StopBadware’s activities have long been focused, in large part, on badware websites, their owners, and the companies—such as our partners Google and Mozilla—who warn users away from these sites. And we’ve recognized from an early stage that web hosting providers also play an important role in protecting users from badware. We’re pleased to announce today that we’ve decided to increase our focus on the role of web hosting providers in protecting users. Our first major project in this realm will be to develop a set of best practices for web hosts to follow when they receive reports of malware URLs on their networks.
We’ve noticed that there’s quite a bit of inconsistency within the industry about how to respond to malware reports. The aim in developing our best practices document is to create a clear, useful set of common practices for hosting providers to follow upon receiving a malware report. We want this best practices document to be as complete and sensible as possible, so we’ve assembled an advisory working group to assist in its development. The members of this working group represent a diverse set of perspectives, and come from top hosting companies, security companies, and policy organizations. We’ll be working with them and taking their insights into consideration over the next few months as we develop the document. More information about the working group can be found at http://stopbadware.org/home/webhost.
We’re very excited about the level of enthusiasm and interest this project has engendered. The final document will be publicly available in early spring of 2011. You can read the full press release at http://stopbadware.org/home/pr_11162010.
This is great news, too many ‘hosts’ don’t care about the kind of sites on their systems and do little to protect users.
As we specialise in helping small businesses we welcome this initiate and look forward to it’s development.
All the best
The team at SWD