The typical LAMP-stack out of the box is nowadays relatively safe. They were a lot unsafer earlier. So, how to keep safe: 1. The app itself: If you have a sm

The typical LAMP-stack out of the box is nowadays relatively safe. They were a lot unsafer earlier. So, how to keep safe: 1. The app itself: If you have a small web app, you have an incredible advantage that makes your web app potentially way more secure than that of a big corporation: You write the code and you know the inside outs of the system. And you are probably the only one having passwords etc. to the system. In a big corp, sometimes the interns write some code and they have no clue of web app security. From an attacker's perspective, one security hole is enough. So, if you know about web app security, you're probably better off than any other big corp. 2. The server infrastructure: If you worry about the server architecture, get a managed dedicated server. There's probably not really a guarantee that this system is set up perfectly, but there might be trustable hosters that know what they're doing. - Keep everything up-to-date (apt-get update, apt-get upgrade). - Don't install software you don't know or can't trust - use SSH only with public key authentication, remap port 22 to something else - use SFTP + SSL for your website - don't include any third party JS-software that messes with your website. Personally, I don't even include Google Analytics. I self-host everything and install only stuff that is trustable. - don't use the root user if not necessary There's this "myth" going on that every system is hackable. This is only partly true. You can't do anything against 0-day hacks, but if you protected your web app against XSS, SQLI etc. and your software is uptodate, there's hardly any chance that you get hacked. What makes every system "hackable" is the human factor. The secretary that gives out her password to some guy on the telephone who pretends to be the technical administrator of server X. Are you likely to get social engineered? Probably not.