Control panels and terminals

We use CPs or command line interfaces as assistive tools to apply, among other things, security systems. There are pros and cons for each of these instruments.

Panels are favorable because their GUIs are user-friendly. Sometimes their point-click usability, however, is hampered by restricted options. We saw an example of this with cPanel's weak default of mod_auth_basic for password protection in Chapter 5.

Terminals, CLIs, shells, consoles or whatever else they're called today are favorable, on the other hand, because their options are infinite and they're faster to use. The downside is that, at first (OK, and at first-and-a-half!), they're bewildering.

Safe server access

In Chapter 5, we looked at SSH and its cousin SSL, setting up the terminal with the former and advising about the importance of the latter for when we log into and browse a panel—so that's using https not http. Both methods are secure although there is always the concern of a brute force password...