Secure your Hosting Servers

So you are moving to a new hosting environment and eager to leave everything up and running but leave a tiny security hole open and you may say good bye hosting. Here is a basic list of things to make reduce security risks:

• Is the Administrator password very nasty, very difficult to guess or break?
  
• Firewall enabled and set-up correctly blocking everything, except the necessary services?
• Latest service packs, patches, maintenance release and hot fixes installed?
  
• Clear of suspicious activity in the Event Log like brute force attempts, mysterious policy changes or a successful login from unrecognized workstation?
• Does the MSSQL "sa" account has a super secure password, the nastier the better?
• Email Anti Virus system in place?
• Is the email server consulting with multiple Blacklisting sites to minimize spam?
• Audit failed activity attempts
• If no one uses FTP disable the service

This list can go on forever in detail but you get the idea:

• Unnecessary accounts and/or services should be blocked, disabled or removed
  
• Auditing OS and services logs regularly helps identify problems
• Up to date OS and services lower risk of security breach
  

While this list is not complete by any measure it gives you an idea of some areas that need attention and proper configuration to minimize the chance of a security breach.