible for reducing latency or delay in loading content on a website while handling the complicated nature of communicating traffic between the sites. This communication will always be two-way, as the clients send requests to the server, and the responses are sent back to the client.

The advantages of CDN are:

• Reduce bandwidth consumption and expenses
• Improve website security
• Decrease page loading time
• Increase the availability of website content

Conclusion

While selecting the web host, you must look for all the critical security attributes discussed above. It helps maintain your company’s reputation in the market while enhancing the security of sensitive data exchanged on your platform. Look for security protocols like SSL certificates, software backup, DDoS protection, frequent security updates, etc. Remember, changing your passwords regularly and creating multi-factor solid authentication are of utmost importance to protect your platform from malicious activities.

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