Whether you are running a personal website dedicated to pictures of cats or a multi-million-dollar online marketplace, securing your server from hackers remains difficult. Fortunately, there are some common practices that can reduce risk. 3 key practices are listed below:
- Restrict access to ports via a firewall. Servers are often misconfigured to allow services to be accessed on the network, but this is bad security practice since it provides bad actors with more points of entry. For SSH access to your server, consider using whitelist rules to prevent clients scanning the server from accessing this service.
- Encrypt traffic using SSL/TLS, redirecting all normal HTTP traffic to HTTPS (port 443). This will help prevent data loss via man-in-the-middle attacks.
- Keep server software up to date. New software versions often patch against vulnerabilities, so it is important to audit web server software from time to time to ensure the latest patches are installed.
Source:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/7-security-measures-to-protect-your-servers
