WEBSITE BACKUPS

Backups are essential to ensure you don’t lose your website to hackers sometime in the future…

If you don’t have automated website backups, you’re vulnerable to losing your entire website at some point in the future. Backups should be setup via your website hosting and can also be running separately at the back of your website.

With most business websites now in WordPress, hackers are targeting out-of-date plugins and default login pages with what is known as brute force attacks. These are very frequent and extremely widespread. If you have a WordPress website, it WILL be under attack from brute force attacks.

Your website needs to be secure in the first instance to keep these attackers at bay. Read more on WordPress security here and website security. But these security measures don’t[
guarantee your site will never be hacked. They just make it much more unlikely. That’s where website backups come in. Backups give us something to restore your entire website in the event of a virus getting in.

There are a number of ways of backing up your website. Some hosting comes with automated website backups. You usually have to pay extra for these backups, but it’s a necessity. Ask your host if backups are included and if not, how much they cost. Also, ask them what their responsibility is for backups and security. And what do they provide for your hosting fees in terms of antivirus scanning and restoring your site from backups.

If you have a WordPress website, there are a number of plugins that can be used to back up your website. Backup Buddy is a good one, particularly of you have a number of sites to back up. You can create backups periodically and download them, or keep the backups stashed away in a cloud somewhere.

I prefer to run all of my website backups from one control panel and have all website backups stored in one location. From that control panel, I can reinstall any website I look after from those backups at the click of a button. This would be a lot of work for you to install yourself as it requires a couple of plugin installations on your site and the external set-up for the website backups and storage. But your web developer or host should be able to do this for you relatively easily.

If your web developer or host can’t help you, I will. Give me a call on 0161 881 9727 and we’ll get you backed up.

Also, consider cyber insurance. If the worst happens, you will be covered for loss of earnings, fixing or rebuilding your website and other broader problems associated with being hacked. Ask for details and I can refer you to my cyber insurer.