A polite warning to anyone hosting a website

Vanilla · 22 Jun 2011 at 07:34

Over in Australia the host DistributeIT was apparently hacked.

Over 4000 people have lost their websites & the backups have been deleted as well (obviously no tapes!). Quite a nasty hack as many people relied on the websites as their livelihood.

This has surely put tehm out of business.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/21/hacks_wipe_aus_web_and_data/

Just a polite reminder that you should ensure *you* backup your data personally. Don't trust your web host as their policies around backup may not be as robust as you think.

I'm sure a lot of the hosting regulars, with far more experience than me, can advise you on such matters and the added protections you can employ to protect your sites.

eXor · 22 Jun 2011 at 09:05

Ouch!

I hope that never happens to Vidahost!

gord · 22 Jun 2011 at 09:12

eXor said:
Ouch!

I hope that never happens to Vidahost!

Why? If it did you'd just wait for them to get the servers back online, re-upload your site and restore the DB from your backup.

3dcandy · 22 Jun 2011 at 09:51

since about 1986 I don't think I've ever lost any personal data, it's all been backed up. I can't believe people do, it's just such an easy thing to do (though time consuming)

gord · 22 Jun 2011 at 10:28

To be honest I'm not surprised at all. I've seen data loss in 2 companies now. And I've only worked for 3.

eXor · 23 Jun 2011 at 05:52

gord said:
Why? If it did you'd just wait for them to get the servers back online, re-upload your site and restore the DB from your backup.

Of course.

But how long would I have to wait if they were dealt a mortal blow like these other guys seem to have been?

mraerosmith1981 · 23 Jun 2011 at 07:26

eek nasty

TigerUK · 23 Jun 2011 at 07:28

3dcandy said:
since about 1986 I don't think I've ever lost any personal data, it's all been backed up. I can't believe people do, it's just such an easy thing to do (though time consuming)

i haven;t lost any data in a long time either, although sometimes i wish i had, my documents folders are stacked with files that should be deleted, files as far back as my secondary school NRA writeups and a level stuff

paradigm · 23 Jun 2011 at 08:23

/strokes tape library.

matthab · 23 Jun 2011 at 12:46

This is why i dont trust remote storage, but I dont trust my own storage either.

Backup and backup also dont forget to backup

.

inSilica · 23 Jun 2011 at 13:03

with fast internet connections and cheap storage, you wonder why backups aren't more frequent ..., a sql dump and rsync/or some remote copy is all you need

TigerUK · 23 Jun 2011 at 14:37

inSilica said:
with fast internet connections and cheap storage, you wonder why backups aren't more frequent ..., a sql dump and rsync/or some remote copy is all you need

yeah, i have a weekly sql backup that's emailed to me. With most websites that use CMS, a sql dump is 99% of the work done.

Just download your actual files maybe once every two months or so (depending on how often you upload new files), and you're all done.