5 tips on how to keep your server secure

Raising security awareness is relevant for everyone who wishes to establish their online presence. It’s not a coincidence, as the risk of security challenges starting from stealing sensitive records and destroying important data to reputation loss is getting higher. The experts estimate that the harm from cybercrime would reach $ 6 trillion in the upcoming year.

Under such circumstances, it’s natural that everyone would want to implement all possible strategies to stay secure.  So here are top tips on how to protect your server:

Keep your backups offsite

There are two categories of people: those who make backups from the beginning and those who learn it the hard way. Don’t be the one from the second category and set up automatic backup creation to be able to recover the important data in case of emergency. Make sure to store them remotely, otherwise, if something is wrong with the current server your data may be lost. Using the remote file server solutions like Triofox will get you covered.

Protect SSH

This one is more relevant for those running a Linux server as using SSH is more common for Unix-based systems. First, change the 22 port to some custom one, as the majority of attacks are targeted on the default ports (speaking of ports, it’s also worth disabling all the unused ports as they may be used to expose your network). Make sure to replace the login with a password to SSH keys using a passphrase instead, as they are harder to guess, thus more secure.  Then, create a custom user with sudo rights, and disable the root one. The root has the highest access right, and if it is hacked, your server is completely exposed.

Use SSL

SSL helps to сreate an encrypted channel for information exchange between the client’s browser and a server to prevent a session from hijacking and stealing passwords, credit card details, and other sensitive information that is being transmitted. Thus, installing one on your website ensures a secure connection.

Set up Server Monitoring

Monitoring the server logs generated by core services and software installed on the server ensures you stay in control of everything that is happening. This way you can spot any alarming logs, abnormal activity, and user traffic and resolve the issues before they become critical.

Protect against malicious attack

In attempts to protect your server from malicious attacks, it’s worth getting armed with a firewall to filter the incoming traffic and block any suspicious requests. The next step is watching the files that are being uploaded to the server and the existing ones with trusted anti-virus software to purge unwanted files in time. Another threat comes with brute force attacks where the attackers use various password combinations to get in. Unfortunately, these attacks are often successful so using solutions like CSF (for Linux) or BFGuard (For Windows) can help you combat these attacks by blocking IP addresses after a certain amount of failed login attempts.

Another popular attack is DDoS that aims to overload a server with requests to bring it down. Unfortunately, there’s no 100% way to protect from them, as the traffic influx is generated from multiple networks, but rate-limiting the incoming requests and using protection solutions (like Imperva or CloudFlare) can help you mitigate them faster.

Implementing these tips will help you to ensure a better level of protection for your server, however, it’s not a single time measure. Maintaining a server requires constant attention, timely software updates, and conducting regular security audits.

For sure, some technical skills are required to implement these tips and you may need to hire a system administrator to arrange everything correctly. But these investments are justified by giving you peace of mind managing your server.