In October of 2012 most of the northeast learned some hard lessons about being prepared for a disaster like Hurricane Sandy. Many businesses have since learned to utilize the cloud and create digital plans to better communicate with their customers and employees. People stay more tuned into the weather services for monitoring storms. They are grateful when it’s nothing major and aware of steps that need to be taken when something more serious is forecasted.

It’s time to apply that same planning to your website with website monitoring services. Let’s look at what these tools do, the difference between website monitoring and web hosting, why this service is important, and the costs involved.

What is Website Monitoring?

Website monitoring is an additional software application that can be added to your website to identify malicious code or other issues. Monitoring applications will scan your website looking for possible infections. Depending upon the monitoring application they may also monitor your website’s technical reputation. This refers to when a website is blacklisted. A website monitoring tool will notify you of an issue, but may not resolve it for you. Think of it like adding a security company to your site; they notify you of an intrusion but they don’t necessarily stop it from happening.

Website Monitoring is not Website Hosting

A web host is responsible for providing you with a secure space to house your website so it can be reached via the web. They give you the ability to add anything else you may want. Think of the space a web host gives as a storage locker and you can do with it what you need. Website hosts do not provide monitoring to you at no cost. It is usually an additional fee. Certain web hosts may scan their servers as a whole and will notify you of issues, but only as it may affect their other clients on the same server.

All Websites Are Vulnerable to Viruses

Please do not freak out here, but the fact is we’re all susceptible to getting a virus or being blacklisted. It’s just like you getting the flu. You may get a flu shot (web site monitoring) but it doesn’t guarantee you won’t get the flu; it will just be less aggressive. The monitoring system can catch things early to fix the problem. If you look at the news for the past six months, you can see that sites from LivingSocial to Twitter have all been hacked and trust me, they have great security.

Who’s Responsible for Fixing & What Are the Costs?

The answer I know you do not want to hear is that fixing the infection is a cost of doing business. You can lower the cost by monitoring the site and looking for a monitoring service that will clean out your infections. You can cut-down on attacks by making sure you are upgrading your web technology, having complicated passwords, changing your passwords frequently and ensuring you are removing system defaults from open source web tools. Good preparation can help prevent a total disaster from happening, but it does not guarantee that you won’t have an issue here and there. At this point, it is a good idea to invest a little more each month in your hosting, like insurance. Add a monitoring and upgrade package to your website to protect your business.

Have questions and want to know more? Feel free to schedule a consultation to discuss your concerns about your website.