Higher Productivity And Security With Windows 2008 Hosting

The upgrade to Windows 2008 from Windows 2003 can bring a hosting customer multiple benefits, including power savings, better remote access, higher security, and the capacity to deliver streaming media, in addition to comprehensive disaster recovery, versatile operating system support, and new administration tools.

Power Savings Offer Lower Hosting Costs

A hosting company that offers Windows 2008 will be able to offer more processing power for less based on lower power consumption. Tests show Windows Server 2008 using less power than Windows Server 2003 when running on the same hardware at comparable levels of throughput, achieving power savings of up to 10 percent. This is achieved partly through the power management policy in Windows Server 2008 that automatically reduces the performance levels during periods of reduced demand for processor resources.

Disaster Recovery with Enhanced Backup Capabilities

Get faster backup technology and better disaster protection with Windows Server Backup in Windows 2008, using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and block-level backup technology. This new technology offers faster backups, simplified restoration and recovery, ability to recover applications, and improved scheduling, while retaining support for manual backups. It also provides for the offsite removal of backups for disaster protection, remote administration, automatic disk usage management, extensive command-line support, and support for optical media drives and removable media.

Increased Security with a Low-profile Server Core Installation

If you have dedicated servers that aren’t run through a GUI, or that require higher security, the Server Core installation option could serve your needs. The Server Core installation is a minimal installation (1 GB of disk space) for Windows 2008 server in which only the items required for the specified server roles are installed. That reduces software maintenance, management, and attack surface on the server. The Server Core installation provides an environment for server roles including Active Directory Domain Services, Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services, DHCP Server, DNS Server, File Services, Print Server, and Streaming Media Services. (Windows Server Backup is not available with Server Core installation.)

Rich Communications with Streaming Media Services

Streaming Media Services allow you to deploy a Windows Media server, a platform for streaming live and on-demand digital media content over networks. If your company manages network resources to deliver rich communications for online learning, marketing, and sales, Streaming Media Services can provide the platform you need to deliver the material efficiently, robustly, and at a reasonable cost. Other uses include wireless broadband entertainment, Internet broadcasting, secure audio and video content, and high-quality IPTV over LANs.

Improved Remote Access and Services through New Terminal Services Functionality

The upgrade from Window 2003 to 2008 will improve all aspects of your remote access service using Terminal Services. Windows 2008 includes improved functionality for core functionality and for Terminal Services RemoteApp, Web Access, Printing, Licensing, and Gateway.

Terminal Services core functionality has been greatly enhanced by the addition of services such as Remote Desktop Connection, monitor spanning, which displays a remote desktop session across multiple monitors, and display data prioritization to improve screen performance by giving display, keyboard, and mouse data priority over traffic like printing or file transfers.

RemoteApp and Web Access provide access to Windows programs from virtually any location through a company-provided installation using a remote desktop client or website.

Other enhanced Terminal Services include Printing, Licensing, and Gateway. Printing has been enhanced with the Terminal Services Easy Print driver. This feature enables users to reliably print from a RemoteApp program or from a terminal server desktop session to the correct printer on their client computer. Licensing simplifies Client Access License (CAL) management and helps ensure that you don’t purchase more licenses than you need. Gateway enables users to connect to internal network resources over the Internet using a secure encrypted connection without the need to configure a VPN connection.

DNS Server Functionality, NFS Services and PowerShell

The DNS Server for Windows 2008 has been enhanced with several tools, including background zone loading to allow the DNS server to respond to requests while the Active Directory Domain Services zones are loading in separate threads, and support for IPv6 addresses to support present and future DNS clients designed to take advantage of the benefits of IPv6 addressing.

Services for Network File System (NFS) provide a file sharing solution for mixed Windows and UNIX environments. Support has been added for Active Directory Lookup, 64-bit version support, enhanced server performance, UNIX special device (the mknod function) support, and enhanced UNIX support, including Sun Microsystems Solaris version 9, Red Hat Linux version 9, IBM AIX version 5L 5.2, and Hewlett Packard HP-UX version 11i.

Windows 2008 has also added a new tool for system administrators called PowerShell. This command-line shell and scripting language can help your company achieve greater productivity with more than 130 command-line tools to enable easier administration and automation.

Upgrade to Windows 2008 Hosting with Infinitely Virtual

If you’d like to find out more about how Windows 2008 can improve your hosting service, call (866) 257-8455 or go to www.InfinitelyVirtual.com. We can show you how Windows 2008 can increase server security while enhancing your company’s productivity.

Ftp Servers and Security – Three Methods That Secure Ftp Servers Use

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) has been the standard for file transfer since the early days of the internet. The most remarkable feature about FTP was that it was independent of the operating system. Files could be seamlessly transferred between Unix, Windows and any other operating system. The other neat feature about FTP was that a simple authentication mechanism consisting of a login name and a password could be used to restrict access to files. However, the actual data itself was transferred in plain text and it was easy to monitor and listen in on an FTP connection.

The internet itself had very negligible security built into it. Consisting of many smaller independent networks that stretched across the globe, the path that a packet of information took to get from point A to point B was unpredictable. With the widespread adoption of the internet, it became essential to be able to send many types of sensitive data with some amount of security. Netscape Communications solved the security problem on the internet by creating the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol (SSL) which used public key cryptography to encrypt data transmitted over the internet. This is still the preferred security mechanism and is implemented by all web browsers.

FTPS Encrypted File Transfer
Modifications to the FTP protocol were released to incorporate the use of SSL for encrypting file transfers over the internet. The modified mechanism is referred to as FTPS. In order to maintain backwards compatibility with FTP, an FTPS connection could either be explicit, where the connection between the client connection and the server starts out as regular FTP and then negotiates a secure connection, or implicit where the connection starts out being encrypted.

HTTPS Encrypted File Transfer
Since a web browser is already capable of encrypting data using SSL, simple downloads and uploads can be performed directly from a web browser using the HTTPS protocol. This means that special FTP Client software is not needed.

SFTP Encrypted File Transfer
The Secure Shell protocol also known as SSH was developed by Tatu Ylonen to enable secure access to remote shells using public key cryptography and replace Telnet and other insecure shells. This protocol has since evolved to also support a file transfer mechanism known as SFTP. The main advantage of this mechanism is that it did not require the opening of a second data channel connection for transferring files.

All of these three methods of secure file transfer are based on public key cryptography and all of them are equally capable of securing the transfer of sensitive files across the internet. The only drawback of these methods is that there is a data increase associated with encrypting files. There is also a performance overhead associated with encrypting the files at the source and decrypting them at the destination. Because of this, system administrators sometimes use regular FTP for file transfers within a secured internal network. However, for transferring files over the internet, this is a small price to pay in exchange for the peace of mind that sensitive files reach their destination without being intercepted or tampered with.

Server Security- Understanding the Reasons with Possible Error Rectifying Measures

Server security has become vulnerable to the threats in the web environment. Hackers are on the lookout for the web server security breach to enter malicious software that gets installed automatically. It is important to look into the server security issues and provide solutions for optimum server security as it is the backbone of a website and making server security less vulnerable which is our prime responsibility only if we want to flourish without fail in the World Wide Web. There is a need to take heed of the possibilities of a hacking process that poses danger on the server security.

Web applications developed to ease of development and testing procedures offer privileges with no such restrictions and such privileges done on live production server poses a great threat for mischievous users to access it and hack it instantly and harm the server security. Similarly, the privileges on the file and network services by means of the service software can induce a malicious user to access sensitive areas like the website and its database, the web application files, backend data etc,  and create a server security breach issue. It is therefore wise on the part of the web master to provide least privileges for utmost server security.

User accounts can also keep certain server security holes as open access for hackers to barge in to pose a threat over the server security. The default user accounts when not in use should be deactivated or other wise it can pose a threat over server security. The names for the administrative accounts should be changed and not to be given to other users so as to guarantee complete server security. Correct authentication and privileges solves half of the problem and server security is guaranteed.

There is the need to get specialized in current security trends on the Internet; gaining experience to enable us to identify potential threats that might bring down your Internet hosts. There are full security auditing services offered for all UNIX-like operating systems (such as Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris etc.) and for all other Internet services. The security auditing should include within itself 24/7 live support, scanners for threat identification and terminating server security threats and errors from its root, periodical check, performance optimization and systematic troubleshooting tactics in case of grievous error occurrences. The scanners installed in the system should scan the web applications and perform advanced server security checks against the open ports and network services as well. The next best thing is also to check which ports are open or not by accessing your ISP Configuration Portscanner and can open only the ports you need for your services.

The expert team performing server security checks should have the ability to customize audits by controlling access to remote systems, comprehensive reporting facilities must be catered in order to ascertain open IP ports and network weaknesses, behavior of port scans, flexibility to schedule audits, give suggestions on newer server security measures implemented for ultimate server security. What more? Many websites offer security seals that perform standard and advanced audits to ensure proper server security making it less hacking prone.

Cisco Security Server Agent – License – 25 Agents Category: Software Licensing

• Sold Individually

Product Description
Item #: 128903. The next-generation Cisco Security Agent network security software provides threat protection for server and desktop computing systems, also known as “endpoints”. The Cisco Security Agent goes beyond conventional endpoint security solutions by identifying and preventing malicious behavior before it can occur, thereby removing potential known and unknown security risks that threaten enterprise networks and applications. Because the Cisco Security Agen… More >>

Cisco Security Server Agent – License – 25 Agents Category: Software Licensing