The Internet is filled with people trying to make a name for themselves by breaking your code, crashing your site, posting inappropriate content, and otherwise making your day interesting. It doesn’t matter if you have a small or large site; you are a target by simply being online, by having a server that can be connected to. Many cracking programs do not discern by size, they simply trawl massive IP blocks looking for victims. Try not to become one.
When on a shared host, security simply isn’t going to be as strong as when on a dedicated host. This is one of the tradeoffs for the inexpensive fee. Shared hosting environments perhaps ought to be considered from the security mindset in the same fashion as a compromised system (that which has or may have been already cracked into).
In order to secure our web applications I read some resources in order to identify different types of vulnerabilities and what are the measures that should be taken to protect our applications. In the first part I will talk about vulnerabilities and measures that should be taken for protection. In the second part you will find a checklist to be used when developing any application. In the appendixes you will find examples about filtering, validations and other security related issues.
