Data Protection in ScalaHosting Shared Web Hosting Plans

Every person using shared web hosting services is more or less concerned about the protection of their data. It’s absolutely natural —  there are other users on the same server, which opens the doors for all kinds of breaches and web attacks.

ScalaHosting works on improving the security of shared hosting servers, and there is always a lot to do in that regard. Today, we will share some of the things we do to ensure every client project is safe from cyber attacks. 

ScalaHosting has developed a custom security software that scans all files within the public_html directories

It looks for configuration and system files, which contain sensitive information such as MySQL login details and access authorization. Should any of your preset permissions are wrong — our solution will fix them. 

Whenever a website is compromised, the attacker often looks to get access to password data to steal your login details and gain full control over your account. That’s why it is important to keep file permissions set to 600 or even 400. 

The three numbers relate to the binary value of reading, writing, and execution rights, where 0 gives no access, and 1 allows the user to perform a certain action. This way, a value of 400 means no one else can read the protected files except you.

Another exciting feature of our security system is the traffic monitoring tool that regularly scans your online activity to look for malware. If it detects malicious activity, the system notifies the client and helps them take the necessary actions. 

ScalaHosting’s mod_security rules are being updated on a weekly basis so we can block most of the attacks that come to the server and customer websites. 

We have also installed ClamAV on all servers to scan for viruses and stop malicious files from being uploaded to the server via FTP. But that’s not even half of it.

Our security system tracks the running processes on all servers 24/7 for suspicious activity. This goes for any of our packages, even the most affordable web hosting and reseller plans. 

Of course, even with Scala’s enterprise-grade security solutions, the customer has an important role in maintaining their online safety. Keeping all scripts, plugins, and themes up to date, using hard-to-guess passwords, setting proper permissions, disabling public access to your admin area — those are all a must if you don’t want to have issues with hackers.

Even if you manage to handle all of the above, there is still one other thing to consider

Data backups are your Plan B in case things go sideways. You have to ensure to not only back up your data every day, but to keep it in a secure offsite location as well. This way, even if someone gains control over the server and your website files, you will still have a working copy saved elsewhere. 

ScalaHosting allows all web hosting and reseller clients to restore data from seven recovery points. The backups are safely stored on a remote server, but we still highly recommend keeping your own copies as well. 

You can always hope for the best, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prepare for the worst.