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Security Solutions

Anti Virus Solutions

According to the FBI, dealing with viruses, spyware, PC theft and other computer-related crimes costs U.S. businesses a staggering $67.2 billion a year. Though Linux-based servers rarely become infected with viruses, your end-users are likely running Microsoft Windows or Apple systems. You can offer an additional layer of protection for your clients by filtering viruses directly at your server. While server-level filtering does not replace desktop antivirus software, server antivirus solutions provide another layer of security.

Email Systems

Antivirus solutions for inbound email are well known. Most major control panels, such as Ensim, Plesk and cPanel, either include or can be modified to provide inbound antivirus scanning of email. Some systems also allow you to scan outbound email, which is equally as important if you provide shared hosting services.

Scanning outbound email can be an effective way to block an end-user from spamming unintentionally. Many viruses replicate by sending thousands of emails from the infected computer. If your client's PC uses your SMTP server, your server's IP addresses can easily be blocked. Tools like the CBL (composite blacklist) or the XBL (Spamhaus's Exploits Block List) are real time databases of IP addresses with appear to be infected with illegal third-party exploits, worms/viruses with built-in spam engines, and other types of trojan-horse exploits. Proper email server security and spam-filtering can block these trojans from flooding email through your server.

File Server Antivirus

As community sites continue to grow, there's a new avenue of virus propagation. Increasingly, virus authors are uploading infected files to community sites. End-users with improperly configured desktop antivirus software could easily have their PC's infected by files derived from your server. There are a growing number of tools to provide real-time AV solutions for Linux-based servers, including PHP and Apache modules to provide real-time scanning of user-submitted content.

Application Design

If you are launching a new Web 2.0 site or other venture that relies heavily on user-submitted content, you may want to consider building your servers and network to mitigate against potentially hostile content. Though most viruses target end-users, what if a malicious user decided to attack your site directly by uploading a Linux virus that would corrupt all of your image files? As SaaS and other online services continue to grow, a rise in server-based virus attacks will surely follow.

Key Services

rackAID provides antivirus solutions for email and server systems. We also have a range of options for Plesk, Ensim and cPanel based servers. We can often combine our antivirus solutions with anti-spam solutions for a complete email protection package.