A business owner has a lot of hats and an unlimited number of issues to manage.  Among them, having a website hacked is somewhere at the very bottom of the list of worries.

It’s no surprise that the typical business owner doesn’t learn a site has been hacked until notified by a customer – sometimes hours or days after it occurs.  When it does happen, they are often frantic and have no process in place to easily restore the damage.
It’s always a good time to be proactive in making your site secure, and looking to your web host is a good first step.

Shared hosting doesn’t necessarily make your website less secure. A small part of it is how your shared hosting provider handles security and the type of guarantee they have in place.  The major concern is when you have a large number of users on a shared webserver and each has their own private FTP account.  A lazy account manager with weak passwords could create an issue for everyone a shared server if your hosting provider doesn’t work to ensure that the systems are as secured as they can be for a cost effective shared server.

Hackers perform all manner of attacks in order to bring down web servers and cause problems through phishing, with denial of service attacks that spam data packets and force servers to bog down, rogue access through open wireless access points permitting outside breeches and back door access achieved through configuration issues, administrative errors and even poor passwords.
Any website can be fair game for the sinister intentions of hackers and, like it or not, that includes sites on shared hosting servers. With the popularity of this hosting option, the likelihood of your sites being hacked is a genuine possibility, however it is not something that you can spend your time stressing about, since ‘most’ sites span their lifetime without issue.

The best chance that you have of protecting your sites, is to make use of strong passwords, upgrade all of your applications, and converse with your hosting company to ensure that they are also being diligent with their system security.