Backups
Ask yourself a quick question as a business owner. If you were to lose all your online content including your website, how quickly could you get it all back up and running? This also applies to electronic communications and storage. Answering this question on paper will force you to consider, question and formulate a backup plan. Most websites, databases and email accounts can be backed up very easily nowadays. The recommendation is to back up to an external provider, many of which provide free accounts that include 5 GB of storage (plenty for most business’s needs). Ask the person responsible for your website to walk you through how and when the data is backed up.
The frequency of backups will be determined by what type of site you have. The backup can range from real time backups to casually backing up everything on a weekly or even monthly basis. In the advent of data loss or a disaster, having a readily available backup may save your business.
Security
Online security is always in the news and just because your website and email system is stored or hosted by a major industry player does not mean you won’t get hacked or compromised. Remember, it is not the hosting companies’ responsibility to secure your site, it is your responsibility. At worse, the hosting company will simply isolate and disable your account so as not to compromise other websites.
Being hacked or having your website compromised also has knock-on effects that can be painful for many businesses. It often results in your domain name being blacklisted on a global registry. Effectively this means your domain name is not trusted. This not only affects the domain name (your website) but also all your email accounts. Suddenly your emails are going into your recipients spam filter or not even getting that far. Then starts the process of getting your domain name whitelisted again, which can take weeks.
