Protect Your Servers - Security Guidance Centre for Small Business

If you think of your servers as your network's command centre, it's easy to understand why it is mission-critical to keep them safe from attack. Once your servers are compromised, your entire network is at risk. While some server attacks are merely annoying, others can cause serious damage. To protect your business, protect your servers.

If you're a small business, you may not have more than a server or two. But no matter how few or how many servers you are running, your network relies on them. They serve the applications or web pages or e-mail your team needs to do their jobs. They store valuable and/or confidential information resources. They provide a means for your customers to communicate with you, perhaps even purchase goods or services from you.

So if your servers are down, you lose productivity, you jeopardise customer relationships and you may even take an economic hit.

Basic Steps You Can Take

Many of the procedures already discussed will help protect your servers too. So if you haven't yet taken care of the following, make these steps a priority:

Step 1: Protect Your Desktops and Laptops

Step 2: Keep Your Data Safe

Step 3: Use the Internet Safely

Step 4: Protect Your Network

Even with those security measures addressed, there is more you can do to protect your servers.

1. Keep your servers in a safe place. Businesses must make sure that their servers are not vulnerable to physical calamities. Locate these machines in a secure, well-ventilated room, not in a hallway or under a desk where someone might inadvertently kick or spill coffee on them. Or mischievously tinker with them. Your server room should have no windows and a single door you can lock. Server cases should also be locked to prevent tampering with internal components. Know which employees have keys to the server room. You should also keep a record of the serial numbers of your servers, and mark them with your company information, so they can be identified and recovered if stolen.

2. Practice least privilege. With Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 and Small Business Server 2003, it is possible to assign users different permission levels. Rather than giving all users "Administrator" access - which is not a best practice for maintaining a secure environment for PCs or servers - you should use your servers to manage client PCs. Windows Servers can be configured to give individual users access to specific programs only, and to define which user privileges are allowed on the server. This ensures users can't make changes in areas that are critical to the server or client PC operation. It also prevents them from installing software that may introduce a virus or otherwise compromise the integrity of your network.

3. Understand your security options. Today's servers are more secure than ever, but the powerful security settings you find in Windows server products are only good if they are used appropriately and monitored aggressively. If your team doesn't have an IT specialist and/or expertise in security issues, consider hiring an outside consultant to work with you to appropriately protect your servers.

For more information on how to protect your servers visit Microsoft security guidance .