Recent events in Australia have seen the collapse and gradual recovery of Distribute IT (DIT), a leading industry IT provider following a coordinated and systematic attack on their network. According to reports this attack was determined to sabotage and destroy DIT's network. While this may be an extreme case it does highlight the fact that these attacks can occur. In many cases the level of these intrusions is minor or moderate with the perpetrators doing little harm. However as the case with DIT proves, more serious threats aim to sabotage or compromise data stored in networks, as Sony could testify to being the focus of a network intrusion that compromised their network.

Security measures are installed and monitored by companies to ensure the integrity of their networks and that sensitive data is not compromised. Ever since we've relied on security measures to protect what we hold valuable, we have been subject to counter-security systems.

Perhaps one of the most important factors to understand regarding security is that no matter what measures you put into place to protect information someone will attempt to bypass those measures. Relative to this is the fact that security measures do not stop the attempt to intrude, they only make it more difficult to intrude.

I am not implying that security measures should not be a relevant factor to your business. The fact that intruders will continue to attempt to bypass security systems does not detract from the need to have those systems in place. Quite the opposite, security systems should be installed, kept up to date, monitored regularly and tested for weaknesses. What we need to add into the equation is an insurance policy, and that policy is backing up your data.

Backing up your data is your safeguard that if your data is compromised you have a copy of that data held in storage that you can fall back on if the need arises. So how do you go about the process of backing up your data?

Backing Up Your Data

The process to backup your data and store those backups in secure external locations can be expensive and time consuming, however as this article is targetted at small scale websites or businesses, I'll focus on the options available to small scale users that can be undertaken themselves. I'll also refer to data and websites interchangeably.

Before you start the process of backing up your data, you need to undertake a simple risk assessment of your website and address two basic principles. Firstly, how often should you backup your data, and secondly, where should you store your backed up data.

To answer the first question you need to consider how often your data is modified, and whether modifications to your website are of minor or major importance. You may have content that is updated regularly, or perform administraive tasks each day, in which case backing up your site is something that should be undertaken daily. Alternatively if your website is a static site that does not change regularly, you might be able to backup your website weekly.

The regularity of backing up your data is something that you should determine yourself, however as a general rule, backing up your site at least once per day or once per week will provide you with a satisfactory copy to work from in the event your data is compromised.

Having established how often you will be backing up your data you now need to consider where those backups are going to be stored. Should you store them on the same server that your website is hosted on? The short answer, no. Backups should never be left stored for retrieval on the same server as the website the backup is created from. Consider that if your website was subjected to a malicious attack, and your data in a worst case scenario was erased, then it may be safe to assume that your backups would be erased as well.

Instead you need to consider storing your backups at an external location, with perhaps the simplest location being a home or work computer. Once a backup of your website is completed that backup can then be downloaded and stored at home or work; however you should also consider taking a copy of that backup by burning it to a DVD. Taking these additional pre-cautionary measures ensures that if things do go pear-shaped you have sources available to get your website content back up online fast.

If backing your site up to a local computer is not a viable option you can always investigate third-party providers that offer offsite storage solutions. Offsite simply means that the data is stored at a different site from the location of your website. While these services can be beneficial for your storage needs you need to consider the costs involved and the availability of your data. Certain providers offer offsite storage solutions for free however the included features may be limited.

How Do I Backup My Data

Backups can generally be managed through a webhosting control panel such as cPanel. The backup utility provided can take backups of your entire site, or specific sections such as databases. This is easily understood if we show you so we have included a cPanel video tutorial which will guide you through the process of using the cPanel backup utility. From the tutorials page, click on Files and Directories, and scroll to the bottom to view the video.

If you would like to investigate automatic backups there are many sources available that provide PHP scripts that can be used to automate the backup process with CRON. Examples can be found at

• Automatic cPanel backup (domain & MySQL) with cron & PHP
• cPanel Automated Backup Script
• Creating Automatic MySQL Database backups

In regards to Livestates web hosting services, all of our plans are fully managed and maintained. Backups are taken on a daily, weekly and monthly basis with the backups being copied to a remote server.

If you need any assistance backing up your website please visit our Client Portal open a support ticket and we'll help you organise you website backup process.