In this video we'll look at the different systems hosting companies use to protect their servers against
security attacks and another layer of security is not the only one you'll want to incorporate.
We're dressed as a web site application which should have its own security measures while hosting companies
provide a variety of systems to protect their own servers.
The applications installed on a server like Wordpress are usually the weakest link in security.
By the end of this video you'll have a good idea of what to look for in a hosting company as well as
how to add additional layers of security to your hosting account even before you secure your Wordpress
installation itself.
In this video I'll go through my recommended hosting companies and we'll look at what WordPress dot
org says about security and hardening WordPress.
Hardening is typically a security term for making a web application more secure or hardening its outer
shell.
This is a great page to read at the Codex at Wordpress dot org.
It's called hardening WordPress.
I'm just going to go down and point out a couple of things.
First of all security is not about perfectly secure systems.
This is basically impossible.
It's basically about employing the appropriate controls that within reason can allow traffic to visit
your web site but it limits bots and hackers and other attempts from getting in and compromising your
site.
So there is a complicated dynamic as stated here between hosting companies and the security of your
web site.
One of the main points right here if you read this is that hosting companies make a certain amount of
effort to secure their servers and the hardware that you use at the server and the hosting company may
have some different levels of security and we'll talk about which hosting companies do what but what
they're really designed to do is protect their own servers from being hacked.
When you install WordPress on a hosting companies servers it is your responsibility to secure those
web applications as well.
On top of what the hosting companies can do all of the Web hosting companies that I use and that I recommend
in this course use something called a web application firewall inside of their servers and their stack
where they host WordPress sites and this is basically a firewall between attempts at hacking and well-known
hacker IP addresses etc. and types of attacks.
Between that and your Web site that's hosted on their services and hardware.
So site Ground employs a very common web application firewall that's an open source one called maade
security and on their mad Security web site is it basically explains what it is.
It's a cross-platform open source web application firewall.
It enables the server to defen h TTP and HDTV as traffic against attacks.
It also allows them to implement specific advanced protections and create ones that are specifically
built for their server space.
Flywheel has a more extensive security system and they have actually free malware removal if your site
does get hacked.
Are going to go in and fix it for free.
They also have security at the server level.
They use a service called security that they're partnered with in order to provide a third party Web
application firewall.
That's probably even more powerful than maade security and at cloud ways they also use a web application
firewall that they've created there.
And even though I've had more Bot traffic to manage in terms of slowing down my site at my cloud Waze
Web sites this has been a great secure platform and they do regularly patch the servers and they host
the applications and they minimize the number of services open to the Internet.
That's what a web application firewall does.
So if you're researching hosting companies for your sites or for your business I'd recommend you ask
about web application firewalls and security processes that are in place at the server level.
Now an additional web application firewall or a layer of security that's provided by a third party that
you can sign up for separate from your web hosting company exists from several third party companies
out there.
Security at securty dot net is a great Web site security company and one of those services is a Web
site firewall.
You can see in their graphic here that they'll allow traffic to come into their network as well as potentially
spam sequel injections.
Hackers brute force attacks and bad bots out on the Internet and they will filter out a lot of that
bad stuff and they'll balance the load and only send legitimate legitimate traffic towards your Web
site.
They do that by altering the DNS and having you point your web site traffic from your domain name to
security first before it reaches your Web site.
Their service is a paid for service and it's probably the best out there for Wordpress CloudFlare is
another service at CloudFlare dot com and they provide a very similar web application firewall for free.
Some of the most common types of attacks are called brute force attacks.
These are actually bots that come to your logon page and they set up services and bots to try and guess
your username and your password.
Now brute force attacks are the most common and one of the problems with these type of attacks is that
this is actual traffic that goes to your Web site and it can slow it down.
And so there's different ways of protecting your Web site against brute force attacks an unauthorized
logging and attempts that might slow down your site and actually eat up your bandwidth as well making
your server space and potentially your hosting cost more.
We'll look at these next type of protections in the next video when we look at security plug ins for
Wordpress specifically.
I encourage you to do your own research to find out what you can about security at the server you choose
to host your web sites as well as different layers that you can incorporate yourself.
There's some great information at Wordpress dot org on hardening WordPress as well as brute force attacks.
Right here this is a great page to read for yourself and I'd recommend checking out CloudFlare and security
with their web site application firewalls.
And then if you do use a hosting company like site ground and flywheel and cloud ways you know you're
already getting an excellent professional and secure service on which you can build your Wordpress security.
In this lesson you learn how your hosting company should provide some level of security filtering in
the form of a web application firewall.
Plus we won over some third party services you can add to further harden your server space against attacks
in the next video.
We'll look at several security plug ins for Wordpress so that you can block the most common areas of
vulnerability for brute force attacks and hacking attempts on WordPress powered Web sites.
Plus you can use these plug ins to monitor the traffic to your site continuing to improve your site's
security and speed over time.