Hackers, spoofing and search engine ranking?

[cyberious]

My client's website has been hacked 3 times already, 2 out of those 3 times, my ISP was spoofed so whenever I went to the site, everything looked fine. When I heard from a second visitor that parts of the site were down, I became a bit concerned because I knew it had happened again. This time, I took screenshots of the page on other computere and saw that the page was reporting errors.

Do you think a competitor would actually go through the trouble to have a hacker break the site to drop your rank in search engines?

How do you protect your site from hackers when they are covering their tracks? (no info in the error logs, access logs, or anything)

If I were to move to a new hosting provider (again!) what do you look for in security? How do you know that server is going to be better than another server?

If anyone has any light to shed on this type of situation, I'm all ears, and thank you for taking the time to reply.

~Hacked and Spoofed 1-2-Many!

[Maximilian]

Originally Posted by cyberious

If I were to move to a new hosting provider (again!) what do you look for in security? How do you know that server is going to be better than another server?

IMHO - I would recommend that you investigate the guaranteed security offered in the hosting packages at http://www.1and1.com - They are priced right, have great customer service, always improving hosting packages with added value for free & have tight security.

[cyberious]

I would if I knew what to look for in security measures. Thanks for the tip though. I really am not familiar with internet security to know what the difference is. Every hosting provider boasts the best security, among everything else. But what does that really mean in technical terms?

[Maximilian]

This might make one feel a liitle more secure:

Originally Posted by http://www.1and1.com

90-Day Money Back Guarantee:
We want to make sure our customers are completely satisfied. If you decide that you are not completely happy, within 90-days from when your initial order was placed, you’ll receive your money back – no questions asked.

IMHO - You can only learn security of servers by actually controlling & administering one. That said, remote "Sun Cobalt Servers" can be leased inexpensively & are a good starter server for a novice administrator & has an excellent support community worldwide. Security update patches are very easy to install.

Just run a google query on "Cobalt Servers". Their 500 series is a newer release that is very user friendly - runs on linux/apache but supports MS asp & frontpage.

[mikmik]

I agree with Max, a good host will have good security. You might be able to find reviews on this with Google?

Here is a site, mostly about spyware, but a page on website security here has some tips and relevent links:
http://www.unwantedlinks.com/

Look under 'Web Masters' and then 'Protecting Your Site'.

[cyberious]

Cool site mikmik!