HostMonster Website Security Review
Securing a website is not an easy task. Many will tell you that this host has this and that feature but ultimately, most of your security will come from how good you are at managing the risks associated with running a business on the Internet.
Hostmonster Security
First it comes the security of the hosting environmenty you are using. These days, all linux or linux compatible server comes more or less with the same standard features that make the system reasonably secure. You couldn’t expect military grade security from a host that serves small to medium businesses, but the security measures of Hostmoster are very good.
Your Passwords
This is the first line of defense. You should use strong passwords to access your hosting space. The vast majority of clients use very weak passwords that could compromise their hosting space very easily. A strong password has letters and numbers in lower and upper case and also some other characters as.: %ยท(&, making it very difficult to guess, even if a computer had a chance to test passwords one after another (which is not possible when brute force access is checked at the server).
Your PC
Another problem is brought by Spyware. Spyware that infects your PC could access your hosting space and put malicious code into your site in order to infect other computers that visit your web and don’t have automatic upgrades of the operating system. Many will blame the host for this, but the only culprit is the Spyware that infected your PC and accessed your website through the passwords stored in your computer.
PHP Scripts, plugins and other programs
If you want to install PHP scripts in your hosting space, make sure that they are wildely used, so errors could be fixed fast. Some time ago, I had a client that installed a PHP script to generate articles for his website. That script didn’t checked that the parameters passed to it where legit, so the program was open to an attack known as “cross site scripting”, which means that malicious code got into his hosting space passing itself as legitimate parameters for the program.
Conclusion
Hostmonster offers standard security for your website, but is your responsability to make sure nothing get compromised in your PC, your applications and your passwords. If you deal with these items correctly, you shouldn’t suffer any kind of attack.
