How to Secure VPS Hosting

When you have signed up for a VPS server there is an operating system which is installed as per your choice. But there are no security protocols which are deployed natively. So, it is upon you to secure your VPS hosting server. There are some easy to follow guidelines which can instruct you on the best ways to secure your VPS. Some of these have been discussed as follows:

One of the best things that you can do is to configure SSH service listening port which is set to 22 by default. You should ideally change this and not keep it at the default setting because most of the hackers are well aware of this and they create robots accordingly which can successfully target the port 22. So, when you modify the default settings, you can make it more challenging for hackers to go ahead with their hacking attempts. You can replace the port number with any other port of your preference but not one which has been used already in the system. You should then save the configuration file and restart the server.

Another useful tip is to change passwords associated with "root". When any OS gets installed there is a password that is created automatically for users to have root access. It is recommended that you should change this and customize it. The system will then ask you to give a new password two times over so as to authenticate it. When typing, password characters are usually not shown. You can also create a user having restricted rights. The user will have permission to log into the system through SSH with password as specified when this account had been created. When the user is logged in, he must enter password related to root user to validate certain operations. When you use UNIX systems, this rot user gets created by default and therefore it is quite dangerous to keep the server accessible only via this user. So, it is advisable to disable the direct access through the SSH protocol.

Finally, it is a good practice to keep everything updated, installing the most recent security patches and upgrades. This is because the new versions of an operating system can have patches for security loopholes which had affected the previous ones. Besides, you should also ensure that backups are performed on a regular basis; so, you can always roll back to earlier versions if need arises.

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