Website Security and Backups

You should find this article interesting if you have spent a lot of time or money on your website. It can be unbelievably heartbreaking to find out that the website you have cherished and nurtured has gone wrong and then only way to get it back is to start from scratch.

Today I'm going to start by asking you what value you place on your website. There's the obvious cost of setting the thing up, but what about the hidden costs? For starters, it wouldn't surprise me if you said you had spent hours or even days writing content for it. What about it's sales value - can you place a price on the number of people who merely find your contact details online? So I ask you, what was that value again?

Across the world websites get hacked all the time, according to annual studies by Internet security firm Sophos, the rate at which this is happening is rising. Just last year the figure was placed at one new website every five seconds! Now that's not to say web developers produce poor quality work, but that new unknown methods of hacking are invented or discovered every day. Ah forget it, the chances of it happening to you are slim right? Well... even if that is the case, what happens if your editing your site and you click the wrong button and "whoops - its gone"... or even if the server that it lives on has a catastrophic failure?

Okay so I've got your attention - but what can be done about this horrible situation? Well, after the fact - not a lot. But if you are forward thinking enough to want a plan these three things might just be up your street...

1) first of all, find an experienced web developer that works with security in mind, or better still is qualified in the field. These guys will make it as hard as they can for hackers so that the chances of the unthinkable happening are significantly reduced in your favour. (Shameless plug: the guys from E-rizon are obsessed with security, the development team study it regularly!)

2) you should also find that your website development agency is capable of taking backups of your website. Its likely an additional service, but at prices starting from as little as £1.20 a week its got to be worth it. (No surprise then, that E-rizon can offer backup services...)

3) When you purchase a website, you are more often than not, paying someone for their time to make it. So consider this, even if your shiny website was immune to every single known hacking method when it was built, what about the new ones that are developed in the next few years of its life? If you want to be protected from future problems too, consider getting a maintenance agreement, yes there is an additional cost, but it boils down to how much you value your website. (And yes, E-rizon do have maintenance agreements too!)

So for any advice, feel free to get in contact with us!