09/10/2014
Were nearing the end of the third "semester" of beta testing, within regard to the RapidWebs Secure Cloud Hosting Platform. We are currently offering hosting to customers, privately, but will soon be moving forward with our public launch. I (Steven Page) Would like to thank everybody who has supported RapidWebs, as well as every body else who has been so very patient.
Security is something that if not properly planned, then executed... could end up backfiring- doing more harm that it does good. a complex security hierarchy can be time consuming to trouble shoot: unless time is taken to ensure the wheels are greased and that things work fluently.
just as important, is ensuring things remain simplified in terms of interface and management. finally, custom components and tools must be well documented, and critical infrastructure must conform to many different industry standard compliance checks.
Implementation is key, and this includes real world testing, benchmarking, audits, planning, and work experience in your environment.
but I digress. Everybody at RapidWebs, including myself, thanks you very much for your patience!
and To thank our existing beta users, plus any new customer coming in the future... we are planning many large discounts, coupons & vouchers... which will cover all sorts of services and options available from the new RapidWebs Secure Cloud Based Hosting Platform.
These should be available some time after our initial public launch. They should be announced in the forums, on our website, and via monthly email letter subscriptions... so keep tuned in!
Anyway, Here is a detailed list of most things that will be available at launch time. Enjoy!
the RapidWebs Secure Cloud Based Hosting Platform
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o A New Breed of Shared Hosting from RapidWebs!
- dedicated resource allotment per customer
- optional dedicated CPUs and extra memory during peak times
- expanding packages, which are open for negotiation after a trail period
- customizable intelligent caching front end (similar to CloudFlare)
- google's Page Speed + next generation http standard (SPDY)
- do you have multiple sites? sub-servers allow multiple websites or applications to be hosted under one account.. all while helping fairly separate resources allocated to each website, customer, and user
- Reseller Hosting Packages are planned to be available, in coming time
- OpenVZ / Proxmox Virtual Private Servers are planned to be incorporated into our product line, with our goal, or deadline, estimated at around one year after the initial public launch of the RapidWebs Hosting Service
o plus a diverse set of Essential Features and Options:
- support for PHP, Perl, Python, and other CGI Options
- Monthly Offsite backups for all users (Weekly Incremental for Advanced Packages)
- Daily off-site database backups for all users
- Secure HTTP (HTTPS) Support, with an easy to use Certificate Manager
- FTPS / SFTP / SSH / Control Panel / File Manager / etc
- Statistics Tracking (Webalizer / AWStats / Google Analytics)
- a Full Featured Hosting Control Panel, including Mobile Phone Access
- and Many, Many customization options, such as access to basic user defined Apache/NGinx Configuration Points, user defined Bind9 Settings, SpamAssassin Settings, Procmail filters, and many other things to help tune your experience to meet your demands and expectations
o but not without the Infrastructure to Boot!
- scalable CGI/PHP Worker Pools, ensuring scalability of your website
- relational database hosting: MySQL, SQLite, etc
- load balanced, secure, in house DNS Hosting
- load balanced, secure, in house Email Hosting
- Website Monitoring (uptime, load-time, etc)
- Personalized Backups Schedules (on site)
- GIT / SVN / CVS / WebDav Project Hosting
- Access to personalized server access log files
- Access to personalized server error / warning log files
- "Sensitive File" Permission Monitor
o and the list goes on, and on..:
- Shell Access includes some limited executable directories, which can be used for shell scripting purposes
- Customizable PHP Instances (personal php.ini for each Website)
- Wide array of helper software, such as backup tools, minification software (for CSS, JavaScript, and HTML), and access to things like Cron Jobs.
- Google PageSpeed allows on the fly code clean-up, compression, caching, and other great features for decreasing load time of your Website
- Many Common or even Necessary Apache/PHP/Pear Modules available for use. If needed, We can also install other dependencies (upon request).
- Automatic or Manual Installation, and Updating, of essential scripts (i.e PHPMyAdmin, WHMCS, django, etc)
- one time free setup of Wordpress, Joomla, and any other supported Content Management System or Software
o DNS Servers Include:
- A basic "zone" editor, for those new to DNS Management
- A more full-featured zone editor, for those comfortable with DNS Management
- Off-site Zone Backups for all users
- Load balancing throughout the Cloud
- Basic Brute Force Protection / Denial of Service Mitigation
- A minimum of at least 3 or more Name Servers per Domain/Website
- DNSSEC, DKIM, SPF, etc
o Email servers include:
- Secure IMAP/POP3/SMTP, over high grade Ephemeral SSL
- Support for GNU GPG Encryption + Mail Authentication
- Webmail with Mobile Phone Access
- Custom Filtering Solutions
- Support for large amounts of physical inboxs / user accounts
- Auto-Reply, Catch-all's and Forwarders
- Anti-Spam, Phishing, Malware, Virus and Scam Filters
- the ability tune your spam filter, including an "auto-white list"
- Load Balanced Incoming/Outgoing Mail Servers
- Off-site Backups
- DKIM / Domain Keys
- Mailing Lists, Login Monitoring, and More!
and ALL of this includes a heavily monitored, standards compliant, audited, and consistently tested security atmosphere.. intended to secure your services, including any possible transactions you many process using RapidWebs Hosting Services..
but most of all, keeping in mind the constant priority of securing your personal information, business assets, and intellectual property. Keeping it SAFE- for both you, and your business:
o Thus, we are Depending on a New Breed of Security!
- support for Google Authenticator / Two Factor Authentication
- fine tuned Web Application Firewall(s)
- optional secondary Web Application Firewall (for cloud frontend)
- servers are frequently audited in-house, and by third parties
- anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spam, and many more file scanning features operate in real time, and are available on demand (to necessary applications)
- Brute Force Detection. Denial of Service Attack Mitigation
- custom in house firewall software, which operates across the entire distributed network, sharing critical information.. all working in tandem throughout our Cloud Infrastructure.
o Network Wide Intrusion Detection Systems
- IDS Systems include the use of of several tiers of monitoring and management: heuristics, rule-sets based on previous audits, host based intrusion prevention features, incredibly specific file system monitoring, and more!
- these are also supplemented by regular pe*******on testing.
- security patches and software upgrades are always considered high priority, and although largely automatic.. they are always double checked to ensure all based are covered, or that nothing was missed or overlooked.
- vulnerabilities are often manually patched, if they have not yet hit the mainstream Linux repository (for example). specifically if it is cause for concern, and others have deemed such a vulnerability as of Critical Importance..
- users can make use of our low level "file integrity monitor", and have our systems mail them in the event that any files have been changed without reasonable consent.. or if anything looks "out of place"
o Noteworthy Information on our In-House Firewall Software:
- our custom firewall software is based on "IPTables", and includes basic features such as a stateful packet filter, port scan detection, per customer/user packet monitoring and filtering, packet classification, denial of service mitigation, and more
- firewall includes some custom "advanced" features, such as attack fingerprinting, with the ability to instantly respond to the intrusion detection systems red-flags.
- mitigation of common attacks is hard coded into each machines rule-set
- a global list of host-names or IP Addresses is maintained by the RapidWebs Cloud and Proprietary Firewall Software. mostly consisting of previous or suspected attackers, this is used to block attacks across the entire network, synchronously, relative to the time of the first, or isolated time of initial interception
- This list is frequently merged with a public database of bot-nets and hackers, helping deter rouge hosts, various probes, and things like brute force password crackers. moreover, this helps strangle or stifle cooardinated attacks, and reject obvious malicious networks from the get-go.
- RapidWebs will occasionally supply information on daily attack patterns, acting as a "honey-pot" at times. essentially, this information contributes valuable information on new or emerging threats, and when combined with thousands of other sources.. helps form and support a community based security mechanism.
- these features which have been discussed, plus many more, all help reduce the attack surface within regard to our distributed network. this is including each and every individual web application. the end game is an attempt at limiting the ability for hostile damage, loss of intellectual property, or worse.. but these mechanisms do this safely, and all at the perimeter of our network!
o Standards Compliant, Professionally Planned and Ready for Anything!
- well rounded disaster recovery plans, and plenty of supporting infrastructure enables web masters to not only have confidence in RapidWebs during serious technical difficulties, cyber attack, or any other relevant situation.. but it provides the underlying framework which allows dynamic websites and their growing businesses to operate with peace of mind.
- all services either Support, but try to Enforce *High Grade Encryption*
- distributed network nodes used by customers are occasionally audited for PCI Compliance (Credit Card Industry Standards)
- preferred ciphers typically include favouring Diffie–Hellman, or Elliptic Curves Ciphers (where possible). most often, the use of an ephemeral key exchange is a primary focus.
- we make use of 128 or 256 encryption, each with their own specific use case scenarios. typically sensitive information, like user data, backups, emails, financial transactions, and things of the like: these are forced over 256 bit encryption. 128 bit is only used where speed is a concern, and when this information is generally less sensitive, such as transient connections between servers or applications. an example of this could be typical HTTPS Connections, or server to server tunnels.
o We try to go the extra mile where ever we can:
- off-site backups are stored on both RAID Storage, and occasionally copied to an external hard storage backup device. these "hard storage devices" are encrypted, locked in a safe and only accessible to a few key personnel. these are only ever used for exactly their intended purposes.
- off-site backups are always stored using the latest strong ciphers and high grade encryption schemes.
- Each and every node within our distributed network is backed up like this, and can be re-imaged to any desired point in recent time, whenever required.
- Our Clustering Topology was designed in an fashion which aims to prevent any "Single Points of Failure", and is intended to be able to withstand most standard, and some major outages in other parts of the network: achieving high fault tolerance.
- Load balancing is a focus on all essential services, with web services making use of intelligent caching in both memory, and on disk, through out several nodes within the distributed network. plans are to map nodes using geo-ip location data so that these front end servers are also called upon in an order closest to the user requesting the site or file (increasing load time for end-users)
o Other Important Notes (Over-selling):
- Over-selling is not ever going to be part of our business strategy. most simply put, this is because such business practices could have the effect of stressing out critical elements of our infrastructure, in turn, negating the very core aspects of our product and service line. that which we consider to make our hosting platform unique.
- With that said however, know that this is accomplished by delegating each customer a *dedicated* amount of resources. We consider this part of our platforms appeal. We plan to do everything in our power to prevent "over-selling" any of our services. However, there might be times during expansion or upgrade where things could get "tight", so to say. but know that the large majority of the time.. over-selling will simply not be a problem here at RapidWebs.
o Other Important Notes (Resources and Peak Load Times):
- If a specific client is experiencing high load volumes, and putting stress on other users, they will be micro-managed accordingly. strict monitoring will allow for proper resource allocation, and processor scheduling priority/affinity.
- clients can "rent" a personal dedicated CPU, extra memory, or other resources during times of expected traffic surges, peak load times, and more. this can help if you are going over your limit, do not wish to upgrade your plan or package, and need a minor or temporary adjustment to your allocated resources
- Servers operate on 100 mbit/s lines, and 90% of available throughput is *always* equally divided up between each customer. users stepping out of their fair use boundaries have a soft limit and hard limit on their account. soft limits give the ability to have "burst" periods for unexpected traffic. however, hard limits will result in a temporary error page, sending notification to the end-user, of the issue at hand.
o Support Options / Fair Use Policy:
-We will be providing our users with several customer support options. Your first support option will be our community forums. following that would be a ticket based support system. finally, if we need to have one on one conversation... we plan to be supplying a jabber, or IRC chat server, for instant messaging communication with community members or staff.
- Abuse of Services will simply NOT be tolerated. We will do EVERYTHING in our power to provide a fair, equal, security wise and dynamic hosting experiences for our customers. this means that everybody has to be team players here. no cheaters. no gluttons. no hogs. in the end, you will have a better experience if you simply follow the rules, like everybody else.
- if you break any terms of service, or if your website is abused due to critical weakness.. we will first try to work WITH you to resolve any problems. however, we will not refrain from terminating customers who refuse to comply with our fair use policies. just as we will not refrain from expunging those who are violating the moral standing of our business, by publishing illegal, offensive, or violent material to our servers.
- we will never destroy your data immediately after suspension or termination. we understand the potential significance, and incredible important of the information or data that resides within your individual account. if you have removed from RapidWebs due to minor infractions, or billing issues.. you data will be available for pick up / download, up to at least 30 days from that day of your termination.
In Conclusion... Thanks for taking the time to read this. and We hope you are as excited about our Public Launch as we are! after stringent testing and benchmarking, we will open our services to the public. however, we feel that it's important that we know everything is secure, in tip top condition, and that there is no major service issues before we decide to offer our services to the public. We hope you understand the need for our beta testing and benchmarking period.
However, if you would like to buy hosting through RapidWebs, and participate in our beta testing phase: you can message us at ANY time to setup a new account
Hosting: [email protected]
Other Services: [email protected]
Customer Support: [email protected]
You can also message us on here if desired!
Take Care!
Steven Page,
the RapidWebs Organization
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most things described in this article should be considered "as-is". most of these things discussed in this article will not change before our public launch, and likewise, most policy will remain in tact from now throughout our public launch... but its wise to note that anything can change during beta testing phases. Due to this, We reserve the right to add, edit, redact, or delete statements from this document at any time. We can not be held liable for things that may, or may not be honoured, that which is described in this article. for more information, you may contact the RapidWebs Organization at [email protected]
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