Astra’s Web Hosting Malware Scanner and Antivirus

Hosting servers are the foothold of a website. Reasonably, it becomes a nightmare for the administrator if the hosting server goes south due to a malware infection. It is nothing less than painful to detect the source & level of infection. Furthermore, the search for the solution in these cases seems endless. But, your pain would have been relieved long back, had you found a good web host malware scanner.

Let me introduce you to the Astra Security’s web host malware scanner with this article. This scanner contains various utilities that consistently and effectively mitigate malware infections from your web hosting server. Read on to learn more about its features.

But, before we jump into that, let’s take a look into the consequences & causes of a web host malware infection.

Consequences of Malware Infection

1. Corruption and Loss of Data

When malware infects your website, there is mostly corruption and loss of stored information in your website directories. The data may be accessible by a remote code execution as an aftermath of various vulnerabilities existing on your website. Once, someone gains access to your website’s integral information, it can be deleted or made unintelligible or misused. This can lead to huge losses to your organization.

2. Account Suspension by Hosting

Once the malware infects your website, the users are redirected to pages which they didn’t request or clicked on. In addition, various other undesired activities also take place on your website. This causes your hosting provider to suspend your hosting account. A suspension makes your website inaccessible; this can have a negative impact on your business & reputation.

3. Search Engine Blacklisting

When malware remains hosted, it creates links and backdoors to websites which are malicious. It stores malicious files which can lead to corruption of your website’s directories and contents. When the search engine crawler crawls over your website, it checks for the malicious links and files. Having found those, the search engine blacklists your website. This hampers the SEO of your website.

Causes of Malware Infection on Hosting Web Servers

1. Open Vulnerable ports

This is one of the major reasons for web servers getting infected. Hackers scan your web server quietly and then quickly determine the open ports. They also get information about the software version and the service running on these open ports. They search for a payload and inject it on the server which causes it to malfunction. It can further cause corruption of data.

2. Outdated Web Server Software

Server developers and administrators often do not update the software running on the web server for the fear that it may affect the quality of performance. However, what they don’t see is that when they do not update their system, it makes them vulnerable to hackers. The exploits for older versions are disclosed which increases the risk of web server getting infected by malware.

3. Shared Hosting

Startups or small business groups often opt for shared hosting for their website. It is because shared hosting is cheaper and allows multiple websites to be hosted on a single web server. Now, websites usually do not know who their neighbors are on a shared hosting server. Hence, a malicious web host can introduce malware on the web hosting server which can lead to compromisation of the other websites hosted on the system.

4. Unchecked “Uploads” Section

Websites often have an upload section. This is used for uploading an image file or a document file. A hacker may try to exploit this section and try to upload a reverse shell file. If the upload section doesn’t validate the file, it may lead to compromisation of your website. The hacker may also upload malware into your website directory which can cause corruption of your website data.

Solution: Web Host Malware Scanner

The online world is constantly being threatened by the presence and introduction of different types of malware and virus programs. Cyber threats are a new epidemic for websites. Hence, it is important that web servers defend themselves with robust scanners.

There are different types of web host malware scanners available for use which scan your website for malware infections and mitigate it.

However, the majority of them have the following issues:

• They are not updated with the latest definitions of malware especially zero-days.
• It is hard to find a scanner with a community which can scrutinize your website’s security and suggests you measures for protection from future malware attacks.
• They are often too pricey.
• Incompatibility with different CMS.
• They often don’t provide actual human support.
• They often hamper the quality of performance of your website while scanning for malware

So which web host malware scanner should you use?

Astra Web Host Malware Scanner

Astra offers one of the best web host malware scanner and web hosting antivirus software. It is available for different web hosting platforms and helps in swift detection and mitigation of malware infections present in your web server. It has the following features which make it stand out amongst the rest of the web host malware scanner utilities:

Intuitive Dashboard

It offers a bird’s eye view of your web server’s security. Detailed information such as the number of stopped attacks, attack parameter, malicious files, attacker’s profile, the origin of attack, most attacked areas of your web servers. It even shows login notifications and threat analytics along with blacklist monitoring. Unlike other web host malware scanners, it doesn’t report any false positives.

One-Click Malware Removal

The on-demand malware scanner and cleaner tool are powered by machine learning and available for service 24×7. It automatically performs scans on a daily basis. The user/administrator of the web host also has the option of scheduling the scans on their web server as per their convenience.

It also additionally checks for any file modifications on your web server’s directories. Everything is logged within Astra and made available for review. The malware scanner scans and removes malware like pub2srv, Japanese spam, Credit card hack, Malicious redirects, Pharma attack, etc.

Rock Solid Firewall

Moreover, the web application firewall by Astra keeps an eye on all coming traffic and hacking attempts. This will ensure that no malware infection happens on your web host server.

It offers protection from spam and bad bot. And the best part is – it is all done in real-time, thus, you need not worry about your website facing downtime. Apart from that Astra also stops the defined OWASP top 10 attacks. Astra Security’s firewall is tailored to protect against the known CVEs. This firewall even monitors visitor patterns on the websites hosted on the webserver and blocks any vector with malicious intent.

Traffic Control and Monitoring

With the click of a button, traffic incoming from a particular country or IP can be whitelisted or blocked. It also offers the option to add exception rules, whitelist URLs, GET, POST, JSON fields, HTML fields. There are various other options for IP profiling available with Astra’s web host malware scanner.

File Upload Scanning

Apart from only scanning the website, it also scans and controls the extensions and file sizes allowed on all the upload areas of websites hosted on the web host. This prevents uploading of malicious files and also prevents uploading of backdoors on your web host. Thus only the good reaches you, the bad gets dropped at the gate.

Community-Powered Intelligence

All the websites which run on Astra share their threat intelligence to power your website’s security. Learnings from an attack on other website’s automatically get pushed on to your website. This way, Astra can predict attacks from malware on your web host before they can cause an impact. The collective threat intelligence uses machine learning and mitigates malware attacks with the least amount of false-positive results.

Custom built for your hosting server

One size doesn’t fit every hosting platform’s security requirements. Be it any web hosting server i.e. GoDaddy, Bluehost, Hostgator, 1&1, AWS and many more, Astra’s web host malware scanner works seamlessly on every platform. Astra even protects your web hosting from any dedicated attach which may strike on your webserver.

Real human assistance

Unlike other utility software, Astra’s web host malware scanner also offers experienced real-human support. Officials at Astra are available round the clock for support. You may reach out to them via chat & phone support. Because when it comes to security, timing is everything.

Great pricing plans

The pricing of Astra’s web host malware scanner is highly affordable. It has been designed keeping in mind the requirements of small and large businesses alike so that they get the best value for money.

To Sum Up

These were some of the points which make Astra’s web host malware scanner a must-have. The numerous features work in great amalgamation to guard your webserver from cyber threats. It eases the process by automating it for the website administrator or a web security officer. Having an active web host malware scanner is a desirable feature to have. Hence, always use a robust malware scanner for your web host and keep malware infections at bay.

Share this...

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Linkedin