Avoid Disasters: Make Backups of Websites and Business Assets Mandatory
Do you have a backup of all your website and business data?
A sudden attack on your web hosting or an employee mistake can wreak havoc without warning.
The same goes for any information about your business stored on your computer. If your computer suddenly got infected with a virus and you had to format your hard drive, it would likely have a huge impact on your business.
So what should you do to prepare for data loss?
Is your website and domain name safe from being taken hostage? Read our article: How to keep your digital business assets SECURE from being taken HOSTAGE
Backup of your website
Sometimes website attacks may not be obvious, and you really need to be on the lookout for any suspicious activity.
Unfortunately, hackers can do more than break your website. In the past, some websites have been secretly hijacked and new information added to them without your knowledge.
The reason may be that another website is tracking your users or monitoring what you are doing to help a competing company. Check your pages for unusual content additions, as well as any new plugins you may not have added yourself.
If you notice something, then you have a problem. Without backups of your website, that problem can be very difficult to solve.
Try this free malware and security scanner from Sucuri to see if you currently have a problem.
With backups you can fix things with just a few clicks!
Your website backup could be something that is already underway without you knowing it. Check with your web host and see if they already have automatic backups enabled and make sure you understand how to do a “rollback” where you can restore a previous version of your website that was backed up before you encountered an error.
By doing this, you can literally restore your website in a few clicks and save yourself a lot of stress.
If you don’t have backups, see if your CMS (such as WordPress) has a backup tool/plugin you can employ. There are plenty of free options to choose from depending on how your website was built, like UpdraftPlus for WordPress.
If your website is 100% custom, the easiest thing to do is use a File Transfer Protocol tool like Filezilla and manually download your website to your PC. You can then store it on a cloud storage service or external hard drive in case you run into any issues and need a working version of your site. If your website is not very large, you can simply compress the content and email it to them.
If you prefer to have someone else take care of your website security and backup measures, please contact us as we have a monthly maintenance plan to take this burden off your shoulders.
Backup of your business data
Most entrepreneurs and small business owners run their business on their computer.
While many files can be searched in your email, you don’t want to start combing through emails looking for spreadsheets. Therefore, it is a very good idea to make regular backups of your computer data.
This process is easy and can become a routine habit once you’ve done it a few times.
The first step will really help with something mentioned in the backup part of the website above and that is to use Winzip or Winrar.
These programs compress the files into a single file so you have everything in one place. Some emails restrict sending these types of files for security reasons, so you may want to back up these files using a free cloud storage system like GDrive or Dropbox.
After installing Winzip or Winrar, you will be able to right click on the folder on your desktop with all of your business information and simply select add to archive. This will create the shredded copy of everything in that folder for easy storage.
Then simply go to your preferred storage point and add the archive file! You can drag it to an external drive or add it to a cloud. In any case, you will have all that information available at your fingertips whenever you need it.
Avoid disaster and implement!
These may seem like trivial things or a huge hassle to deal with…until you need them.
Anyone who has experienced a hacked website or a compromised hard drive knows that in hindsight it’s 20/20 and the words “if only I had…” suddenly become woefully normal.
Backups are like oil changes and need to be done regularly to ensure your business continues to run without devastating interruptions.