Useful References
Introduction
Hosting a website that can withstand various malicious attacks and unauthorised access is not an easy task. There are several approaches to mitigating digital threats and reducing your site's vulnerabilities. There is no one-fits-all solution however and the site's owners or administrators should plan for various contingencies well in advance, in lieu of their financial situation and technical expertise. This guide attempts to describe several scenarios and various approaches for secure hosting.
Step1: What are you planning to host?
- Website - standalone website, blog, forum
- Internet Server - mail server, VPN, proxy, VoIP server
- Web Application - custom database, in-browser application
Step 2: What are your hosting options
Each category will include details of hosting options for additional reference we include here core hosting types and a methodology for choosing a hosting provider:
- Dedicated Hosting
- Shared Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
- Choosing a hosting provider
Step 3: Plan for contingency and threat mitigation
For each form of system use relevant threats and strategies to mitigate them are include. These approaches are ordered in terms of technical ability requirements. The following topics are relevant to all setups:
- Data backup and recovery
- Password management
- Data Encryption
- Secure communications
- Brute force and Denial of Service attacks
Step 4: Decide on your level of technical expertise
Throughout this guide we will use the following key to differentiate the difficulty level associated with each type of system setup. More technically complicated setups will require either permanent IT staff or access to an IT provider. The latter may be limited by an organisation financial resources.
- High Technical - multiple experiences of server administration, can confidently install/update server software; apache, mysql mail server
- Intermediate Technical - some experience of server administration, can install and manage software via guides, can use ssh and commandline interface
- Basic Technical - no experience, can use software management interfaces such as CPanel