It should not forget that servers are database storage spaces, where billions of highly relevant data are stored. Moreover, the website's functionality depends directly on the availability of the data stored in these databases. Therefore, when setting up an infrastructure, apart from making the applications work well, which is usually the primary concern, you must consider the security aspects to avoid catastrophic consequences.
To help you with this task, in this article, we will talk about some recommended security measures to protect web applications to prevent or minimize the damage in case of a possible attack.
There are a series of security measures to protect your anonymous VPS hosting that is important for you to know. It is essential to consider both current and future needs to know which security measures should be implemented.
SSH keys are two cryptographic keys that allow users to authenticate themselves to access an SSH server. Thus, it is a more secure alternative to traditional passwords. The cryptographic key pair consists of a public and a private key. While the former can be shared with other users, the latter keeps the user's identity secret.
Setting up SSH keys is very simple. First, you only have to place the public key that identifies your user in a specific directory located within the server. Then, once you connect to the server in question, you must use the private key to access it. Still unsure? Then find out more in this article about How to Set Up SSH Keys on Your VPS.
Another excellent web server security measure is the firewall. This is a piece of software, or sometimes hardware, that controls all services that are in any way exposed to the network. The firewall is responsible for blocking access to all ports except those enabled for the public.
The firewall is an essential part of the VPS configuration. Thus, reducing the exposed software minimizes the points through which the server can be attacked.
Private networks are networks that are only available to certain users or servers. For example, an organization may have servers in different regions around the world. Through a private network, these servers can communicate with each other regardless of their actual location.
The Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows you to create secure connections between remote computers. It is, therefore, the creation of a local private network. In this way, you can configure services in the same way as if you were in a private network, and it also allows you to connect servers in a secure mode. But, of course, it is much more convenient to implement private rather than public networks for internal communications.
To improve server security, this is one of the best solutions in the professional or corporate environment. SSL or TLS certificates authenticate different entities and are then used to establish encrypted and secure communications.
Regardless of the other measures, you implement to improve server security, service auditing to check security is a must. It consists of an exhaustive process to prevent which services are running on the different servers, which ports are used for communication, and which protocols are accepted. This is invaluable information for properly configuring firewall settings.
Following good practices and checking server security regularly are two key guidelines to minimize the risk of suffering any security problem.
The file audit compares the current system with the file log characteristic of your system when it is in a healthy state. This is used to detect changes to the system that may not have been authorized.
An intrusion Detection System is a software that monitors a system or network for unauthorized activity. You need to know that several intrusion detection systems implement file auditing to check if a system has been modified.
Isolated execution environments refer to any method in which individual components are executed within their dedicated space.
This process consists of separating the components of your application on the servers, or if necessary, configuring the services to operate in chroot or containerized environments. The level of isolation depends mainly on the requirements of your application and the capabilities of your infrastructure.
In conclusion, the strategies described above are some of the most recommended to improve the protection of your anonymous VPS. However, you have to know that you must implement them manually after choosing the desired VPS configuration. If you take these 7 security measures into account, you can ensure that your applications are protected against attackers. However, we recommend you always be on the lookout for emerging threats and security patches to install security updates on your servers to prevent attacks. To keep your server anonymous, it's also important to know how to detect suspicious activity on your server. At PRV, we offer anonymous bitcoin servers powered by DigitalOcean that allow you to perform all the necessary security configurations. As a result, achieve greater security apart from supporting high workload and production.