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 Those copied files are quickly outdated.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.
For a relatively low traffic site where the data being collect aren’t all that critical, weekly backups may suffice. For sites receiving large numbers of orders and client information every day, daily backups are a minimum requirement. The largest e-commerce sites are known to take backups on an hourly basis, or even have their data constantly written to backup computers in a process known as replication.
Technologies used for backup solutions vary depending on the operating system platform and the types of data being backed up. In a Windows environment, Veritas software’s BackupExec is a premier solution for those who can’t afford any data loss. Veritas produces special agents to work with many leading software applications to ensure data from those applications are backed up perfectly. In a Unix environment, open source backup software such as Bacula makes for a high-quality, low-cost solution.
In addition to considering software products that run backups, online merchants must consider what type of media they want their backups stored on. Choices include secondary hard drives in the same computer or server that’s running the site, tape drives, separate network storage devices, and CDs or DVDs. CDs and DVDs make for great portable backups, but are limited to relatively small file sizes (roughly 700MB and 4.8GB respectively). Network storage devices can be very expensive, but can backup enormous amounts of data. Tape drives offer perhaps the best balance of cost, storage capacity, portability, security and quality. Backups done to a secondary hard drive are the easiest on the budget and the fastest in terms of restore time, but are vulnerable to corruption in a situation where the disaster is caused by a hacker.
Choosing the right backup plan for your business should be done in consultation with an experienced professional who can help you design a solution that will allow you to restore your site to full functionality as quickly as needed. While often overlooked in the price-conscious shopping process, backups are critical to the long-term success of any Web operation. Computers being what they are, after a certain amount of time it’s a given that your backup solution will be tested; it’s just a matter of when.
Chris Kivlehan is the Marketing Manager for INetU Managed Hosting, a web hosting provider that specializes in managed dedicated hosting for businesses nationwide. He can be reached at (610) 266-7441 or chris@inetu.net.