New and Improved SG Site Scanner Security Service

Our SG Site Scanner service has been one of the most valued tools by our clients since we launched it back in 2017. It has helped tens of thousands of site owners to protect their sites from destructive hacks, data theft and reputation damages via early detection of malicious software. For the last four years sites subscribed to our SG Site Scanner service had their URLs crawled for suspicious code and their domain reputation checked daily. Now our clients using the service will also be able to run a thorough file scan of their site directly on the host server with a single click. Read below to learn how this new scanning method enhances the existing site scanner functionality. 

Daily URL scans and domain blacklist status checks 

As always we will continue to scan the publicly available URLs of any site that is subscribed to our SG Site Scanner on a daily basis. This is a powerful method for detecting malicious code and infected file locations by scanning your public website source code. Additionally, we do reputation checks of the website domain by looking for it in the blacklists of security authorities like Google, PhishTank, McAfee and more. If a Site Scanner-subscribed domain is present in any of them, the owner gets an immediate notification. Both these checks are performed by our long time security partner Sucuri, which is one of the most trusted companies, providing site scan services. 

NEW: Comprehensive file scans on demand

Apart from the automatic daily checks described above, the SG Site Scanner service also includes the option for on-demand scan to be initiated by the customers in their Site Tools. Now on top of the Sucuri checks, these on-demand scans include a new scanning method, developed in-house by our DevOps team. The new method is a deep file scan done directly on the server. It can detect malware that is not publicly accessible and thus can be missed by the external URL scans. For example, if the malicious code is located in a password protected folder it will not be found by the URL scan, but the new file scan will easily detect it.

An additional benefit of the file scan is that it uses its own comprehensive definitions about what is malicious code and thus can catch threads that may be missed by the URL scan. Another big advantage of the file scan is that it can give you valuable information about the location of a problem that has already been detected by the URL scan. This information can make cleaning a hacked website much easier.

How to take advantage of the extended scanning capabilities?

All clients who already have the SG Site Scanner activated can log in their Site Tools > Security > SG Site Scanner and click to run an on-demand scan. If the site is hosted on our servers, the scan will include the new files checks too, on top of the URL scan and the blacklist status checks.

We strongly recommend that each site has an active SG Site Scanner at all times. The service has proven over the years to be essential for keeping sites safe and preventing data loss and downtime. It now has an unmatched value thanks to the unique additional scanning method available. If you don’t have it yet, you can find it in your Client Area > Marketplace > Hosting Services.