Web Hosting Company Host Color Published Security Advice To Webmasters

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Posted by dawhb, 12-16-2005, 02:26 PM
Host Color LLC (hostcolor.com), a US shared web hosting company has released in its hosting support forums (http://forum.hostcolor.com) a number of articles on the basics of webmaster security. The company wants to raise awareness among novice webmasters of the main measures they have to take to make their sites secure. The company has been alarmed by the growth in SPAM and other hacker attacks it has observed.

Host Color has published basic guidelines on securing PHP and Perl applications. The hosting company security specialists also underline how important it is that all web applications are updated regularly.

"Our company has always placed a strong emphasis on security. The main program that we face however is that many webmasters do not realize that they need to think about all security implications when they install software on their accounts. A recent problem that we faced for example is that many of the 'Contact us' scripts that our customers install are vulnerable and can be used as open-relays by spammers. This causes serious problem for the servers since it can turn them into sources of spam. We have added detailed instructions on how this can be avoided. We have also give simple examples of what code and SQL injection are and how those can be stopped as well," says Stoyan Marinov, Host Color's Security Specialist.

Host Color also advises its customers to subscribe to the security bulletins of the open-source software that we use such as phpBB, Joomla or osCommerce. If all updates are applied in time then the security of open-source application can live up to a high standard.

On the whole the problems that Host Color describes are not critical the companys hosting servers since their software is regularly updated. Problems with a site's security however can lead to defacing of customers websites and leakage of information. "Host Color is committed to helping our customers build a viable and functional web presence. That is why our support and system administration teams work closely together on all such problems," assures Stoyan Marinov.