Windows VPS is a decent hosting solution for your web project. However, upon purchasing it you probably won’t be able to into working with it right away, as it needs some basic network setup. Moreover, there are a lot more things to be done to increase its protection against cyber threats. For this reason, we’ve prepared this guide with the first steps to be done after you get your Windows VPS.
Table of Contents
Configuring Network Settings on Windows 10
If you’re using Windows 10 and want to connect it to your newly purchased Windows VPS, you’ll face the problem of not being able to connect. The problem here lies in the default network settings of Windows 10 that do not suggest connecting to a remote desktop by default. In the following, we’ll look at the changes that are to be made in the network setting of Windows 10 for everything to run as it should.
- Create the VPS with your Windows 10 ISO.
- After this, you’ll get a message that there has been detected an error when trying to set the password.
- As you can’t make your server turn on, you have to go to the VPS settings and create a VNC password.
- Now you can connect to the new Windows VPS with the VNC password created in the previous step.
- Login with your admin login information.
- Go to the network settings by clicking the corresponding icon in the taskbar.
- In the new window, go to “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)” and then to “Properties”.
- In the following window, change the automatic settings to manual. Insert your IP address, Network mask, and gateway. Then, specify your DNS resolvers. As “preferred” you can use 8.8.8.8 and as the alternate – 8.8.4.4.
- Go back. Enable and disable the network device that was configured in the previous steps.
You have just configured the network on Windows 10 VPS. Now you can proceed to the further configuration aimed at protecting your server from cyber threats.
Protecting Your Server on Windows 10 VPS
Disable the default admin account and create a new one under a new name
The first default thing to fix is the admin account. By default, the account with administrative rights is called “admin”. This simple fact makes it much easier to hack since the potential cyber criminal now only need to brute-force the password. In order to solve this issue, simply disable the default account a create a new one, allocating admin rights to it, but choosing another name of your choice, making the would-be hacking much harder.
Set up a strong password
With the necessity of coming up with a new password every time you create an account for whatever purpose on the internet, you may have started to neglect this issue and solve it by going the most primitive way of setting a too obvious combination of characters, like 12345… or qwerty, or using the same password, at most with several changes, all the time. If you may do it for logging into an account of a random and insignificant site, don’t use this approach when dealing with something of bigger importance, like your Windows 10 VPS server, containing your web project and important data about it. Create a strong password, which is at least 10 characters long, contains various types of characters – numbers, upper and lower case letters, and special characters, – and is easy to memorize for you, but hard to guess for anybody but your doppelganger, and keep it in a safe place (not in the browser password manager).
Change the RDP port
The default RDP port is 3389, which is another easy target for intrusions. Changing your RDP port will make guessing it harder. But some hackers still do try to brute-force it. So, stay careful about it, monitoring the audit logs, and checking, if there aren’t any excessive login attempts, then blocking the IP addresses responsible for them in your Firewall.
Make sure to enable the antivirus and the firewall
The antivirus and the firewall are two main mechanisms that help you to protect your VPS from common threats coming from the web. The antivirus checks your system for malware and blocks suspicious applications when needed, the firewall filters the incoming and outgoing traffic, checking for suspicious events and applying appropriate measures to block them. Make sure that Windows Defender or any other third-party antivirus of your choice is enabled, as well as the Windows Firewall. The latter will protect you from the vast majority of threats, but to maximize your server protection you can also consider installing a third-party firewall.
The further step is to block with the firewall all the ports that are not required by your needs, leaving only the essential ones.
See Also: 11 BEST free apps for windows 10
Perform regular updates
Whatever software you use, there will be always some bugs that reveal after a while and that can potentially be breached in your system’s security. Fixing those bugs is one of the main purposes updates are constantly developed. So, if you don’t want your VPS to fall victim to some old flaw in the software, make sure to regularly check for updates, setting up automatic updates when possible. This applies both to your operating system and to any other third-party software you’re using.
Use Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA)
Now that you have taken care of the most available measures to help you secure your Windows VPS, you can install and use the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer, a tool that will let you know whether there is anything more to be done about security. It will throw light on any vulnerabilities that arise in your system and inform you about the measure to be done for solving them.
Conclusion
As have seen, after purchasing Windows VPS there are still things to be done. But once you are through with them, you can feel much safer and develop your web projects without caring so much about the risks that are hidden on the web. Here we end our article, thank you for reading, and have a nice day!