Large corporate enterprises are not the only ones that need to be careful about security and having the tools in place to recover from a web hosting disaster.
My good buddy Barry, from Layered Tech posed an interesting quandary to me the other day.
As someone who works for a major player in hosting, one of the biggest problems I see on a daily basis is people having their server hacked and used for some nefarious purposes such as spam, DOS attacks, and more. There are many ways to combat this costly threat, what is the most cost-effective way for the small to medium-sized business?
It is important for everybody to have a good offense and a good defense when it comes to all the proverbial “natural disasters” that can happen in the web hosting world. My best advice would be to have a good strategy in place first, so you can prevent the problems from happening in the first place. You have to be proactive, and not reactive.
Now, I know that might be hard to do in a tough economy, cause we are all short on money, time and man power. If you can keep an eye on a couple of important things, you should have less problems to deal with, and more time to devote to your web site and business.
Here are a few key things everyone should keep in mind:
Monitor your server usage, no matter if you are on a shared hosting plan or a dedicated server. Check in once a day or once a week to make sure your usage stays on average, and if you see a steady increase, you talk with your hosting provider to make sure you are ready for the time that increase means you need more computing power.
Stay on top of the latest updates for your scripts and plugins. Once a hole is found in a third-party script, it doesn’t take long for holes to be exploited. If you have a script installed, like WordPress or SMF, stay up to date on when it is updated. The faster you get updates done, the less likely your web site or business will be compromised.
Get help when you need it. For web hosting clients that go down the dedicated or VPS hosting route, find a web hosting partner that will be able to get with you quickly to tackle your problems. I have often said you can’t judge a web host by the cliché 99.9% uptime guarantee. A true test of a web host is how they react to a tough situation. In a shared hosting situation, it might be harder to get the attention needed 100% of the time, due to the fact that you are one in a hundred or more people on a server. That is one of the drawbacks to the shared hosting world.
Making sure your offense is as good as or better than your defense can solve a lot of problems before they happen. Small businesses should try to be proactive about problems in the long run, rather than reactive when the going gets tough.
Big thanks to Barry from Layered Tech for such an awesome question. Be sure to check them out at LayeredTech.com and give them a big thank you for being the number one supporters and sponsors of the Web Hosting Show podcast. If you have a web hosting or development question, give me your name, URL and question over on the submit a question page and I will be more than happy to help!
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