Saturday, May 08, 2010

YOUR BLOG IS AS VULNERABLE TO ATTACK AS OTHER WEBSITES

A blog is an online journal on any subject maintained by a blogger. The word blog is actually a contraction of the term weblog and the writer is called a blogger. We have many local bloggers who write on subjects as varied as farming to tribal architecture. The popularity of these blogs has increased in the recent past and they have become the de facto sources of social, political and economic information that would never be published by mainstream media organizations.

Popular Kenyan blogs include bankelele, a blog that provides valuable insights on our economy. Kumekucha is another popular blog that presents a no holds barred political analysis of Kenyan politics.

Blogs are however not immune to hacking attacks due to their power to shape and sway public opinion. Various Kenyan blogs have been attacked and local bloggers need to secure and protect their blogs. You might be a budding blogger yourself and you will need to implement a few security features before you blog away.

You should first protect your blog username and password. This is like stating the obvious but blog passwords are valuable to identity thieves out to impersonate a blogger so as to damage his/her reputation. You should ideally have a unique login credential for your blog that is different from your email account and other websites you visit.

Backing up your blog is another good way of securing your content. Most blog hacking attacks are usually out to deface the blog with offensive content. A hacker who can penetrate the blog server can also delete the contents of all blogs that are hosted in it. Periodically backing up your blog makes it possible for you to re-post your articles immediately thereby retaining your readership.

Sometimes we get too busy to update our blogs and they slowly die after a few months of neglect. The danger of not regularly updating your blog means that you can have old vulnerable blogging software that can be used to penetrate the blog and your computer. At the very least you should frequently update the version of the blogging software so that security patches can be up-to-date.

Finally choose your blogging host carefully. Use a responsive and helpful host company so as to save you considerable ache when things go wrong.

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