8 security measures that your web host must have

1. Well thought-out backup strategy

In principle, backups of your website are made with every web host. Handy, of course, because the chance that something will go wrong with your website (a hack, wrong programming code, etc.) is quite high.

The big question is: how often are these backups made and for how long are they kept?

Daily backups are best, of course. Especially if you can do this in combination with manual backups. Manual backups are ideal if you want to perform updates to your website, for example.

Also check how easy the backup process is. Is the backup process described simply and is it intuitive? And is there perhaps a limit on the number of backups? Is the backup done automatically and how often does it happen?

You've already read it: a good backup strategy involves a lot. A well thought-out process is crucial for the security of your website or online store.

2. Using RAID

RAID is a system that protects data. RAID ensures that your files remain safe and are stored. RAID consists of a multiple hard drives. When one fails, the same data on the other drives remains intact. With RAID you never have to worry about losing data.

The use of RAID is offered by many web hosts. However, this is an expensive affair and is therefore not included in all standard packages.

If you come across a web host who has incorporated this into all packages by default, you can at least know for sure that the web host is very committed to security (and speed).

3. Ability to reboot manually

Being able to manually reboot your server is something you will find in VPS hosting or Dedicated hosting. This is especially ideal if you want to implement important updates or configurations or if problems have arisen on the server, for example. A manual reboot can often be the solution.

4. A secure data center

Maybe not something you immediately think of, but the data center where your server is located is a physical place. And physical places are of course sensitive to natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes or, for example, power cuts.

Such a disaster never ends well, but you are of course not waiting for this to have consequences for your online store or website. That is why it is good to check where the data center of your web host is located. Preferably, this is a place that is rarely or never exposed to natural disasters.

5. Up-time

How much up-time does your web host promise? If this is 100%, it can almost certainly not keep this promise (unless you choose cloud hosting). In any case, go for a web host that guarantees an up-time of 99.9% or higher. The higher the up-time percentage, the less often your website will experience downtime.

6. Lets Encrypt support

A web host must at least offer the possibility to create SSL certificates.

Let's Encrypt makes it possible to issue SSL certificates for free. The certificates are small data files that digitally link a cryptographic key to the data of a domain.

As soon as these are installed on a web server, the HTTPS protocol is automatically activated via port 443. This creates a secure connection between the web server and the browser and that is something search engines are going to make mandatory.

7. Outstanding support / service department

A support department that excels in pro-active action and timely recognizes security-related issues is really valuable. This is also where many web hosts make the difference, or lack in.

Incorrect configurations, hacking attempts, downtime, you prefer that this is monitored in real time and that problems are resolved in a timely manner and you are of course also informed about this.

8. Extra measures on the server

Web hosts also distinguish themselves in all the extra measures they have arranged. Hipex, for example, has a bad bot blocker. This is a measure that ensures that requests from 'bad bots' are immediately blocked. This way, it filters it out and only lets the 'good' reliable traffic through.

Another standard measure that is by no means always commonplace with other web hosts is that we close so-called critical locations at, for example, Magento 1 shops on our platform by default. In addition to that, we advise and help protecting your back-end the best we can.

Be critical and choose secure web hosting

A secure website is crucial and especially for online stores. What you don't want is that your website has constant downtime or that sensitive customer data is exposed.

We recognize this at Hipex and that is why the security of your online store or website is the most important thing. In addition to an enormous performance boost, you also get a state of the art environment in which safety is of crucial importance.