Security Measures for Your Website & Your Data
It is not enough to have a nice looking website. It also has to be safe for your clients to visit it.
Now you might think that you are only a small business and cannot afford the security measures, but there are actually services around that are cheap and can help you with this.
It is your responsibility not to spread malware to your clients.
Do a quick online research on your hosting service. Some are more vulnerable than others and often it will only cost you a few EUR/month to get a more reliable and secure service.
Keep the software on your computer system up to date. Most software allows you to run automated updates, which is convenient for most of us who are no experts.
Check out if a monitoring-services might be something for you. These are services (like Initiative-S in Germany, which is financed by the government) where you can register your website for a free external check and constant monitoring. If they find an infection, they will not only let you know about it, but they will also tell you how to fix the problem.
For Germany / German speakers: you might also be interested in BürgerCERT, a governmental project where you can register for several kinds of internet security related newsletters (technical warnings, security update informations etc). I registered several years ago when I first heard of it and it was (still is) a blessing. Before that I was constantly worried of missing something important – now I just have to go through the newsletters to know the vital stuff. VERY CONVENIENT!
You will probably find this kind of services in your language, too. Internet Security problems are mostly a global issue.
Remember, just because you are a small business, it does not mean that you will not be targeted. Sometimes things just happen. Attacks spread. And seriously, when you have to do a lot of research online, like hunting for pictures, then chances are high that you will run across more than what you are looking for. With Apple increasing its market share, it is no longer safe to assume that because you have a MAC this topic does not affect you (and your clients).
Secure Your/Your Client’s Data
Regardless if you are working on a PC or on a MAC, set up a crash-proof backup system. It is inevitable, malware or no malware, that sooner or later something will happen that will endanger your data — be it hardware failure, software failure or even user failure. Most likely it will happen in the least convenient moment, too, shortly before a deadline or similar.
I myself am not a technical expert, but I can tell you what I am doing.
I have more than one business. And I have a separate harddrive in my MAC for each one of them. And one harddrive for my system. If one harddrive fails, I just have to worry about one set of data.
I have an external backup drive for my system, which I backup with SuperDuper. I have this scheduled in my calendar and do it manually. I could automate it via SuperDuper, but I do not want my system backup in a vulnerable position (it is my backup after all), so I do not have it powered up all the time and I do not have it plugged into my main system unless I am backing up. Still, I do a minimum backup of once a week. If I am installing a lot of things and much is going on, I’ll do it more often.
I have an external RAID system for my data, too. Two mirrored disks. So if one fails, I still have the other. TimeMachine comes free with every Mac and that is what I am using for this backup. You can choose the source (in my case everything but the system) and the whole setup is completely painless – it also is completely automated.
While working on projects, I generally use the fact that I use separate harddrives for my businesses and make quick additional backups of the project data onto the other drives. So if I accidentaly overwrite a file because I forgot to rename a new version (this likes to happen to me in a night session), I just recover it quickly from one of my other harddrives. I would hate to use TimeMachine for this because if I do not notice my mistake right away, I might lose everything I have done in between. (Yes, there are ways around this, but simply getting the lost file from another harddrive, is quicker and less complicated – we are talking about stressful nightsessions here, and the less complicated and the faster a solution is, the better)
Apart from the constant TimeMachine backups I have separate harddrives, where I archive finished projects. I store these harddrives somewhere else altogether.
Stay safe.
Keep your clients safe.
