Methods for Improving ECS Security

If ECSs are not protected, they may be attacked by viruses, resulting in data leakage or data loss.

You can use the methods introduced below to protect your ECSs from viruses or attacks.

ECS can be protected externally and internally.

Host Security Service (HSS) is designed to improve the overall security for ECSs. It helps you identify and manage the assets on your servers, eliminate risks, and defend against intrusions and web page tampering. There are also advanced protection and security operations functions available to help you easily detect and handle threats.

Before using the HSS service, install the HSS agent on your ECSs first and you will be able to check the ECS security status and risks in a region on the HSS console.

Monitoring is key for ensuring ECS performance, reliability, and availability. Using monitored data, you can determine ECS resource utilization. The cloud platform provides Cloud Eye to help you obtain the running statuses of your ECSs. You can use Cloud Eye to automatically monitor ECSs in real time and manage alarms and notifications to keep track of ECS performance metrics.

Server monitoring includes basic monitoring, OS monitoring, and process monitoring for servers.

• Basic monitoring

  Basic monitoring does not require the agent to be installed and automatically reports ECS metrics to Cloud Eye. Basic monitoring for KVM ECSs is performed every 5 minutes.

• OS monitoring

  By installing the Agent on an ECS, OS monitoring provides system-wide, active, and fine-grained monitoring. OS monitoring for KVM ECSs is performed every minute.

  To enable OS monitoring for a created ECS:

  You need to manually install the agent.

  For instructions about how to install and configure the Agent, see Installing and Configuring the Agent.

• Process monitoring

  Process monitoring provides monitoring of active processes on ECSs and it requires the Agent to be installed on the ECSs to be monitored. Processes are monitored at an interval of 1 minute (for KVM ECSs).

After server monitoring is enabled, you can set ECS alarm rules to customize the monitored objects and notification policies and learn about the ECS running status at any time.

Data backup is a process of storing all or part of data in different ways to prevent data loss. The following uses Cloud Backup and Recovery (CBR) as an example. For more backup methods, see Overview.

CBR enables you to back up ECSs and disks with ease. In case of a virus attack, accidental deletion, or software or hardware fault, you can restore data to any point in the past when the data was backed up. CBR protects your services by ensuring the security and consistency of your data.

To enable CBR when purchasing an ECS:

Set CBR when purchasing an ECS. The system will associate the ECS with a cloud backup vault and the selected backup policy to periodically back up the ECS.

• Create new
  1. Enter the name of the cloud backup vault. The name consists of 1 to 64 characters. Only letters, digits, underscores (_), and hyphens (-) are allowed. For example, vault-f61e. The default naming rule is vault_xxxx.
  2. Enter the vault capacity, which is required for backing up the ECS. The vault capacity cannot be smaller than that of the ECS to be backed up. The value range is from the ECS's total capacity to 10,485,760, in GiB.
  3. Select a backup policy from the drop-down list, or log in to the CBR console and configure a desired one.
• Specify
  1. Select an existing cloud backup vault from the drop-down list.
  2. Select a backup policy from the drop-down list, or log in to the CBR console and configure a desired one.
• Do not use

  Skip this configuration if CBR is not required. If you need to enable CBR after creating an ECS, log in to the CBR console, locate the target vault, and associate it with the ECS.

You can use the cloud server backup and cloud disk backup to back up your ECS data.

• Cloud server backup (recommended): Use this backup method if you want to back up the data of all EVS disks (system and data disks) attached to an ECS. This prevents data inconsistency caused by the time difference in creating a backup.
• Cloud disk backup: Use this backup method if you want to back up the data of one or more EVS disks (system or data disk) attached to an ECS. This minimizes backup costs on the basis of data security.

Key pair authentication is recommended because it is more secure than password-based authentication.

If you select Password, ensure that the password meets complexity requirements to prevent malicious attacks. For details, see Overview of Password Reset.

The system does not periodically change the ECS password. It is recommended that you change your password regularly for security.

The password must conform to the following rules:

• The password must consist of at least 10 characters.
• Do not use easily guessed passwords (for example, passwords in common rainbow tables or passwords with adjacent keyboard characters). The password must contain at least three of the following character types: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, digits, and special characters.
• Do not include accounts in passwords, such as administrator, test, root, oracle, and mysql.
• Change the password at least every 90 days.
• Do not reuse the latest five passwords.
• Set different passwords for different applications. Do not use the same password for multiple applications.

You can use security groups to protect the network security of your ECSs. A security group controls inbound and outbound traffic for your ECSs. Inbound traffic originates from the outside to the ECS, while outbound traffic originates from the ECS to the outside.

You can configure security group rules to grant access to or from specific ports. You are advised to disable high-risk ports and only enable necessary ports.

Table 2 lists common high-risk ports. You are advised to change these ports to non-high-risk ports.

After ECSs are created, you need to maintain and periodically upgrade the operating system.