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Designing and building secure websites

 

Keeping your Website secure

Your website needs to be secure. Safe and sound, so to speak. Cleaning up after a hacker is done with you can take weeks and cost you a bundle - time, money and trust/reputation. So, let's avoid that.

There are a number of things you can do to help your website stay safe and there are a number of things we do to achieve the same.

 

SSL Certificate

We include an SSL Certificate with every hosting account. This serves your website to a browser at a higher encryption. You've probably noticed a little padlock before your website address in the browser address line. If a website does NOT use a valid SSL certificate, browsers like Chrome will display a message warning that the site may not be 'safe'. 

 

Up-to-date Software

Updates to your Joomla installation and extensions almost ALWAYS deal with security. It is of utmost importance that you update as soon as possible. Most updates are a one-click sort of deal.. and if you run into trouble, give us a call. We're always happy to help.

 

Website Firewall

$50/year - offered with all of our Joomla! installations

A firewall offers an additional layer of protection for your Joomla! site. It stops file inclusion attempts, login attacks, and much more. We consider this a must-have extension.

 

Backing up your Website

Part of a recovery plan for if things do go horribly wrong is backing up your website at regular intervals. We do several backups at the server level and we include JETBACKUP with all of our hosting accounts. This gives you the opportunity to back your site up any time you wish. Before doing any major changes, it is good practice to do a Snapshot backup of your site.

 

Managing Your Email

 

Junk Email

An unfortunate side effect of having a successful website is unsolicited mail, also known as email spam or junk.  

There are a number of ways to try and combat unwanted email communications, but in reality you're never going to eliminate all of it. Let's look at some of the different programs available and how they work:

 

Spam Assassin

INCLUDED with any of our hosting accounts.
This is your very first line of defense (and pre-installed on every account on our servers) and works at the server level. The program looks at every one of your incoming email and evaluates based on a point system. If the email scores let's say five points (you can set the level), it will either get thrown into your Spam Box, or gets a one-way ticket to cyberspace. You will need to enable the software, decide how aggressively to tag spam, and what to do with emails that fit the bill.

It is safe to assume that everything tagged junk by Spam Assassin is in fact junk. 


MailChannels

$10/month with any of our hosting accounts.
Filtering of all incoming mail and a daily quarantine report letting you know which messages were filtered out, and you have the option to approve/whitelist any of those senders. 

 

Rules and Junk Filters in your email program

FREE with many email client software (Microsoft Outlook, Windows or Mac Mail, Google or Yahoo! Mail. etc.)
These filters are executed once the email gets to your device. You likely have a junk box or folder where some of your email ends up. These rules and filters can be configured but aren't always highly effective. Things that shouldn't, get through and email from people in your address book ends up in junk. Still, you should configure at least the very basics, to filter out messages that contain "Viagara", etc. and known spam senders. 

 

Page Summary: Utilizing additional software to help maintain healthy, secure websites. Check out our web hosting solutions in the Manitoulin and Greater Sudbury areas,