web app development Archives - Page 2 of 3

Overview on Sucuri

What is Sucuri?

Today, the commonest question that baffles app owners is: “How to secure a website against hackers?” Here is one of the viable solution to this issue – Sucuri, a cloud-based platform ensures website security by implementing strategies that keep a website clean and protect it from all sorts of security threats including hacking, malware attacks, DDoS, and blacklists. The adept professionals at Sucuri are capable of fixing hacks and they adopt suitable measures for preventing future hacks/attacks.

When Sucuri is enabled, the entire traffic of the website passes through Sucuri’s cloud proxy firewall before reaching the hosting server. This approach enables Sucuri to block all security breaches/attacks and only send the legitimate/relevant visitors to the website. So web app development companies can take the leverage of this tool to make their site more secured. Now, let’s take a look at how Sucuri works; the reference screenshots provided will provide better clarity and help you understand better on how to configure your site for better protection.

The Basic outline of Sucuri’s Network

Sucuri’s domain-specific services include the elimination of website security threats through monitoring, Firewall, and Backup services for websites.

Sucuri’s Pricing Model

Refer to the following link to check out the details of Sucuri’s pricing model.

Sucuri’s pricing model

Sucuri’s pricing model: In a nutshell

Sucuri offers 3 plans – A Basic Platform, a Pro Platform, and a Business Platform
Please note that each pricing plan supports only one website (domain) by default; reference URL: https://sucuri.net/faq/ question: How do you define a website?
- The Single license plan will work for: example.com/blog and example.com/forum, and this will be treated as a single website
- Multiple licenses is required if:
  - awesomedomain.com directs traffic to somesite.com/blog
  - blog.example.com or forum.example.com will need 3 different licenses – 2 for each blog and forum; and 1 for example.com

How to set up Sucuri: Key Steps

Peek through the steps of setting up this website security and protection platform. Here we go!

1. Logging in

For logging in to Sucuri you have 2 options to choose from:

- Login using this URL: https://dashboard.sucuri.net/login/ OR
- Go to the Sucuri website i.e. https://sucuri.net/ and click on the login button visible on the top of the main menu bar

Then, you will be redirected to the login page and you need to log in using the login details you are having.

2. Adding and Scanning the website domain

- After the login process is completed, the first-time users will be redirected to the “Add site” screen, as provided in the following screenshot:

- Thereafter, click on the “Add Site” button to add the site for monitoring. This click will open a pop-up screen, where you need to add the website domain. Enter the website domain in the given text space. It will take some time to get scanned when entered for the first time. Check out the following screenshot for reference:

- After the scan is completed, the result will be displayed as shown in the screenshot provided below – it will inform you whether the site is under malware attack or not, it will also let you know whether the site has been blocked by any Antivirus, etc. Check out the screenshot given below for reference:

3. Enabling the server-side Scanner

Now, we need to enable the server-side scanner. For executing this step, you need to go to Monitoring -> Settings -> Server Side Scanner; refer to the screenshot given below:

To enable the server-side scanner, Sucuri uses a file that needs to be uploaded at the root directory of the website and so, Sucuri will ask for FTP/SFTP details for uploading the file on the server. Thereafter, it does not require the FTP/SFTP as it is a one-time process. This step can be executed manually as well. Here goes the process:

- Enabling the server-side scanner via FTP/SFTP – Sucuri will provide the form as given below for receiving the FTP/SFTP details; refer to the following screenshot:

- Enabling the server-side scanner manually instead of providing FTP/SFTP details: Click on the blue line labeled as “Enable Manually”. You will be provided with an option to download the file. Download that file manually, upload it on the server at the root level, and then click on the button “Verify File and Enable”.

4. Adding Firewall

Now you need to add a firewall for your site.

Click on the Firewall menu given on the top of the main menu bar, check out the screenshot provided below for reference:
- For first-time users, a screen will be displayed which will ask the user to protect the site.
- When you select to protect the site, a pop-up bar will be displayed and it will ask you to add the website domain for the firewall.
Here, if your website is under a DDoS attack, you can click the first option
If you’ve got a WordPress site or any CMS site, and wish to restrict the access of its admin panel for the general public and enable it only for the IP addresses which are whitelisted, you need to select the second option.
Depending on the requirement you can decide whether or not you should use Sucuri’s DNS servers. And, if you wish to use DNS servers, you need to select the third option.
Thereafter, click on “Add Site”. It will activate the firewall and generate a firewall IP, and will also download copies of the website content to Sucuri’s network.
You need to switch the DNS (www.example.com) to point to the newly generated firewall IP of Sucuri. Before that, when we click on “Add Site”, it will show a warning that “the Service is Not Activated, and that’s because we’ve not yet switched the DNS to point Sucuri’s firewall IP.” Before switching to the DNS, we can test whether Sucuri’s network has downloaded the website content properly or not, and for this, Sucuri’s provides its internal Sucuri Firewall Domain. Click on this, and if you find that the website is loading properly, it indicates that everything has gone well so far.
After switching the DNS (www.example.com) to Sucuri’s Firewall IP in a domain management service provider like godaddy.com, AWS, etc. if we visit Sucuri’s Firewall menu; it will show that the Firewall Service is ‘Activated’ and that the domain is pointing to firewall IP.

Now, take a look at certain crucial Firewall settings that need to be established

Access Control:

- Allow IP Addresses: Here if you have provided restricted access only for the whitelisted IP addresses, you can add IPs for whitelisting them. Sucuri provides some options while whitelisting the IP – time-based whitelisting for IP that is been going to be added, for a duration of 30 mins, 1 hr, 3 hrs, 6 hrs, 12 hrs, 1 day, or for a permanent period.
- Geo-Blocking: Here, you can block access to your website based on geo-location – you can restrict users belonging to certain countries/regions from accessing the website. Sucuri provides some options like “View” and “Post.” Read the description given below for figuring out what View and Post will do; refer to the screenshot given below:

Security:

- As given in the screenshot provided below, the options that are provided inside the orange-colored box under the button “Advanced Security Options,” are the options that are most likely to be enabled.
- The options that are provided inside the yellow-colored box are related to WordPress. Here, the first option restricts the Admin panel from being publicly accessed and the second set of options restricts comments, etc. Refer to the screenshot given below:

All other options are self-explanatory and for more clarity, refer to the link: https://sucuri.net/guides/getting-started-with-sucuri/#

Key Takeaway

So, isn’t Sucuri a good tool to adopt for protecting your website from data breaches and ensuring website security? We are an experienced and technically sound IT firm outsourcing software development services to a global clientele. We have helped several entrepreneurs to establish their digital footprints without any hassles.

Serverless App Development is the latest trend in the IT sector! Yet, several questions arise in the minds of entrepreneurs planning to execute serverless architecture for their next app development project.

What is serverless architecture?

How is the serverless model different from other prevalent cloud computing models?

What are the opportunities and obstacles of serverless applications?

Is my business going to benefit from the serverless computing model?

Well, this article answers all the aforesaid questions! So, let’s commence.

What is serverless architecture?

Serverless architecture refers to a software design pattern in which a third-party service hosts the applications; so that the developers need not engage in the task of managing the server software and hardware. This approach is also known as serverless computing as the app logic gets implemented in an eco-system wherein servers, OS, and virtual machines are not visible. This doesn’t mean that servers are not used at all. The app logic is executed on an OS that uses physical servers. But, the difference with other cloud services is that; here the service provider wholly takes up the responsibility of infrastructure management and so the mobile app developer can focus only on writing codes.

Categories of Serverless Applications:

FaaS (Function as a Service/Feature as a Service), the serverless model enables developers to build, run and manage the app functionalities; without having to create or maintain the infrastructure needed for developing and launching the app. The first FaaS service provider was AWS Lambda by Amazon, followed by several others like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Functions, etc.

PaaS (Platform as a Service), another category of cloud computing, bears similarity with FaaS as they too hide servers from developers. But, unlike FaaS this service runs one server process continually for receiving external requests. The app is scaled by booting up more server processors, for which the developer is charged and so the scalability is visible to the developer.

BaaS (Backend as a Service), is another prominent model which addresses the cloud-computing requirements for the mobile and web app developers by offering them a unified means of connecting their apps to cloud computing services. As such, BaaS automates the development of the backend for the web and mobile and also manages the cloud infrastructure. This enables the mobile and web app development companies to only focus on the frontend part of the application.

SaaS (Software as a Service), is a software distribution service model. Here, a cloud provider hosts the software apps and empowers the end-users to connect and use those apps over the internet. Usually, users employ web browsers to access SaaS apps. Independent software vendors may give SaaS contracts to third-party cloud providers for hosting the app. A single company can also be the cloud provider as well as the software vendor; this is usually the case with big firms.

SaaS users enjoy the convenience of accessing their app through the internet instead of having to install and manage complex software and hardware. The app runs on the servers of the SaaS providers who does SaaS development. The provider handles all app-related tasks like access, performance, availability, and security.

Serverless Applications: Advantages

Reduced Administrative and Infrastructural burden

The hassle of managing servers passes on to the vendor, resulting in the following benefits for a mobile and web app development company.

Firms need not spend a huge amount on the hardware or hire engineers for maintaining that hardware.
More time and resources can be dedicated to creating and improving customer-facing features.
Developers have the flexibility of crafting and scaling the apps as required; without having to worry about the constraint of server capacity.

Cost-efficient Pricing Model

In traditional server-full architectural setups, developers have to figure out in advance the amount of server capacity needed; based on which the company purchases the capacity whether or not they end up using it. However, serverless setups follow the “pay-as-you-go” policy which means the vendor charges the company only for the amount of server space they use. The code runs whenever the serverless application needs backend functions and gets automatically scaled up whenever required. Also, provisioning is precise, dynamic, and happens in real-time. As FaaS charges a fraction of the price per request, a start-up can build an MVP at minimal cost without having to pay huge bills for lesser traffic.

Quicker Deployments and Updates

The serverless model eliminates the tasks of uploading the code to servers or engaging in any backend configuration for releasing a fully functional app. Hence, developers can speedily upload bits of code and launch a new app. As the app is a collection of functions provisioned by the service provider, rather than being a single monolithic stack; developers can either upload the entire code at one go or upload one function at a time. This ability speeds up the tasks of fixing, patching, or updating the app without any need to make changes in the entire application.

Latency Reduction

Since the app does not get hosted in the origin server, it becomes possible to run its code from anywhere. As such, the app’s functions can be run on servers that are close to the end-user depending on the vendor selected. This strategy reduces latency as the requests coming from the user need not travel a long way to reach an origin server.

Inherent Scalability

Serverless applications are capable of scaling automatically with the increase in the number of user base or usage. If a function requires to be run several times, the vendor’s servers will start, run and end them as required using separate containers. This provides the ability to handle a higher number of requests effectively as compared to a traditionally structured app.

Serverless Applications: Downsides

As the vendor fully controls the operations, a firm has to abide by their rules. For instance, if your app is set in Lambda it’s not easy to port it to Azure. This concern applies to coding languages as well. Presently only Python and Node.js developers have the flexibility to choose between the prevalent serverless options.
FaaS tools involve a steep learning curve despite the availability of comprehensive documentation.
Companies need to split their monolith into microservices for painlessly migrating to a serverless model.
Debugging and troubleshooting become challenging as serverless apps use traditional tools.
This model is great for short real-time processes but an additional function needs to be called if the task takes longer. Traditional approaches fare better for indulging in extended duration operations.

Bottom line

Serverless computing best suits start-ups and small businesses. But, if your company has a well-established workflow, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons before making a decision. For technical assistance with cloud solutions or any mobile app development services, connect to Biz4Solutions, a leading cloud service provider.

web app development, Page 2 Category

How does Sucuri enhance Website Security?