Web applications will always have vulnerabilities and they are quite hard to get rid of. In this article, we will discuss software vulnerabilities, how you can minimize them and protect your account.
About vulnerabilities
Here, at TBC-Hosting, we always strive to provide better security for our servers at operating systems and networking levels. However, there is software that clients can install to their personal accounts, and it can contain vulnerabilities that may expose customers’ accounts to hacker attacks.
For the past few years, the number of hacker attacks majorly increased, including hacker attacks on our customers’ accounts. They, however, are primarily done by programs and bots rather than humans. They also are broad in spectrum and are attempted against many different accounts rather than focused on specific account(s).
Hackers and spammers (bots or humans) are the main perpetrators of these attacks. They want to take over vulnerable web sites to send spam, distribute malware, or incorporate the hosting account into a botnet and launch attacks on other sites and servers.
Those malicious actors often use software vulnerabilities as a gateway to the hosting account.
Why vulnerabilities exist
All of the hosting account owners use some type of software for different purposes that correspond to the purpose of their website/blog. For example, many customers use a content management system (CMS) or blogging application, such as WordPress or Drupal. A lot of people also use an e-commerce application, such as Magento or PrestaShop. Any software program of significant size contains bugs, and web applications are no exception.
Malicious actors are constantly looking for vulnerabilities to exploit these popular web applications. Similarly, the developers of these applications are constantly providing security patches to fix vulnerabilities. So you can see how there is a constant cycle between vulnerabilities being added and removed. And while developers of those web applications are trying their best to keep their clients safe, there are always malicious actors that undo all the work done by developers.
What you can do to protect your account
The owner of the website always plays a big part in the cycle. And while you can’t make hackers stop spreading malware, what you can do is make sure that your software doesn’t have some old and well-known vulnerability in it. You can do that by simply updating all your site software as soon as new updates are available. If you do that, you get the latest security patches that provide your software with as much protection as possible.
When software vulnerability is discovered, malicious actors immediately begin searching the internet for sites that use the affected application. The sooner you can update your site, the less chance that someone will be able to exploit a vulnerability and compromise your account.
What TBC-Hosting does to protect your account
As was mentioned above, we are in a constant battle to make your account and your data very secure. Our servers and operating systems have the best protection on them and are not at all easy to gain unauthorized access to. This means we ensure the operating system is up to date with the latest security patches, and we proactively monitor network connections and performance.
In addition, for shared and reseller hosting customers, TBC-Hosting has a partnership with Patchman to provide additional security. Patchman automatically fixes software vulnerabilities in many popular web applications, such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
