Internet giant GoDaddy experienced a massive outage on Monday this week. The site itself, as well as several million sites who use their hosting, were down for a period of hours.

GD maintains that the problems were purely internal and not caused by an outside attack. A Twitter user purporting to be the leader of the hacker group Anonymous, however, has claimed responsibility for the outage.

Regardless of which story is true, this is just one more example in a recent string of events that show that no one is immune to hackers. Even the biggest companies find themselves falling prey to those who would use their coding prowess for evil rather than good. Notable names of recent memory include LinkedIn, Apple, and even the international police group Interpol, after they arrested several suspected members of Anonymous.

The bad news: hackers happen, and unfortunately there’s very little anyone can do to stop a determined hacker from taking down their site. Catastrophic server failures also happen, no matter who you’re hosted with, which can wipe out your site entirely. There’s also the risk, if a hacker gains access to your sensitive files, that malware could be introduced into your site.

The good news: there are precautions you can take to minimize the damage done if your site does get hacked or otherwise erased.

Keep Redundant Backups

This is the single most valuable piece of advice we can offer. ‘Redundant backups’ means regularly backing up your site to multiple locations. You might keep a backup on your computer, one on a separate server, one in a cloud service, one on a USB drive – the point is to have several copies in different, unrelated places. By doing so you are covered in the event that your Web server crashes beyond repair and all your online files and content are permanently lost. Your webmaster only has to take your most recent backup and upload it to whatever new server you end up with.

Full backups provide security in the event of technical problems; they also provide a clean slate that you can revert back to if your site gets infected with malware.

Many of the industry-leading Web hosts create weekly backups automatically. Check the user guides for any host you may be with. If they DON’T do backups, you may want to either switch hosts or invest in a backup plan of your own.

Monitor Your Site

Proactively check in on your site regularly, to make sure it’s still in working order. This sounds obvious, but it’s an often overlooked piece of owning a site.

There are also several security options which will automatically scan your site for any problems. Sucuri is one such paid service; WordFence is an example of a WordPress-specific plugin. Do your research and find a service that’s right for you. The investment in time and money will pay off exponentially if you’re ever hacked.

---

Just like a car, a Web site has to be maintained and monitored to make sure it keeps running smoothly. Implement the two simple steps above, and you’ll be in good shape in no time.

Image by Abode of Chaos