How Does My Hosting Service Protect My Website?

Did you know that almost half of all security breaches online, and their subsequent losses, are a result of malicious intent? The other half can stem from a variety of other dangers, which could all affect your online presence and data. 

A major part of your protection online is thanks to your hosting service. Whether it’s securing your datacenter or regularly conducting backups and reboots, hosting services use many ways to keep websites out of reach from natural disasters, hackers, and various malfunctions. 

This article will elaborate on the five ways a credible web host secures your website so that you can focus on managing your business. 

RAID 

Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is the technique of protecting data in case of hardware failure and malfunctions by combining multiple standalone hard drives to create one version for redundancy and performance. RAID storage generates multiple copies of the website data on varied devices to reproduce the original data when one system crashes.

By doing so, it protects your website information to ensure reliability and availability of network storage with high performance. Most hosts offer RAID on premium plans or as an add-on, and it’s uncommon on shared plans. 

The various levels of RAID storage arrays used by web hosting services are described below:

• RAID 0: Striping 
• RAID 1: Mirroring 
• RAID 5: Parity striping
• RAID 6: Double parity striping 
• RAID 10: Combination of mirroring and striping
• RAID 60: Combination two/more RAID 5 with one RAID 0.
• RAID 60: Combination two/more RAID 6 with one RAID 0.

Robust Datacenter 

When a data center outage occurs, it leads to undue downtime, financial liabilities, and stress. 

Here are six ways hosts secure their data centers:

• Placing data centers at least 20 miles away from offices and 100 feet from the main road or highways. 
• Avoiding locations prone to natural disasters like lightning, storms, cyclones, floods, and earthquakes.
• Evading man-made high-risk areas such as airports, power outages, chemical facilities, and power stations. 
• Installing security surveillance, implementing Zero Trust security, or using personal redundancy measures. 
• Creating secondary sources for HVAC, generator, power, and communications if the primary hardware fails. 
• Following data center security regulations, which include policies and rules to prevent vulnerability of the hardware using ACLs, firewalls, and IDSs.

Back-Ups 

When you back up the latest version of your website, you can restore it easily in case of an emergency. A secure hosting provider comes with regular and automated backups that are often done daily, nightly, weekly, or monthly. 

While automated daily backups are ideal, most shared types of web hosting plans don’t provide this. In such a case, they might offer manual backups. You can then schedule regular backups manually or make a habit of doing so after every major update. Keep in mind that web hosts also restrict the backup size; hence, check their terms of service properly before registering. 

Ask your web hosting service the following questions to find out details about data backup: 

• Are backups automatic?
• What is the limit for backups?
• How do you restore backed up data?
• Where does the hosting service store the backed up data?
• Do you have to pay for the above services?

Reboots 

Uncommon in shared hosting plans, the manual reboot function is often seen in the best web hosting plans and enables website owners to reboot the server via a cPanel. Such a function lets you implement updates quickly and resolve server issues seamlessly, especially if you’re using Linux hosting or Python hosting.

Web hosting providers often reboot after replacing hardware or updating the system kernel. Premium service providers will restart the server every week or once per month. If rebooting the rack manually doesn’t resolve issues, you can contact the support team for help. 

For 100% Uptime: Cloud Hosting 

Uptime is defined as the time your site will stay online. Typically, 99% uptime translates to 7 hours and 12 minutes of downtime every 30 days, while 99.99% means downtimes of 43.12 minutes and 4.19 minutes, respectively. 

This is why 100% uptime is the sign of high-performance servers. While many service providers promise 100% uptime, not many can deliver. Cloud hosting is the only way hosting service can realistically guarantee 100% uptime. 

• Liquid Web is a hosting service provider that guarantees 100% uptime. If you fail to receive 100% with this host, you can request a refund. 
• DreamHost offers a 100% uptime guarantee. If you face more than one hour of downtime, you’ll get one free day of hosting with 10% off during renewal. 

Bottom Line

By signing up with a package that offers manual reboots, utilizes the best RAID arrays, has a secure datacenter, and carries out regular backups - your website can remain safe. The best way to make sure you reduce risks is by opting for cloud hosting, especially if it guarantees 100% uptime.