Go Daddy Offering Website Security Scanning Tool

Go Daddy, world renowned Web registrar and hosting company released a new service for their clients named Site Scanner, a tool for detecting website security holes.

Sounds futuristic, but Site Scanner works based on the international industry standard for detecting computer vulnerabilities, the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

The service performs daily scans of a client's website against a continuously growing list of over 3,000 known vulnerabilities a hacker could exploit and gain access to sensitive information, inject malware and spyware or steal data from the website's clients.

Site Scanner allows access to a dashboard where the user can check the results of his daily scan.

Scan results present messages split in three categories: Critical, Warning and Informational, based on the way the detected vulnerabilities could influence the website.

For each message, Site Scanner will provide a short synopsis and description of what it means, show the risk factor, current status, notice's history (if it appeared in the past) and provide a small general way of solving the problem.

All these messages will factor in the final scan result, which can be a pass or fail message in the dashboard.

If the site passes the basic security scan, the website owner has the choice of showing a seal on his website with the Site Scanner's pass result, along with the date of the recent passed scan.

The seal is automatically renewed whenever the user passes a new scan.

Maybe the service is not for advanced security experts, but non-technical people running a  website will appreciate it for sure.

Should work also as a good security educational tool, allowing novice Web users to learn how security holes are left open because of negligence and how they affect a website in the long run.

Don't think it's free. Site Scanner comes as an add-on service to an existing Go Daddy account, being initially offered for $9.99 per month.

As a side note, Go Daddy has been recently nominated for the 2010 SC Magazine Awards Best Security Team category. Site Scanner should give them a boost toward the big prize.