How To Assess Web Hosting Security Before Buying A Package

When it comes to running any website, an often overlooked factor is security. Unfortunately, most site owners have no idea about the dangers associated with web hosting and how vulnerable some scripts or hosting packages can be. The one vital thing that has to be remembered is that the majority of security problems can be taken care of by simply working with a reliable web hosting provider.

You might think that the security of your site is not important. For instance, if you run a service like Noll Law car accident lawyer Springfield, it is easy to think that it does not matter if the site is down or the databases are compromised. However, even a few minutes offline can hurt the reputation of a business.

Whenever you want to buy web hosting, be sure that you think about the following.

Infrastructure Element Version History

The web hosting provider will always be responsible for the security of the applications that are offered, unless you rent a dedicated server and you are the one that has to take care of everything. With this in mind, you need to be sure that infrastructure elements are updated. This includes server operating system, CPanel, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, caching and much more. When it comes to what you install, like WordPress, plugins and themes, this is all up to the site owner, not the hosting company.

Are Accounts Isolated?

In many cases it was observed that there are hosting companies where user accounts are not actually isolated from each other. This is a huge potential threat as someone else might end up having access to your account. There were many cases where an attack led to getting access to databases of all sites on a server. You can easily imagine how damaging this can be for a business. The best hosting provider always keeps accounts separate. The other server users cannot access the account.

Sever Log Availability And Duration

Talk to the hosting provider about server logs. You are interested in knowing for how long they are available and what they cover. These are important since they offer a great medium to use in order to investigate the circumstances associated with a site attack. In the event there are no server logs kept or they only cover a really short period of time, they cannot help you. It would practically be impossible to figure out if the site was compromised or not, together with how problems appeared.

Server Backup Policies

When sites are backed up, which should be the case, you want to know about how often this happens and for how long the backups are kept. One of the simplest ways to restore the hacked site is to simply restore a backup. The best hosting providers always offer very fast backup access and actually store numerous backups that can be used by site owners as problems happen. Ask questions about where hosts are stored and remember the fact that most entry-level plans just do not have a backup in place to cover you for something bad that would happen.