Web Site Security: Back Up Your Web Site to Protect Customer Data

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 is 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 even more than that. 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 your Web site collects data from customers and prospects, you’ll need a 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.

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 Those copied files are quickly outdated.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 frequent 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 collected isn’t all that critical, weekly backups may suffice. But 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 can be a solution for those who can’t afford any data loss. Veritas produces special agents that work with many software applications to ensure that data from those applications is 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 back up 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 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