Tip #5
Be Paranoid About Your Website Traffic
Website hacks happen on one of two ways, from external sources or internal sources.
You’ve established strong passwords, validated user input, kept your software updated and limited viewable personal and business data. You’re paranoid and off to a great start. But now you need to monitor your website traffic.
Whether you are on a Windows Server, a flavor of Unix and Apache, all servers create several types of traffic logs. These logs can provide lots of information including smtp access, password crack attempts, and website access and error logs.
Website logs are your friends. Use them. If you don’t have access to these logs contact your hosting company and find out what they have available for your use. If your site gets little traffic, examining the logs manually will be easy. Read more…
Tip #6
Limit Your Exposure to Areas Where You Do Business
If your website business sells widgets to a small area, limit the website traffic you will accept. If you own a restaurant in Milan and use your website to sell Cannelloni to the local neighborhood, limit acceptable traffic and input to your immediate area. Read more…
Tip #7
Be Paranoid About Backups
Good backup policies are essential. Backups, just like server logs are your friends. Backups are excellent resources to have when your site is down, your server has crashed or you are moving your website to a new server. But there is another equally important reason to maintain original backups.
Properly maintained original backups allow you to do file comparisons with your existing website.
Compare the files on your web server against your original secured files. Notice any file differences? If you do it is possible your site or server has been hacked. Read more…
Tip #8
Be Paranoid About Your Email Addresses
Everybody hates spam except the spammers. Spam accounts for close to 90% of all email communication. It’s big business. It’s profitable. For the chance to make a millions to billions of dollars with very little effort, spammers have a great incentive to make your life miserable.
Spam brings unwanted advertisements and the dangers of viruses, Trojans, malware, spyware, identity theft and control of botnets.
Receive email and chances are you will receive spam.
Your first line of defense is your email address. Read more…
Tip #9
Use Country IP Blocks
Country IP Blocks provides real time country specific network location data on every active IP Address around the globe. This data allows you to know the origins of your server or website traffic and respond accordingly. Read more…