Web Site Security: Back up Your Web Site to Prevent Customer Data Loss
For every business that uses the Web as a revenue-generating channel, data are important company assets. The loss of a customer order database would be devastating to a cataloger, leading to unfulfilled orders, dissatisfied customers and loss of touch with thousands of clients. Keeping all of your Web site data on one computer or server, death-prone machines that they are, is a formula for disaster.
Since it’s self-evident that preventing the loss of all of a business’ orders and customer information is an important task, why is it that backup solutions are among the lowest priorities of most businesses shopping for Web hosting?
Backups are like life insurance policies for your Web operation, but they’re really something more. Quality backups are like a life insurance plan that resurrects you if you pass away, rather than simply granting your loved ones some monetary assistance.
Like a Web hosting plan, a backup solution should be chosen appropriately with how your company does business on the Web. If you’re running a small brochure Web site, you’ll only need the most modest sort of backup. However, if your Web site collects data from customers and prospects, you’ll need a more reliable backup solution. The litmus test for a backup plan is whether or not it provides the means to restore your site to a fully operational condition within one hour after a server crash.
A modest backup suitable for a brochure-style site can consist of simply keeping a spare copy of all of the files on a separate computer. If your site is such that visitors don’t submit information to any databases, then this type of backup is perfect. Certainly, a basic brochure site could be restored very quickly with this type of backup.
Sites that dynamically interact with visitors and constantly write new information to databases simply can’t rely on keeping spare copies of their files. Those copied files are quickly outdated. Databases that accept information online frequently need to be backed up. How frequently depends on how important the data are to the company, and how unacceptable some data loss is in a disaster.
