Even though we strongly believe security should be an entitlement for hosting customers, we strongly believe that security starts at home.

A hosting provider can have the most secure environment in the world, but if the customer uses weak passwords and out-dated applications, then that’s like waving a sign stating “thieves and vandals welcome.”

The easiest thing you can do as a customer to make your home safe, is to create strong passwords you change frequently (monthly to at least quarterly).

The key to password strength include length and complexity. An ideal password is long and has letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers.

The password length should be twelve (12) or more characters containing numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and if permissible by the application accepting the password special symbols. A password should not contain any words or phrases found in a dictionary.

If you don’t have your own application to generate random, secure, passwords, check out random.org.

You should use a unique password for each application. So if your web site has a control panel, the control panel would have its own password. If you have FTP, then for each FTP password, it would be unique (completely different than the control panel password). The same goes for email and database passwords.

There are different applications that can help you create secure passwords, and store them for you in a secure place. One such application is SpashID, but there are many others.

The other part of keeping your home secure is making sure applications you’ve installed (whether yourself, your designers, or even your hosting provider) are kept up to date.

While some application updates are just new features you may not need, a lot of the time on the Internet, updates include security fixes necessary to help keep hackers out.

Your hosting provider technical support department should be able to get you to speed in both areas if you need help.

If your hosting provider is not responsive to your needs, contact us for more information about our managed hosting options.