Security is a hard problem

Keeping a server secure online is hard. It takes constant vigilance, but there are things you can do to give yourself the best chance of avoiding a hack. The consequences of an exposed port that you've forgotten or never knew about can be dire. What's more, while IPtables is a fantastic bit of kit, it's not always obvious what's on the list of ports that are open and when that list changes.

All Devopera machines, the free VMs we release and our server builds, feature a firewall and a message of the day that shows you which ports are exposed. Everytime we install another module for you or update your machine, that message is updated so you can readily double-check that's open against what you expect to be running.