Businesses and start-ups have to deal with a new threat: hackers. You’ve likely heard about hackers and cybercriminals hacking into websites and releasing sensitive information to the general public.
To keep your website information safe, you should consider how secure your web hosting is. As you get more visitors to your site, you’ll likely choose a more expensive plan to provide you with the resources you need to handle the higher levels of traffic. As your website grows, there might be more opportunities for hackers to crack into your site.
When choosing your secure web hosting provider, you must do careful research. Some providers use outdated servers and have poor maintenance while others don't. It is often complicated to determine just which web hosts have the services you need.
Why You Need Secure Hosting
Unfortunately, not every website hosting provider or web designer will act with your best interests at heart. These days, there are plenty of unethical systems and companies eager to use your email for spamming and your website for their ads. Having a safe hosting provider is vital to keeping your data safe from fraud, and to have your server up and running all day, every day. Here are six features you should consider
Six Key Features of Secure Hosting Plans
Without knowing what to look for, it can be difficult to identify which hosting companies have highly secure servers (Check which are the top hosting companies here). Keep these features in mind to ensure that you are finding the best secure hosting provider.
RAID
RAID is a special system for protecting data. Even if the system crashes, RAIS keeps your files space from spammers or viruses. If you see that a web host has servers with RAID pre-installed, that is a good sign. However, this feature is rather expensive, so most shared plans won't have it included. Some web hosts offer RAID for an extra fee—find out as many details as you can before making a purchase.
Secure Datacenter
Natural disasters can strike at any time. Hurricanes, power shortages, and earthquakes could destroy the integrity and safety if you haven’t chosen a secure website provider. Some of the best hosting providers will offer you their secure facilities, diesel power generators, and other protection measures. Also, pay attention to the location of your web host's datacenters — give preference to the areas that are not exposed to natural disasters.
Uptime
Uptime is the time your website stays online, and your clients can access it without any problems. Most web hosts will claim to provide 100% uptime, and in most cases, that isn't true. The only type of hosting plan that can give you an uptime guarantee of 100% is cloud hosting, About eight years ago, cloud hosting had a bad reputation for not being as secure as other types of website hosting. However, this isn’t true. Cloud hosting is just as secure as others, and can deliver a great uptime guarantee as well.
However, if you don’t need or want cloud hosting, it’s okay to have a secure web hosting provider with an uptime guarantee of at least 99.9% or higher. The closer it is to 100%, the less downtime you’ll have. However, the brief shortages are not always bad, especially if you have a start-up without many website visitors off the bat. If this is the case, searching secure web hosts that promise reimbursement for the downtime is your best bet.
Back-Up
Many companies include the possibility to make a backup of your data for emergency cases. The most common options are daily, weekly, and monthly backups. Of course, daily backups are the best. That will let you restore the latest version of your website in case your server goes down.
Also, some web hosts offer manual backup, which is even better — you can make it every time you have something updated on the websites. Finally, many service providers have backup limits (e.g., max 10Gb), so it's important to read all backup conditions well before purchasing a hosting plan.
Before committing to a secure hosting provider, here are some things you should consider:
Are the backups automated? How many backups are kept? How intuitive is the backup process? Where is the data backed up to? Are there any costs involved with the backups?Of course, if you are using WordPress, you can even opt for a free or paid WordPress plugin that will automatically backup your website. If anything goes wrong and your site is hacked, you can reboot your website to the point where there were no problems.
Manual Reboot
Manual reboot is a service included in VPS and dedicated hosting packages. It lets you use a control panel for restarting your dedicated or virtual server. That is great for when making important updates. Also, a manual reboot is very good if you notice some problems on your server. You can first try rebooting your rack; if the problem remains, you can always contact your web host's customer support. The best types of secured hosting plans will have 24/7 customer service, so you can get your issues resolved as quickly as possible.
Top-Level Domain Names
The website domain name you pick is vital to the safest of your website. Top-level domains like .com or .org are the most popular, but other TLDs are becoming more popular. You might think using a newer TLD in order to get a better domain name. However, new TLDs like .men, .click., or .work are some of the most riskiest TLDs on the internet. If you are going to go with a TLD that isn’t one of the more traditional versions, then research beforehand to ensure that the domain name you choose is safe.
More Security Tips
In the end, we'd like to give another couple of tips that will keep your website safer. First of all, read the reviews of every web host who has the features you need. Forums are also great for getting some operative feedback about this or that when it comes to a web host company and their security.
You can also pay attention to the Clients per Server numbers. Though most hosting companies don't meet those limits, the less they promise, the fewer clients/server they'll have, and the better it is for your website.
Just remember — security is very important. Especially if you deal with sensitive information of your clients, you need to ensure that you are keeping your site as safe as possible. Don't neglect it when choosing a secure web host company, and your web project will stay healthy and efficient.
