Guest Author - Meg Meyer

Business Website Security

It's my business to help other people run their businesses more effectively, efficiently, and in a healthy way for themselves. This week, *I* got hit, when I wasn't looking. My database was wiped out, meaning my website, my source of income, my business was somehow, through no doing of my own or my company - it was all erased.

(!@&*#$^!!!!) :(

So, while I'm putting my ol' Humpty Dumpty back together again - I have GREAT inspiration to give you, dear readers, some tools to protect and prevent some of the issues my business is facing this week.

First and foremost, let's talk about passwords.

While most people choose passwords that are easy for themselves to remember, the flip side to this is that it could be easier for a hacker to guess, too. Make sure that you use different passwords for different sites. That way if one site, like a social networking profile were to somehow be compromised - that password wouldn't give up the security of other sites you use. Also change your passwords on a regular basis, for the same reason. While most people are good, there are those out there who would steal your personal info. Protect yourself and your livelihood with secure password management.

Next, you need to know about doing backups.

Many web hosting companies, like mine, do automatic backups on a daily basis. This can be a saving grace if you mangle your code and need to revert to a previous, unmangled, version of your site. You can just have tech support replace your mangled code or database, with an earlier version.

You also want to avoid my mistake.

You want to make sure you have hard copies of your backups, at least weekly. For security purposes, I opted to not do this, as I work from a laptop, mostly. And the reason I'm without my site now, is that I didn't have a hard copy of it. I didn't notice until over 24 hours had passed, that my website was gone. Meaning the new backup was in place... with the new... empty database. So, no back up from the website host was possible.

Lesson learned - always have a back up stored away from the main server space. Take every security precaution possible. And protect your client data at all costs. (My client sites were fine, only mine was harmed.)