Countermeasures

After you have conducted your own security scanning and patched your site, you will want to go about hardening your site.

Here are some vital things:

• Close all unnecessary ports, or open ONLY the ones you need.

• Uninstall any extension not in use (mambot, plug-in, component, module).

• Uninstall FrontPage Services from shared hosting. If you are using Joomla!, you will not need FrontPage.

• Ensure that your host is at the latest patch levels for OS and the associated moving parts such as Apache, OpenSSL, MySQL (version dependent), and PHP.

• Set your permissions as tightly as possible.

• Fine-tune your site through .htaccess and php.ini.

• If you allow uploads, limit the size and sequester them for testing.

• Check your log files frequently.

• Block specific countries that are known to be havens for attacks, IF you do not need traffic from those countries. See the final chapter in this book for a good way to find this information.

• Have an excellent disaster recovery and business continuity plan...