Automatic Joomla, WordPress, Drupal & Magento updates and more
All of our Cloud VPS & Extreme customers using Plesk Panel 11.5 can now benefit from a series of new and improved features for this leading hosting control panel including automatic updates and enhanced security.
One-click apps are now automatically updated
We know that keeping your applications up-to-date is vital for the security of your server, so we’ve implemented the ability to enable automatic upgrades to the latest versions of hundreds of applications installed directly from your Plesk Panel.
This new functionality can be enabled for each individual application install, but we strongly recommend using this to ensure your server is securely using the latest versions of popular hosted applications like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento updates.
Automatic upgrades will make your life easier!
SSL Certificates Explained
SSL is an acronym for Secure Sockets Layer, an encryption technology used to protect sensitive information passed between a web server and a web browser. An SSL certificate provides the encryption keys used during the communication – think of it like a secret password needed to decode the data transmitted between your computer and the specific server you’re talking to.
Even if other Internet users or servers “eavesdrop” on your conversation, they cannot understand what you’re saying because it’s all in a secret code only known to you and the server you’re speaking to.
“S” stands for secure
The ease of shopping and comparing products and prices online makes it an attractive option for many shoppers. But how can you make sure your transactions are safe and your credit card information is going only where you intend it to?
The first thing you should check when purchasing on the Internet (or entering any sensitive information – even login details) should be to look for the “S” in the website address bar. If the address starts with “https” you are on a secure site.
This “S” from “https” gives superpowers to a web page. It means that there’s an SSL certificate which will guarantee that the information you enter (e.g. your personal details or credit card information) is encrypted before transmission from your computer to the Internet. As a customer, that’s all that should interest you.
Secure your mailbox with powerful email antivirus protection!
Parallels Premium Antivirus by Dr. Web
If you’re one of our Cloud VPS customers and are looking to protect your hosted cloud email from viruses, you’ve probably heard about Parallels Premium Antivirus by Dr. Web already.
Dr. Web is what keeps your mailbox safe from all the naughty viruses out there. With more than two decades experience (Doctor Web started developing the anti-virus software in the early 1990’s) the developers have come up with a very effective heuristic engine, and comprehensive virus definitions database (over 120,000 definitions, and each individual definition can detect up to thousands of viruses!). Their sophisticated heuristic virus analysing engine with fly-code technology, origins tracing and structural entropy analysis can detect zero-day viruses and other malware before they are even added to the virus database.
Why do I need to use email antivirus?
Research from the UK’s Federation of Small Businesses estimates that the cost of cybercrime amongst its members in 2012 was £4,000 per member on average (around $6,500) of which virus infections were responsible for a staggering 20%!
According to a study in The Guardian, more than 9 million adults in Britain were hacked in the past year. Would you take this chance?
Another thing worth mentioning is spam generated from your computer becoming infected by viruses. It’s common for a virus to ‘hijack’ your computer to send outbound spam – and we all know everyone hates receiving spam! GroupIB, specialists in cyber security, made a recent report about the evolution of spam in the last two years and determined that profits gained worldwide from this activity reached $786 million in 2012. The main products targeted by these spamming campaigns were medicines, drugs or software. What would your customers say if they suddenly received slimming advice from your e-mail account? Not very professional, right? The only thing ‘slimmed’ would be your profits!
How it works
With Dr Web, you get a rapid protection time for all new viruses. You can be confident it’s up to date with hourly updates – critical during any outbreak! Dr. Web’s over 150 R&D staff work around the clock to keep a constant eye on new viruses and respond as soon as something looks questionable, keeping your inbox protected.
Secure webmail hosting with Roundcube and Horde
We have some great news for all of our webmail users! We’ve now introduced Roundcube webmail as the default webmail client for our Cloud VPS range (replacing Atmail open-source which is no longer supported by the developers). And for those of you who prefer to use Horde IMP we’re pleased to say that it was also upgraded to version 5!
These two secure webmail clients are both easy to use, very popular and have a great interface to make your life simpler.
Enhanced secure webmail with Roundcube
Roundcube webmail is very intuitive through its neat drag-and-drop interface.
One of Roundcube’s strongest points is the simplicity of the interface, which is comparable to using a good quality desktop client and brings powerful features usually only typically found in services like Gmail and Outlook.com.
Benefits of tried & tested software versions
We’re often asked by customers why we’re running an old version of PHP or MySQL on our Cloud VPS services as they’re worried that they may be insecure or outdated, but rest assured this couldn’t be further from the truth!
We use extremely stable versions of enterprise software with many benefits over the latest available releases to ensure your web services are always available (and give you the option to change this if you wish!).