Every business that operates in the online arena, either solely or in concert with a brick-and-mortar establishment, fears hackers. For years, experts have warned that it’s not a matter of if, but when a company will be hacked. If it can happen to mega corporations, healthcare providers, banks, and even government entities that have the highest levels of security, it can definitely happen to the average business.
This is partially due to the fact that most businesses are woefully under-protected when it comes to internet security. Or perhaps hackers are just one step ahead. The outcome is the same – your business suffers when hackers cause site downtime and steal, corrupt, destroy, or ransom your data.
Of course, hackers are not the only cause of website downtime. Although hackers pose a real threat, there are other reasons why your website might suffer unscheduled downtime. This interruption of service will annoy customers and cost you money.
The good news is that you’re not the first business to deal with such problems and you can learn a lot from those who suffered before. Preparing yourself to recover from downtime starts with understanding potential causes and then determining how best to plan for recovery. Here are a few threats to your site uptime and what you can do to minimize them.
Web Hosts
It’s important to take your time when it comes to choosing a suitable web host. You will first want to consider the bottom line regarding rates and scalability. Just as importantly, you want to make sure the vendor you select has a solid reputation for service. Look for a host that offers some guarantees (by way of reparations) should you suffer unscheduled downtime.
No web hosting service can guarantee 100% uptime, so if you hear this promise you should probably keep looking. However, reputable and reliable providers should warn you well in advance of scheduled downtime. A good hosting service will be available to help you address and troubleshoot issues with downtime and, in some cases, they may even back up their guarantees with a policy of repayment for any unscheduled downtime you do suffer due to problems on their end.
Traffic and Bandwidth
Business owners must always concern themselves with the bottom line if they want to run an efficient and profitable operation. In terms of bandwidth, you’ll have to try to calculate the amount of virtual traffic that is likely to come in so that you can pay for an appropriate package.
If you miscalculate and you experience more traffic than anticipated, your site could go down. This will leave visitors and patrons unable to peruse your wares and make purchases online. A web host that offers scalability will allow you to ramp up quickly should such issues arise. However, you might want to err on the side of caution by opting for more bandwidth than you think you’ll need and then scale back if you’re not using it all.
Employees
Hackers are a definite threat to your business, but one of the most common ways for hackers to gain entry to your system is through your employees. This happens most often when employees are careless with login information. By creating weak passwords that are easy to hack or allowing others access to their login information, these employees are putting your system at risk.
Employees may also behave in an unsafe manner by visiting dangerous websites, opening emails from unknown senders, or clicking suspicious links. All of these ill-advised actions could result in hackers gaining access to your system and shutting it down from the inside out.
There are two good ways to deal with this. First, you should train your employees to behave in an appropriate manner when using company resources. Second, you should use software protections that prompts employees to create strong passwords (and update them frequently), that warn employees when they’re about to do something dangerous, that requires additional confirmations for downloads, or that outright denies access to certain online resources.
Monitoring and Alerts
If you want the best chance to minimize and address website downtime, regardless of the cause, your best bet is to hire a monitoring and maintenance service. These professionals can not only monitor your site and alert you when problems arise, but they can help you to plan for action and recovery when downtime does occur.