In this modern-age world, we are constantly on our toes to maintain the fine balance between personal and professional life, and in this balancing act we often drain ourselves, consequently leading to physical and psychological disorders. How strongly we desire to own duplicates of ourselves so that our workload could be shared and burden lessened. However, due to budget and societal constraints we can only dream about the concept of duplication. Yet, we have a cheaper version to provide us solace in this rat race – The Internet. Today, people conveniently transact over the Internet to purchase and sell financial commodities, consumer durables, appliances and so much more.
Even though the advent of Internet technology has improved our lifestyle immensely yet it poses a serious threat to our existence. With the incidents of hacking, phishing and internet frauds on the rise, consumers are transacting online with serious consideration. Procuring a stellar designed e-commerce website is not enough. During online financial transactions like shopping or banking the key details of the consumer like credit card information, user name and password are transferred from one server to the other, and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) ensures the information transfer in a secure manner.A webpage or a website will reflect its security through certain indicators like URL, Lock icon and SSL certification (Verisign, GeoTrust).
While for a server to attain security it must diligently keep up with the security updates, yet it does not guarantee an absolute secure server. Let us examine the case of Linux. This operating system is considered to be the most dependable and secure. However, its popularity has attracted numerous hackers to concentrate their break-in efforts. There are exploits that are discovered from time to time, however the open nature of Linux fixes such exploits quickly, and security announcements are disseminated widely, containing either temporary workarounds or pointers to updated software.
Although the security exploits are reported from an external environment or service yet these can be conveniently and effectively used by hackers to break into a system. In all likelihood the hacker will penetrate the system from within, because there are multitudes of commands and utilities fired from the shell in comparison to the external environment.
To battle the security issue of the server, experts recommend; avoid revealing shell accounts to users unless absolutely necessary. Even if the user is trustworthy, a weak password will allow the entrance of the hacker within the blink of an eye.
To increase the security of your server, the following pointers provide an insight to the security solutions.
The foremost being, a constant upgrade of system tools, applications, and kernel. Performing regular upgrades will ensure that the server is not junked with old redundant security measures that are easily prone to hacker’s target. Rather most reported cases of server security abuse lies imbedded in the failure of diligent pursuit of updating the server.
Manage the passwords in an effective and efficient manner. Employ Shadow passwords. Ensure the multiple shell access passwords are strong and changed often. Resist the temptation of deploying the same password across multiple servers, else the probability of hackers’ breaking into all those servers increase.
Lastly, for secure server switch from “telnet” to “ssh”. Telnet is insecure because sessions are unencrypted and an open telnet port is initial place of connect for a hacker. For more information you can visit www.clearcenter.com or you can call 801.994.9625.