How to Secure Your Website and Home Network Effectively

Believe it or not your computer is vulnerable. There is no sure or certain way to fully secure any network. However, with a measure of several common sense approaches you can effectively secure your computer or network from virtually any threat. Here is a tip: Always have a good firewall, antivirus, and spyware/adware/malware remover on your system, have it running constantly and updated at least once a week (Some software such as McAfee has automated updates, which I highly recommend.) The fact of the matter is that whenever your computer is on or connected to another computer, i.e. the internet you could be exposed to a multitude of various attacks, some automated viruses written by rebellious children, and some written by professionals with too much time on their hands, not to even begin with the fact that on some of the web pages out there are viruses or malicious scripts that you may not even be aware had infected your computer, and they do so automatically upon you opening the webpage. Often times you won't even know you infected until it is already done, and your only lee from the storm is the following options I lay out for you, among some others I will be mentioning in future articles.

As far as the frequency or source of attacks, they quite literally come from all over the globe. Some days the exploits and attacks may not be too bad but other days are simply unreal. The amount of alerts we get some days would shock you. I monitor a server on my network, as well as dozens of remote servers for security, and I additionally monitor the security of web based transactions for my own site as well as my clients. The bottom line for me: Secured. Period.

The fact is that no matter how much or how often I have attacks, automated or even people using scripts, exploits, and manually running software to try to steal data, or merely cause mischief or vandalism, we are not alone. Everyday more and more of these attacks will try and get into your system or site and it is up to you to stop them. With such a plethora of malicious activity going around this must be taken very seriously. The best part is you can get some of this software absolutely free, so there really is no excuse for not protecting your assets. You can quite literally secure your computer or site by educating yourself, and implementing that knowledge effectively and efficiently. It really does not have to cost a fortune either. Please don't think about doing it after your website or system has been corrupted, it will be too late by then. Do it now!

Securing your website

Nuke Sentinel

My company and I, we use a combination of software and various other methods to secure our materials, infrastructure, and web sites. One of the first for our PHP-Nuke site is Nuke Sentinel, which was written by a wonderfully intelligent person known under the handle Raven and freely given by Raven Web Services LLC at http://ravenphpscripts.com/ . Her software is absolutely awesome, and extremely effective. I have seen it stop all types of attacks, from general script kiddies to exploits in PHP, and PHP-NUKE, not to even mention the malicious web surfer and generally nosey person attempting to access non-public portions of our online presence. Be sure to read my upcoming review of Nuke Sentinel. It will be telling and I will include some screen shots of the malicious attacks and examples of how beneficial it is if deployed correctly. If you need help installing it please feel free to email me.

PHP-NUKE PLATINUM

Another superior system for securing and building your online presence in and of itself is a PHP-Nuke Platinum installation. Be sure to look for my upcoming review of PHP-NUKE Platinum. You can download it directly from the original coder here: http://www.futurenuke.com/ If you are new or inexperienced, and need help feel free to email me. We do offer free installs with hosting purchases at Corona Media. http://www.coronamedia.us PHP-NUKE Platinum is so broad of an application it is hard to describe without filling a book.

It is a dynamic content oriented multimedia rich and powerful environment for any online presence. It offers such things as full and complete backtrack of all http referrers, including detailed stats of who was on your site, what pages they viewed, even how long they viewed what.

Marketing is hand in hand with Securing.

The fact is an essential element of the success of any website or internet marketing campaign is the ability to analyze the traffic coming to (and from) your website. A key business ideology is that if you can't track it and measure it, you can't manage it. If you can't manage it, you can't sell it.

In truth there are a number of techniques that the best Internet Marketing Strategies employ to jump-start website traffic building. These strategies include article marketing, Blogging, search engine optimization and email marketing. Be sure to check out my upcoming articles on building your online presence, marketing your site, products and services, and how to "shock and awe" not only the competition, but most importantly, new and existing customers. Anyone in business knows that customer retention in difficult in the market today, but it is absolutely vital to success. If you read my articles and follow my advice, you too can be successful. Take what you need and leave what you don't from my articles, but learn and grow regardless.

Luckily for all of us, whether you are a casual browsers buyer, or business; the Internet offers a wealth of excellent and accessible tools for analyzing the success of each of these strategies. If you are looking for a sure fire way to gauge and market to your customers, and insure visitors to your site become buyers, then you need to know exactly how, who, and what to market.

PHP-Nuke offers just such a thing in the sense that you will know what to change and what to keep. If a surfer moves right along after viewing your home page (index.php) you need to add something to attract and keep their attention, and so forth. Be on the lookout for more on PHP-Nuke and Internet marketing to come in my upcoming articles.

Securing you home network

Firewall and Virus Protection

A truly good firewall will effectively cloak your PC making you practically invisible on the net. The hackers will not even know you are there.

Zone Alarm

Over 14 million users trust their Internet connected PCs to Zone Labs, the makers of Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm is the award winning personal firewall that automatically blocks known and unknown Internet threats, barricading your PC and your network from intruders and hostile attacks. So protect your personal and financial information NOW from the prying eyes of hackers and data thieves. You can evaluate this software free from http://www.zonelabs.com. The also have antivirus, but I have not personally evaluated that aspect, so I will leave it up to you to decide.

McAfee

I can honestly say an absolutely phenomenal antivirus and firewall solution is McAfee. I have personally witnessed them stopping all sorts of attacks on our network at home, and suspicious objects from downloads, and emails. I have even seen them stop scripting on a webpage, and later it turned out the page has a Trojan embedded in it! Although it is not free you can evaluate it free for 30 days and then decide if you want to keep it or not. I have had good luck at home with it and I am very impressed.

Black Ice

Black Ice is honestly my dirty little secret. It in and of itself is my last line of defense for my home network, and our server here. It has actually stopped things that McAfee and some of the other big shots have missed, which says a lot. It is offered by a company known for its high end and high tech security solutions, Internet Security Systems. http://www.iss.net/

Virus Hoaxes

There are a lot of viruses out there. But some aren't really out there at all. Virus hoaxes are more of an annoyance than anything else. They may lead some users to routinely ignore all virus warning messages, leaving them vulnerable to a genuine, destructive virus.

The key (again) is to educate and apply.

My first tip is to never open an email attachment unless you know what it is even if it's from someone you know and trust. If someone sends you an attachment and you do not know them ask them to send the information in an email in plain text, without the attachment, that is, if you "Really" want to open it.

Remember that virus writers can use known hoaxes to their advantage. For example, AOL4FREE began as a hoax virus warning. Then somebody distributed a destructive

Trojan attached to the original hoax virus warning!

The lessons are clear:

Always remain vigilant
Never open a suspicious attachment!
Always have and use your antivirus and firewall!
Always leave them on!
Always scan you system for viruses and malicious object at least once a week!

If you have these protective systems in place they will take care of it for you. Leaving you worry free. For peace of mind I would strongly suggest that you update your system now.

The price of freedom (and securing that same freedom) is eternal vigilance.