Protect Shared Hosting from Viruses

Monday, 28 March 2011

Many clients will be using shared web hosting for the simple fact that it is affordable and provides a generous amount of resources to be used with a website.  Shared hosting is often a great choice for personal websites and non-professional types of sites.  Although it is not impossible to use shared hosting for more intensive websites when the clients know what they are doing and understand how to limit their resource usage.  Of course, regardless of what they understand about making a website, it is important to know that viruses are able to infect websites as well as the visitors to the websites.

Virus Protection on Shared Hosting Accounts

Virus protection is a major issue that must be dealt with, especially if you own a website.  Antivirus protection makes it possible to detect and deal with virus files and code that make its way onto your website.  The antivirus program will usually simply get access to the file and quarantine it so that it never makes its way to other visitors to the site.  It can also prevent the spread from others who are accessing the site in order to commandeer it as a virus spreading device.

Antivirus software is available for Windows based operating systems that are installed on servers.  Usually Windows is most susceptible to viruses and can be one of the major exploited options that virus creators use to infect the websites and visitors to the websites.  A virus is capable of doing several things depending on what it is coded to do.
Viruses will often be created to:

Destroy - The virus will destroy the website assets such as the code for the site and files that are stored in the website.  This means that all of the hard work put into the website can be compromised.
Steal - The virus can be designed to steal data such as personal data from customers.  The virus will then relay the information back to the virus creator and lay dormant until instructed to send more information.

Redirect - The virus may change things on the website and cause visitors to the site to be redirected to other websites which may also have malicious code or questionable content on them.
It is important for a website owner to take responsibility and make use of a service which prevents the ability for viruses to propagate on the hosting.  The best way to do so is to use a service which offers antivirus capabilities.  Of course options such as Linux/Unix are less vulnerable to viruses and can actually have much higher protection when compared to Windows.

Shared hosting is one of the most important hosting options to ensure that you are getting virus protection in because of the nature of the hosting plan.  Since there are several websites and domains hosted on the servers, you are at risk of infection when another neighboring website is infected.  With antivirus efforts in place the risk is decreased and the possibility of staying virus free is increased.