Securing servers or sites from Google’s invasion

Below given are the security measures which system administrators and security professionals must take into account to secure critical information available online, falling into wrong hands:

- Install latest security patches available till date for the applications and as well as the operating system running on the servers.

- Don’t put critical and sensitive information on servers without any proper authentication system which can be directly accessible to anyone on internet.

- Disable directory browsing on the webserver. Directory browsing should be enabled for those web-folders for which you want to give access to anyone on internet.

- If you find any links to your restricted server or sites in Google search result then it should be removed. Visit the following link for more details:
http://www.google.com/remove.html

- Disable anonymous access in the webserver through internet to restricted systems directory.

- Install filtering tools like URLScan for servers running IIS as webserver.



Conclusion

Sometimes increase in sophistication in the systems creates new problems. Google being so sophisticated can be used by any Tom, Dick & Harry on internet to dig sensitive information which is normally neither visible nor reachable to anyone.

The only options left for the security professionals and systems administrators are to secure and harden their systems from such un-authorized invasion.