Activating the application firewall
Objective
ModSecurity is a complementary Apache module that filters all incoming requests on your web server. It increases security against known vulnerabilities by intercepting and filtering requests before they are processed by any scripts.
The preconfigured Core Rule Set (CRS) of our ModSecurity protects your websites against the most common attacks, for example:
- Trojans
- Email injections
- Broken PDF files
- File injections on your hosting system
- SQL or XSS type injections
This guide explains how to enable your application firewall for enhanced protection in your OVHcloud Control Panel.
Since your web hosting plan is hosted on a shared infrastructure, modifying your firewall configuration settings is unavailable.
Requirements
- an OVHcloud Web Hosting plan
- at least one domain name attached to the hosting
- access to the OVHcloud Control Panel
Instructions
Log in to the OVHcloud Control Panel and switch to Web Cloud.
Click on Hosting Plans and select the plan concerned.
Activating the application firewall in PHP configuration
Click on the General information tab. The current Global PHP version is displayed in the Configuration box. Click on the ... icon and select Modify configuration. In the popup window, select the item Modify the current configuration and click on the Next button.

In the new window, make sure that Application firewall is set to activated. To confirm the configuration, click on the Confirm button.
Activating the application firewall for individual domains in Multisite
Switch to the Multisite tab of your hosting plan. Click on the ... button in the row of the respecive domain and select the Modify domain option.

In the configuration window, check the Enable the firewall box. You can also include the www subdomain in this configuration by checking the box at the top.
Click on Next and then on Confirm to modify the Multisite settings.

Checking the status of the activation task

Tasks to update your Multisite configuration will be listed in the Ongoing jobs tab (initial status is Planned). The firewall will be active once its update task no longer appears in the list.
Verifying which domains have the firewall enabled
The Multisite tab of your hosting plan provides information on which domains have the firewall option turned on.

The table displayed contains all of the domain names that have been added to your Web Hosting plan. In the "Firewall" column, you will see the activation status for each domain.
Go further
For specialised services (SEO, development, etc.), contact OVHcloud partners.
If you would like assistance using and configuring your OVHcloud solutions, please refer to our support offers.
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