due to the nature of people and the anonymity of being on the internet, having an open unprotected server is a bad idea. it will invite the bad element and they will grief you and invite their griefer friends to help take your server down or make it unplayable for you.

I accidently did that once on a 7 days to die server I rented. and added a service that let me monitor everyone and their inventory. amazing how many people would just cheat.