Your public Website is your sales, marketing, customer service, and fulfillment haven; it is also an avenue for malicious and "just-for-fun" hackers. Hackers can have several goals in mind, including: compromising the operating system, software, firewalls, and the routers that protect your internal LAN. And no one is immune from Internet Service Providers to corporations - they are all targets if a Web server is connected to the World Wide Web.

Hackers have done everything from changing website content, to deleting files, to destroying entire websites. This article takes a first look at the importance of protecting your web server

Why this is important

If your organization hosts its own website you have to prepare yourself before attacks occur. The reputation of your company and it's long-term viability could be at stake. Following are a few measures you could take:

1. Use public resources to find updates and security announcements.

There are many organizations that research local area and wide area network security and make this information available to the public. In addition, they provide information on unforeseen vulnerabilities in software and may provide the patches to fix such security breeches.

"Professional" hackers often publish the scripts used to take advantage of security gaps in software. Take time to review these resources - they will be invaluable in helping you maintain an up-to-date state of readiness.

2. Keep your systems security updated.

In addition to previously described guidelines, update your detection and prevention tools so that you can readily see new attacks and threats. You may have to temporarily disable specific devises and services that may be vulnerable to attack.

3. Make sure that all security personnel can be alerted immediately.

Ensure that your public Web server administrators and firewall administrators are involved and in close communication during the investigation of an attack.

4. Work with your network provider to determine how your organization can mitigate damages due to distributed denial of service attacks.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks can adversely affect you, even if you have taken the necessary steps to protect your company's systems. The lack of adequate measures by your service providers, can allow DDOS attacks to reach your organization.

It is common for DDOS attacks to leverage IP spoofing (a technique used to gain unauthorized access to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a computer with an IP address indicating that the message is coming from a trusted host. To engage in IP spoofing, a hacker must first use a variety of techniques to find an IP address of a trusted host and then modify the packet headers so that it appears that the packets are coming from that host).  Protecting against IP spoofing at the inter/intra connection point of your network will help protect against DDOS.

Take the time to talk with your ISP and other service providers to understand what precautions they have taken against DDOS attacks.