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May 27th, 2009 by Patrick M.
Are you familiar with white hat hacking? If you aren’t, you should be. White hat hacking is a planned attack that checks your systems for vulnerabilities. After the hacker successfully (and harmlessly) compromises your environment, they tell you what to do to fix it.
Even though most security loopholes are well-documented, I’m surprised how many open exploits are in applications that we security scan here at INetU. So stand by for a little White Hat Hacking 101, where I’ll teach you how to hack into your own site.
Hack One: Injection Attacks
I’ll start with injection exploits because most IT professionals, even though they have cursory basic understanding of the dangers, leave too many sites open to the vulnerability.
The Risk: Once a hacker knows they have an unprotected line to your database, the possibilities are endless: vandalism, data theft, or even total system compromise.
The Fix: There are two main ways to protect your site from injection: 1) always …
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Tags: hacking, list, security, sql injection, tutorial, xss
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April 28th, 2009 by Rich H.
I don’t care if you’re selling bulk widgets or providing financial information on emerging markets, if you rely on data and servers for any function of your business, backups should be the single most important item on your IT checklist.
An all-time favorite question of mine to ask business owners or IT managers, following “do you have backups”, is “how do you know your backups work”? The resounding silence and dumbfounded looks this question summons are almost a guarantee.
If you’re sporting that same look right now, here are 5 simple steps to follow that can help ensure when disaster strikes, you can strike back with a successful data recovery.
1. Perform a test recovery.
This sounds so obvious and simple, but hardly anyone actually does it. This is as simple as it sounds. Attempt to recover you data to an alternate location (don’t overwrite your production data), and test the dataset.
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Tags: backup, list, recovery
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March 31st, 2009 by Jeff P.
Server virtualization is an extremely powerful tool that can help you make the most out of your server environment. But just how exactly can you benefit by going virtual? We asked our experts to come up with some of the uses that would benefit your business. If you haven’t considered what virtualization can do for you, now’s the time to think about it. Here are top seven uses for virtualization our experts came up with!
1. Multiple OS’s on one system.
Your entire infrastructure is run on Linux servers, except this one legacy ASP application that requires a small Windows box. Why dedicate separate hardware for this when you can just put a virtual Windows machine on a server that’s also running a Linux VM?
2. Go green!
You might have a few servers in your environment that aren’t being fully utilized. Condense them as virtual machines on a single physical server. This eco-friendly solution helps you “go green” by putting money in your wallet—it costs you less to use less hardware and build out virtual servers.
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Tags: Hyper-V, list, managed hosting, virtualization, vmware, xenserver
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March 19th, 2009 by Jason B.
When choosing a datacenter to host your company’s environment, it’s important to consider all the variables that will come into play. Many times, a site tour of your potential datacenter will show you a limited picture of the center’s inner workings. If you don’t arm yourself with the proper questions to ask or the right things to look for during a tour, you could potentially choose the wrong datacenter. Some typical datacenter security questions include “Is there an authentication system to get into the datacenter?” and “do you have camera systems throughout the datacenter?” Although these are excellent questions, they don’t begin to scratch the surface of what you need to know.
Here are the top 10 things to consider when choosing and/or determining the security posture of a datacenter:
1. “Do all datacenter walls extend to the roof?”
This is very important. If the walls don’t extend to the roof, an intruder needs only to push a couple ceiling tiles out to bypass the physical security and enter the datacenter.
2. “Does the datacenter/building require 2-factor authentication for access?”
These days, single factor authentication just doesn’t cut it when it comes to security. We all know how easy it is for an employee to lose their FOB or badge somewhere, and that means a potential bad guy can find it and let himself in.
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Tags: business continuity, datacenter, list, security
