|
Private Awards Shopping Cart Web and E-Mail Server Not Shared Web and E-Mail Server?
Synopsis of this Feature:
We realize this is getting a bit technical, however having a private web server is extremely important for many reasons. First lets talk about the downsides to having a shared web server. A shared server refers to sharing a web server software application. For instance, sharing Apache Web Server or IIS web server with other customers and clients. It also refers to sharing e-mail servers, ftp servers, telnet/ssh servers, database servers, and other core server services and in some cases, sharing of IP Addresses. In the shared market of hosting, the hosting provider can lower costs due to the fact you can multi-host or virtual host, sometimes also called sub host of web sites sharing resources. Oftentimes, shared hosting also equates to overloading of server hardware with more clients then the server can handle. Everyone has seen the $4.95 hosting. The only way to achieve those rates in hosting is by using shared hosting solutions. Even some $50/month hosting solutions are shared hosting. The problem with using shared servers include but are not limited to:
- Single IP Address vs. Dedicated IP Address (can be extremely detrimental to search engine rankings)
- Single E-Mail Server using a Single IP Address (one person violating spam rules can effect ALL users of that e-mail server linked to a single IP Address resulting in e-mails you send to your customers being blocked by RBL lists (we estimate about 70% of all e-mail servers in the United States subscribe to one or more RBL blocking lists to control spam)
- Non-Sandboxed servers resulting in low security and PCI Compliance violations.
- Non-Sandboxed database servers resulting in low security and PCI Compliance violations.
- If Shared Apache or IIS Server crashes, it crashes for all hosted accounts, not just one account as the case would be with Private Server Technology.
- If shared e-mail server crashes, it crashes for all hosted accounts, not just one account as the case would be with Private Server Technology.
Now lets talk about Private Server technology. With Private Server Technology, each customers sites is sandboxed and isolated from other customers. This means no sharing of IP Addresses for web servers or e-mail servers. This is important to ensure you do not have your e-mails rejected by RBL DNS servers simply due to another persons violation of spam rules Also without sandboxing, there is a higher risk of your competitors gaining access to your database information via hacking since the database servers may not be sandboxed. In addition, Private web server technology, due to its sandboxing of applications, means that if a web server goes offline on another private web server, your web server application is not effected and your site continues to serve web pages.
BizWizard ShopKart™:
NetSoft Studio uses Virtual Private Server technology to sandbox each clients into their own area of the physical server. Each awards shopping cart site has its own Apache Web server, its own e-mail server, its own database server, its own FTP server, etc. etc. This provides higher levels of security as well as higher levels of hack prevention. In addition, for added security, the primary servers "root" user is disabled for access via ftp, ssh, and telnet services are turned off to prevent access to the server through unsecure channels. We also enforce password naming conventions designed to make hacking extremely difficult. For instance the following passwords rules are enforced:
- Password cannot be a dictionary word
- Password must contain at least one alpha lowercase letter
- Password must contain at least one alpha uppercase letter
- Password must contain at least one numerical character
- Password must contain at least one symbol
- Password must be a minimum of 8 characters in length and supports up to 16 characters in length
An Example of a good password we enforce for our servers might be
bE9*wP3@
Even though it is harder to memorize a password such as this (probably won't take you more than a few days of using it to memorize it), it makes your server more secure. Its way to easy to guess a persons daughters name, or a birth date, or the many other types of things people tend to use to secure their information. Using these password rules outlined above, there are 5.1 Quadrillion (5,132,188,731,375,620) possible combinations for a password. We realize this may seem excessive, however when your dealing with computers connected to the internet 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and accessible by the entire world and with so many criminals out there looking to steal credit card numbers, we feel this level of security is important
AwardsCart®:
We could not find any documentation on the AwardsCart® site to determine whether or not their servers are private or shared servers. We did test out a couple of their domain names for web sites in operation for AwardsCart® and see that they used different IP Addresses, which means they at least have single IP Address per site as best as we can tell at this point. AwardsCart® indicates they use LiquidWeb for their hosting. We do not know which type of setup AwardsCart® is using at LiquidWeb, nor can we verify whether they are doing shared/sub-hosting or providing a sandboxed private server for each AwardsCart® site.
LiquidWeb:
Based upon the documentation at LiquidWeb, they sell Virtual Private Server Account Plans which may be used to create sub hosted or shared hosting accounts. The VPS itself is private, but if the VPS is hosting solutions for 100 clients, then each of the 100 clients are playing in the same sandbox together.
They also have dedicated servers. Dedicated servers can also be configured for private server hosting or shared server hosting.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The text, documentation, videos, screen shots and analysis show on this page were produced on April 19, 2010 and were deemed to be accurate and correct at that time. Since software changes over time, it is possible that the companies represented in this comparison have made changes to their solutions after the date of this publication. For this reason, it is recommended that each person evaluating each company represented do their own due diligence and research.
AwardsCart® is a Registered Trademark of Trophy Toolbox, Inc.
NetSoft Studio™ is not affiliated with nor partnered with AwardsCart® or Trophy Toolbox, Inc.
|
