Working in Threes For Domain Security

by stephen on Feb.19, 2010, under how-to, news, security

Our biggest concern and focus when working with small businesses is SECURITY. Hackers and thieves are now silent threats no longer working for notoriety but instead, are in search of money and profit. We have taken a firm policy to enforce the best security measures possible at every one of our clients, no matter how small. The threats are only getting worse and we want to keep our clients as safe as possible.

One of the ways we address this situation is with our own “3layer” approach to everything we do. When we look at every issue, every vulnerability, we create a solutions that includes 3 layers. For instance, one of our best practice recommendations when registering your domain (.com address) is to utilize 3 different providers for different services.

Register your domain with a quality registrar like GoDaddy.com.
Choose a quality DNS provider like DynDns.com to give you more control over DNS entries as well as e-mail failover.
Use a fast host to provide hosting services for your website. We recommend MediaTemple.

TIP: Use different username and complex passwords for each and every site or service you register for. You can read more on how to quickly and easily choose complex passwords here.

Because we haven’t put all our eggs in one basket, there are many benefits to this approach in addition to the level of security it provides.

One lost or stolen username/password cannot immediately take down or damage our site, our email, or other services. It could take 3.
IF, our email server goes down, we have failover with DynDNS. Read more in our post about e-mail failover.
Our domain registration is handled safely and securely by GoDaddy. No worrying about missing a renewal.
We have tremendous flexibility as well as speedy updates (no more propogation) for our DNS records.
The website stays fast and responsive because we have a quality web host. Shared hosting is almost always sluggish.

Again, this is a simple example of our method. However, domain security is an still an important issue. Here is an example at Dreamhost of FTP accounts being breached, http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/06/06/security-breach/. Also, remember the breaches on Twitter (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/technology/internet/19twitter.html), further confirming why separate and unique usernames and unique complex passwords are an ABSOLUTE MUST, especially for business.

In the future we will discuss how our 3layer approach applies to viruses, spam, and content. Let us hear your comments.