Abivia has implemented significant new security measures on all shared Canadian hosting plans. These features are in place for both managed and unmanaged plans. These measures include:

• An improved firewall. Firewall improvements will defend against a wider range of port scans, brute force, and denial of service attacks.
• HTTP attack filters. Improved filters block a range of known attacks earlier in the processing of web requests.
• Real time exploit detection. New files are scanned for possible issues at the time they are created. Files with known malware are immediately quarantined; suspicious files generate a security alert.
• Daily security scans. Files are scanned on a daily basis for suspicious code and malware.

This is a significant improvement in the robustness and reliability of our hosting plans. The real-time exploit detection will be of major benefit to web applications such as Joomla, Wordpress, and others. When a hacker attempts to exploit a vulnerability, either in the application itself or in an extension/plugin, servers will immediately quarantine known exploits and prevent them from functioning. Activity logs will help us identify the attack vector and we will work with developers to close the vulnerability.

Customer Impact

We expect these improvements will dramatically reduce the occurrence of hacked web sites for all shared hosting accounts. Servers will also respond better in the face of brute force and denial of service attacks.

Specific benefits by account type:

• Dedicated and VPS accounts: No changes have been made to dedicated and VPS accounts. Implementation will be performed on a server by server basis to ensure that no disruption occurs.
• Managed hosting plans: customers should see no change, as support will handle any reports of potential attack.
• Reseller accounts: All reports for your sub-accounts will be sent directly to you.
• Unmanaged accounts will receive individual reports whenever a potential issue is detected.

As with all new security measures, these systems may cause some applications to experience difficulties. We will work with all customers who experience issues to ensure that their applications function normally.

Photo credit: Marcel Oosterwijk Licensed CC-SA.