26 Feb 2010

Website security 'is imperative'

Data security for websites is more important than that for servers, it has been claimed.

Paul Baccas, a senior threat analyst at SophosLabs, said the potential capacity for malware to infect other websites is far greater if a site itself becomes infected than at the server level.

He noted a botnet attack on a website could have the potential to send out more than 1.5 billion spam emails per day.

Mr Baccas commented: "The most sensible steps are to follow established best practices. For instance, secure and hard to crack passwords, regular and up to date patching, secure coding to prevent exploitation and so on."

According to Sophos, 60 per cent of respondents to a survey recently carried out by the organisation believe Facebook presents the biggest security threat.

Furthermore, it claimed search engine optimisation targeting attacks are on the rise: someone who can successfully redirect 10,000 hits a day to a spam website can allegedly make around $180,000 (£117,000) a year.