by Elliot Curtis, Senior Director, Mass Market Hosting Sector, Parallels

The recent attack by the “Syrian Electronic Army” on media outlets including the New York Times and Huffington Post websites are a renewed reminder of the challenges around internet security. While SMB websites are an unlikely target for organized hacking or distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks, these highly visible and widely reported security issues raise a wareness and concerns for everyone. Most SMBs are exposed to risks from malicious viruses and hacks, as well as, problems caused by bot-nets or even simple content control.

Awareness of internet security continues to rise, but high-profile incidents like this presents a specific opportunity for Web Hosters and Service Providers to have a discussion with their customers about solutions to protect their Web presence and cloud applications. Parallels products and ecosystem of partners enables a variety of security solutions including; hacking protection, anti-virus, anti-spam, email security, DDOS prevention, backup & disaster recovery. Our SMB Cloud InsightsTM research shows that security solutions are the most popular and the fastest growing add-on to both Web Hosting and VPS core services, so every Web Hoster and Service Provider should have a security bundle as part of both their core offering and their up-sell strategy.