Its good when you move your hosting account to a  ukdedicated servers, it shows that your business is in great progress and you are receiving a great amount of traffic. Now two questions will arise in front of you one is to manage the account and second will be about the security of the account. Once you shift your web hosting account to a dedicated server one thing you should start worrying is security. Even if your account is a managed type of account, there are chances of security issues. Possible security issue may arise from malicious attacks by viruses and hackers. Some other common issues like data corruption and hard disk crashes can affect your dedicated server’s performance. This whole security problem can be solved if you follow some easy steps. If you will follow the steps given below than the performance of the server will automatically rise to the maximum. Following are the steps:

Avoidable Services

Risk of security is directly proportional to the number of ports of your server working on the internet. More the ports and more will be the security issue with the server. There are few services, which are essential for your server like email and HTTP, but there are many you can easily do without. So first rule or step to follow is to disable those services, which are not essential, and you can comfortably work without. For example:

(a) Disable FTP if you are not using it. If you are using FTP,  do not ever let FTP use your administrator or root password. FTP will send your root password across the network in plain text and make it susceptible to snooping.

(b) One of the biggest security risk on the internet is Telnet. If you use telnet as the administrator then there are golden chanced of your password to be stolen. Best way is to disable Telnet and use SSH (secure shell) instead.

Change Passwords

Whenever you obtain a dedicated server, your first step should be change of password. Most of the hosting providers set a default password for your server. Or they may email the password to you in plain text. Let it either way there is always a risk of someone else know your password. If you want your server to be safe or want to be feel convinced that no one else know your password, the change your password. Also follow below given guidelines to make your server safe:

(a) When working on Linux system make sure that the password of the regular account and root password are different from each other. Same rule is applied fro other OS also password of the regular account and administrative should be different from each other.

(b) Passwords should be long and complex so that it will be hard to guess. When you choose a password make a combination of numbers, letters and punctuations, also avoid words that are used in dictionary.

Use Virus Protection

Viruses are considered as the biggest threat on the internet. They can damage your server badly. Specially Windows systems are vulnerable to viruses because most of the virus programs are written for this platform. Social engineering works easily on Windows. So if you are running a server on Windows server than sun the virus scan regularly. In order to catch new viruses keep updating the virus software regularly.

Although Linux ukdedicated serverd are more secure than Windows, but the aren’t completely free from viruses. Many worms that develop security holes in common Linux services cause serious downtime. Best possible way to avoid these is to update your firewall regularly, update your software and disable any superfluous services.

Windows also pose threat to the Linux systems, because they usually email themselves to thousands of addresses. Your server can be besieged when such large file-laden messages are sent to many accounts at once. To overcome these files an email virus scanner will be the best choice, like OdeaVir.

Use a Firewall

No dedicated server is complete without a Firewall. Firewall comes in both form software and hardware. Hardware Firewall is the matter of the hosting providers and software can be installed from your side. A Firewall is package that controls which port on your server are open on the internet. Other than this Firewall often detects interruption attempts. You will find that Firewall is one of the most important feature of any web server. There are many options to go for in the market.

Software Update

Once a software is release, the manufacturers constantly release updates and patch files for the software in order to close the security holes that have been discovered. So keep updating important software components on your server. Some important components to be updates are email server, SSH server, language like Perl or PHP, and Web server. Get out of the illusion that the hosting provider is providing giving you with the latest update of the related software components. Once you install essential software keep checking for the updates and upgrade periodically to keep your server secure.

Use Backups

Always remember one thing one that problem can happen at any time. Problems may be serious and you may lose some important data. Problems can come from anywhere don’t live in the perception that after installing Firewall and antivirus, you will never lose data. It is not necessary that the damage is done by hacker or by some virus, it may be caused by an administrator typing the wrong command or host dragging the wrong plug. But the effect will be same for your site and your customers. That’s where backup comes in the scenario. You should maintain a backup copy for all the important files on a separate machine. If it’s a web content than a local copy you upload may be sufficient. For other important files, you can use FTP to download critical files regularly. Below given are the few points you should be certain to back up:

(a) Any dynamic that are created by your sites, it also includes traffic logs.

(b) Database contents, database systems like MySQL have pre loaded backup plan,you can use this feature to put data to a downloadable file.

(c) If you have customers that use the server, make sure their files have a backup plan. This will protect both you and your customers from user errors as well as other serious problems.

Monitoring The Server

Even after installing Firewall, using backup ad updating software your job is not finished. One more thin you have to do is monitoring your server continually. Some important tips for monitoring the server are given below:

(a) In order to check hacking attempts, regularly run a security auditing tool like chrootkit. Tough not perfect but this service will help you detect hacking almost every hacking attempt on your site.

(b) There are many services which ping your server continuously and aware you if it doesn’t respond. These kind of services can be independently chose or your host can offer it you.

Follow all the above guidelines if you want your server safe from hacker and viruses and want it to perform on its maximum level. Remember your reputation will depend on your service.