I don't trust my hosting company

OK, I am guilty, I should have asked permission from Microsoft(R) first
before I included the KB articles on how to deal with Windows 98 SE
shutdown problem into our Construction Site Operation Menu. I did
mention Microsoft(R) in that four pages because that four pages are
screen capture of the website. Although I did not steal the credit, I
regret I didn't respect intellectual property right of Microsoft(R) and
I will rewrite the article using my own wording to replace that four KB
pages. Finally I will find a way (I am not a technical guy, I type
with two fingers and read For Dummy series) to remove those 4 pages
from the PDF and insert back my new article into the right place of it.
And I promise I will not infringe any copyright related stuff for the
rest of my life. OK?

Please get back to the problem:

We use the web space to host internal files. Beside that operation
menu, we upload our blue prints, customer contacts, building exterior
design, house interior design, meeting records, phone records and most
office document. So that employees at different construction sites can
access to those material when they need it. The site is not open to
the public, the homepage is a login page protected by a .htaccess file
no high tech intro, no welcome message, just user: and pw: two fields.

The operation menu only trigger me to realize that people from hosting
company search through you files so attentive even a password protected
PDF named Cons_Site_Menu.pdf look suspicious? If they have look into
that menu, I assume they have read through all our customer profile,
our current projects, our future projects. Those are not big secret,
but it is uneasy to imagine that a nightshift staff using Acdsee to
browse through our 2000 interior designs we made from the pass ten
years.

The TOS is a standard one that state no copyright stuff, porn, drug,
political.....etc. Other sites hosted by the same company have sexy
but not nude site, Bulletin sites with thousand of BT links or crack or
serial. I really don't think my four pages KB articles is their
concern. And I don't find any statement that give them the right to
look into my files.

So I still have a 12 months to go.
How can I protect my company data privacy from the hosting company and
at the same time can upload and access our files easily?


Is there any encrytion program that encryt file before upload and
decrypt file after download? In a transparent, auto, background way?

Once again, my question is:
/***How can I protect my company data's privacy from the hosting
company and at the same time can upload and access our files
easily?***/

Please do not ask me to change to a better hosting company, this one I
am using has the fastest transfer rate, ulimited storage and bandwidth.

And don't critcize my English because you feel like typing something
but don't have a suggestion to give.


PDF(R). is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. Microsoft(R).
is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Google Group(TM).
is a registered trademark of Google(R), Inc. All other product names
mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. not
mine.

Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> The bottom line is - don't store private/sensitive data on someone
> else's server. Get your own server, a fast internet connection and a
> locked room to keep it in (or a data center which allows you physical
> access to manage your server - and lock it down).

I would disagree that getting your own server is any more secure than a
shared environement. The reason is a shared environment is used by
hundreds of sites so admins are much more on their toes to keeping
things updated and secure. If you have yuor own server, chances are it
is not going to be given nearly the same priority as teh shared server
.. A shared server could generate thousands of dollars of month in
income for a web host compared so just $100 for a dedicated server.
Obviously they are going to do more to ensure the shared sytem is more
secure and patches up to date.

also on a shared environemtn, you get the advantage of security by
obscurity. nobody is going to snoop through the nearly 1000 domains on
each server to see if there is anything of value to hack.

I do agree that encryption is good, but even if the key is not stored
on your server, a hacker just needs to insert a few lines of code into
your scripts to print out what the key is when a user accesses it.