You may have seen this happen before. I know I have. A perfectly good web hosting company– reliable, good reviews, decent services– suddenly disappears in a puff of smoke, overnight! As all of us increasingly rely on web hosting services for our businesses, personal websites and data storage, it becomes ever more important to find providers that will be there tomorrow, and the next day, ad infinitum. Of course, few companies will admit when they’re having problems, and that makes finding a reliable host difficult. Fortunately there are several warning signs to look out for when deciding who to trust with your valuable data.

But It’s Here Today!

Sure, nothing lasts forever. That’s a fact of life. But when you purchase a service from a legitimate business, you expect it to last a good long time. You expect to be able to get your site up and running and move on to bigger and better things, like running your business. Unfortunately, over the past few years a disturbing trend has emerged. Many companies, good solid-seeming companies, have simply vanished, taking the hard work, blood, sweat and tears of their customers along with them.

Who Are They?

There are more disappearing web hosts than I can list here but one prime example is Yahoo’s Geocities, Geocities was around for years and there was no effort to protect customer data when Yahoo decided to abandon that particular pet project. Some customers managed to retrieve data via third-party services, but the majority of customers were just out of luck.

Where Did They Go?

In many cases, like Geocities, the parent company decides to pull the plug. When this happens, it is the parent company’s responsibility to inform their customers. If they don’t, well, there’s not much we can do about it. In the case of many other smaller web hosts, often the company owners simply can’t afford their overhead costs. They don’t own their infrastructure to begin with (they are resellers, “re-selling” the hosting resources of another, larger company) and they can no longer keep up with the bandwidth needs of their customers (regardless of the fact that they may have promised to do so.)

Warning Signs

There are many warning signs to look out for. If the host owns other online properties that aren’t doing so well, beware. Review the company’s profit numbers. If those numbers look bad, there’s a good chance they won’t be around much longer. If financial information isn’t available, look for news coverage of the company that might hint at a growing problem. Often, when a company is going under, things will start to fray at the edges. If customer service isn’t what it used to be– tickets aren’t answered, waiting times are longer, services are sluggish–it may be time to get out while you can still retrieve your data. If there is a sudden change in their terms-of-service, this may indicate an attempt to protect themselves from potential litigation. They surely know they’re going under long before anyone else does, and they will try to mitigate the damage to themselves in any way they can.

How To Avoid the Disappearing Web Host

There are a few common-sense ways to pick a solid web host that you can trust. Look for a host that has been in business for a number of years. Choose one that owns and operates its own infrastructure. Owning a datacenter is an expensive undertaking and only a company with significant resources can afford to buy the building (including heating, cooling, etc.) and the hardware. A company that owns that kind of an infrastructure is not going under overnight. You will have much more time to make other arrangements if things start to go south, and will likely see evidence of this happening long before you lose access to your data. Last, look for customer reviews. A company with a large amount of reviews has a large amount of customers. A good customer base is like a cushion for your and your data. It’s a community of people who are just as interested in seeing the web host thrive as you are, and they will all speak up if the service starts losing its luster.

Here is where I plug TurnKey Internet 🙂 We’ve got the infrastructure, the customer base and the many years of solid service under our belts. Why not give us a try next time you find yourself shopping for a reliable web host.

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Social media is here to stay. It’s about as mainstream as mainstream gets and pretty much everyone has realized the import of the medium for businesses. As a marketing tool, it’s invaluable, though not without its pitfalls. I have written before about how to use social media to grow your business, market products and run specials. Today I am going to talk about how to use social media to build your business’ reputation with customers.

Interacting with customers in a public way is commonplace on the Internet, but on social networks it gets personal. Social networks, by their very nature, encourage participation, interaction and conversation. For individuals that makes keeping active friendships easier. It keeps families closer. It provides a forum for debating the issues of our day. From a business perspective, it presents a potential problem. In some cases, without the proper forethought, monitoring and attention, that problem can be devastating.

For a business, customer service is a cornerstone of growth. Without good customer service any business can fail, and fail fast. With social networks, customer interaction becomes virally public. In the old days, a customer might complain on a forum or on a blog, but today they complain in a Facebook feed… YOUR Facebook feed… and everyone sees it in real time. How you handle that complaint will define your customer service to existing and potential customers. This makes developing an internal customer service policy for social networks paramount. But how many companies are doing this? Is this critical element of social media business being ignored?

On a social network, a snide remark from a tired employee can influence thousands of potential customers. Incorrect information can snowball into a support nightmare in minutes. Every single interaction is being watched by your customer base, your bread and butter. If you’re not coaching your employees on how to handle social network interactions, you better start… fast.

One way to handle this is to restrict access to your social network account. Only give access to employees you trust, who understand the importance of decorum. It is also very helpful to develop a standard policy for social media interactions that focuses on openness, honesty and fairness. The good side of this kind of transparency is that customers can see when one of their own is being unreasonable just as easily as they can see everything else. If you handle interactions admirably, you will build trust, a kind of trust that no amount of traditional marketing can create.

So the social media of our times is one of the most useful and personal tools we’ve ever had for business. It crosses the divide between personal and commercial, paving the way for companies to build relationships like they used to in the mom and pop businesses of old. But with that incredible access comes great risk. Developing a strategy for social media interaction today will help protect your company tomorrow.

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Reduced Data Leakage

This is one of the first things cloud vendors will tell you, and they’ll be right. Many laptops are not safely protecting data with the appropriate encryption. Data is sent here and there and it’s lost here and there. Cloud encryption protects transmitted data every time. And then there’s the obvious data “leakage” issue (read: loss). How many hard drives need to fail before we all recognize the incredible peace of mind cloud storage can provide? Cloud hosting varies in its security offerings, so look for a host that offers secure firewalls and robust backups (read: Turnkey Internet).

Better Monitoring

Centralized storage makes it easier to monitor and control your data. Yes, this does  mean you’re putting all of your data eggs in one basket, but as an IT professional I would much rather know where my data is and focus my security efforts on that location than spread my data all over the place and hope for the best. Besides, “all in one place” doesn’t have the same meaning for cloud servers. Cloud networks are mirrored so data is safe, regardless of what might happen to a single machine.

Responding to Problems

If a cloud server is compromised, it’s a matter of seconds to restore all of the lost data from backups. This means you have no downtime, ever. You can restore data remotely, from anywhere, and with your robust cloud monitoring, you’ll know the second a problem arises. With all of your data in one location, you can easily assess the security problem and fix it.

Improved Logs

Logging is often overlooked, or it’s an afterthought and this means you may not have enough room allocated for your logs. With the cloud, you can index your logs for instant search results. This is true real-time view of your information. If your company is concerned with establishing a C2 audit trail, you can easily opt-in to allocate resources for extended logging.

Improved Security Software Performance

Security vendors are more accountable when their clients are more vigilant. The security concerns so many of us have surrounding the cloud have made many security software companies step up their game. They’re not only making their software more comprehensive and robust, they’re making it more efficient. Cloud clients are watching their billable CPU cycles. They know how much it’s costing them to run software. Visibility equals accountability.

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