{"id":78405,"date":"2025-12-22T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dhblog2.dream.press\/blog\/?p=78405"},"modified":"2026-08-26T15:52:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T22:52:59","slug":"secure-hosting-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www-dev.dreamhost.com\/blog\/secure-hosting-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"Why DreamHost Joined the Secure Hosting Alliance as a Founding Member"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Secure Hosting Alliance (SHA) is an i2Coalition initiative that sets verifiable security, transparency, and accountability standards for hosting providers, then certifies the ones that meet them. DreamHost helped form the SHA at its February 2025 launch and earned certification in October 2025. That means you can verify our security practices instead of just trusting marketing claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Your web host holds your website, your backups, and your customers\u2019 data. So how did you vet that company before handing it all over? If the honest answer is \u201cI read their marketing,\u201d you\u2019re in good company. Until recently, there was nothing better to check.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Secure Hosting Alliance (SHA) exists to fix that. It\u2019s an initiative of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) that sets specific, verifiable standards for how hosting providers handle security, transparency, reliability, and government data requests \u2014 and certifies the providers that meet them. DreamHost helped form the SHA at its launch and is certified under its Trust Seal program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The threats that make this necessary keep growing. In September 2025, Cloudflare reported blocking the largest DDoS attack on record at the time: it peaked at 22.2 terabits per second and 10.6 billion packets per second<\/a>, and was traced to more than 404,000 unique source IP addresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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DDoS Attack<\/h3>\n

DDoS means Distributed Denial of Service. It\u2019s an attack that tries to make a system or network unavailable by flooding it with traffic from multiple sources.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hosting companies are high-value targets because a single compromised provider can expose thousands of customer websites at once. And for every established hosting provider<\/a> working to maintain high standards, there are operators racing to the bottom on price, cutting corners on security, and putting their customers at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The record DDoS attack blocked by Cloudflare in September 2025 peaked at 10.6 billion packets per second (22.2 Tbps). Source: Cloudflare via SecurityWeek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the problem that keeps us up at night: how does a small business owner know which hosting provider they can actually trust?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditional signals don\u2019t work anymore. Marketing claims are easy to make, and testimonials can be manufactured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even price isn\u2019t a reliable indicator: expensive doesn\u2019t guarantee quality, and cheap doesn\u2019t always mean cutting corners.<\/strong> The SHA gives customers a standardized way to check whether a provider meets its security and operational standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until the SHA, every hosting company faced these challenges alone. We each built our own security protocols, developed our own abuse response procedures, and tried to stay ahead of threats independently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the internet doesn\u2019t work in isolation, and neither should the companies that host it. That\u2019s why DreamHost joined the <\/strong>Secure Hosting Alliance<\/strong><\/a> as a founding member, and why we spent months in working groups helping build something bigger than any single company could create on its own.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related Post: [STUDY] 12% of Small Businesses Say They\u2019ve Paid a Ransom Demand<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Verification Vacuum and Why Trust Matters More Than Ever<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Too many hosting providers prioritize short-term profits over long-term reliability. They offer rock-bottom prices, make promises they can\u2019t keep, and often lack the infrastructure or expertise to handle security threats. Some disappear entirely when problems arise, leaving customers with no recourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These kinds of providers persist because the hosting market has spent decades competing primarily on price. When customers can\u2019t easily verify quality differences between providers, price becomes the deciding factor.<\/strong> This creates a race to the bottom that rewards the cheapest option, not the most secure or reliable one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The consequences for businesses are real and devastating:<\/p>\n\n\n\n