For banks—like any business—cost-efficiency can come at the expense of security.
While shared hosting and shared IP addresses are budget-friendly options, they introduce severe systemic risks. Sharing digital real estate means tethering your operational viability and trust to the behavior of completely unknown third parties.
When you share an IP address, you share a reputation. If another website on the server you share engages in malicious activity, your bank faces immediate security, performance, and reputational fallout.
And still, our study conducted by Interisle Consulting Group—a technology research firm—revealed that many U.S. banks engage in this risky behavior.
Let’s break down the biggest risks of shared hosting so you can better understand how to fortify your bank’s cyber presence.
Risk #1: Shared Security is Shoddy Security
In a shared hosting environment, your website sits on the same physical server and uses the same network interface as hundreds of other sites—any of which could be a hub for cybercrime.
When a legitimate website, such as your bank’s website, is hosted on the same IP address as malicious or compromised websites, it may experience service disruptions or outages resulting from IP blocklisting.
What Is IP Blocklisting?
IP blocklisting is the opposite of a guest list.
A provider (often an ISP or private network) uses a blocklist (like Spamhaus DBL) to prevent users from visiting malicious IP addresses, thus restricting their access to domains flagged for phishing, malware, or spam content.
Blocklisting may affect an IP address, a subnet, or autonomous system (AS)—the building blocks of the internet. It can also occur at different locations (e.g., the mailbox provider, the email service provider, the ISP, or the device).
This comes with a setback: blocking the IP affects other legitimate websites on the same address (or subnet or AS if the blocklisting is more widespread).
In other words, if your bank’s IP address is on a blocklist, users (such as your bank customers) will be blocked from accessing your bank’s website.
Helpful Definitions
Cross-Site Contamination: This happens when malware spreads from an infected website to another website on the same server.
DDoS Attacks: If one website is targeted by a DDoS attack, other websites on the same server could be affected.
Research Insight: According to Akamai’s State of the Internet reports, the financial services sector remains one of the most heavily targeted industries for DDoS attacks globally. Relying on shared infrastructure means your bank can become collateral damage in an attack meant for someone else.
Risk #2: Recovery From Blocklisting Is a Long, Costly, and Arduous Process
The most immediate operational threat of shared hosting is IP blocklisting.
Security companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and corporate firewalls maintain real-time blocklists to protect users from malicious entities. If an IP address is flagged for sending spam, hosting phishing pages, or distributing malware, the entire IP address is restricted so any content hosted on that IP address is unreachable.
What does this look like in practice? When a customer tries to log in to their mobile banking app or visit the bank’s website and if the bank’s IP address is on a blocklist, the page simply fails to load, often showing a generic “404 Not Found” or connection timeout error.
Because customers never see an explicit security warning, they assume the bank’s technology is broken, unreliable, or offline. This deals a heavy blow to public trust, corporate reputation, and can cost your bank business from causing a disruption to your services.
Not only that, but communication breaks down entirely: emails sent by customers to support accounts will bounce back, and critical outbound notices—such as fraud alerts or password resets—will be rejected by external mail servers and never reach the customer.
Recovering from a blocklisting event is an incredibly slow, complicated, and expensive ordeal.
Furthermore, determining where blocking has occurred and how broadly it affects your customers is difficult. The appeals process for removal from a blocklist can be lengthy, and in the meantime, the impact is the loss of your internet presence and potential revenue loss.
IP blocklisting is widely used and a recommended practice, so there’s an increased likelihood that if you are on a shared hosting IP address, this could impact your bank, especially if there are cybercriminals on the same server.
Risk #3: Your Reputation Is on the Line
Cybersecurity frameworks, including from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Cyber Risk Institute (CRI), and best practices from the Center for Internet Security (CIS), consistently stress the importance of supply chain and infrastructure risk management.
Your bank must now include your hosting infrastructure in this risk assessment.
For banks, the negative reputational impact of blocklisting is a vulnerability to your primary identity and your good name. You must weigh the risks associated with blocklisting due to the use of a shared IP or server against those of using a dedicated IP address.
Given that the cost of a dedicated IP address and dedicated virtual infrastructure is nominal, the risk appetite of a regulated bank should weigh the cost of a dedicated hosting environment against the potential for reputational harm or tangible loss.
The Ultimate Migration: a .Bank Domain
Migrating to a dedicated infrastructure unlocks the full potential and security promise of the .Bank solution.
While fTLD Registry Services provides a highly verified, exclusive domain name that proves your corporate identity, that domain must be supported by secure infrastructure choices.
By adopting a dedicated IP address specifically for your .Bank domain, your bank moves away from the risks of shared server space with unverified websites and into a more secure, resilient digital infrastructure.
Don’t let your efforts to shore up your cybersecurity fall short. fTLD Registry can help answer questions on reputable vendors and support the migration process.
Schedule a meeting to find out how a .Bank domain can help.
