Hosting, Colocation & Backup Insights

When was the last time you checked or updated your backup software?

Having a backup solution in the first place is, of course, a positive thing. It adds a layer of resilience to your business, ensuring you can recover from any incident with speed. This is a great practice to have in place and means you can focus on running your business and providing your services to your clients.

However, just having a backup solution isn’t enough in the long term.

 

Looking after a backup solution can be complicated. It involves several different components, that all need regular attention, maintenance, and updates. 

Client machines, Backup Servers, and Storage devices all need to be kept up to date with the latest software and security patches. Some will also need an Operating System that has the latest patches. Hardware devices will occasionally need firmware updates. 

Why You Should Be Doing Backup Software Updates

The older a software gets, the more of a security risk it can be, due to the software’s code being exposed to the public for longer. This potentially gives people with malicious intent more time to work around the security in the coding.

Updating your backups software helps to mitigate this.

Another benefit of having all your backup infrastructure on the latest versions is that components will talk to each other in the most efficient manner, which can give you better performance. 

Combined this will give you the best Reliability, Security, and Performance for your backup solution.

  

What Should You Check For Updates?

Below is a small summary of some of the key areas you might want to make sure are updated to the latest versions. Bear in mind, you might need to check compatibility issues between the versions for different parts of your infrastructure.

Client Machines 

• Client backup software or agent
• Operating System
• Anti-Virus
• Security

Backup servers 

• Operating System
• Backup software
• Anti-Virus
• Security

Storage devices 

• Operating System / Firmware
• Anti-Virus
• Security

If your backup software is not up to date, then you should consider a managed backup service. These services are aimed at helping Service Providers deliver backup services to their own clients. Typically, the updating, monitoring, and reporting will all be done by the Managed Backup Provider.

 

Backup Update Checklist

We have created a free resource that gives some information on updating your backup, and also gives you a checklist, that you can use. With the goal that if you can tick off every element on there, then most aspects of your backup should be up to date!

You can get this checklist here: https://hahosting.com/backup-up-to-date/ 

Should Your Domain Be In Your Name?

A Website Domain is a massively important part of your business, especially in today’s age where online business is bigger than ever.

So does it really matter what your Domain Name is called? From a purely technical level – no. No matter the name it will work as any other domain would. However, the major aspects to consider are branding, memorability, and to an extent, SEO.

 

Branding & Memorability

This arguably is the most important aspect of your domain name. Does it match your business’ current branding?

Typically the way to do this would be to have your domain name be the same as your business’ name. For example, Apple’s domain name is ‘Apple.com’. This sounds obvious but you’d be surprised how many websites don’t do this. This helps with your overall branding due to consistency and the repetition of the same name will make it more likely for prospects and clients to remember.

Consistent branding across all of your platforms and marketing will make the experience for the customer less jarring and confusing. They’ll always know when they’re on your site or looking at your content. Don’t underestimate the power of strong branding!

This could also be used as a time of self-reflection. Perhaps seeing a crazy long website address will make you realize if you need to re-brand your business’ name.

 

As another small benefit, having a matching name as to what appears on your website content will be good for SEO. Again this is about consistency, Google will recognize more usage of the same name. Of course, you want to be the first search result when someone does a search for your name directly right?

 

What Should I Call My Website Domain?

As long as your domain name is recognizable as relating to you or your company it will most likely be fine. Generally, the shorter, more readable, and more memorable a domain name is, the better. To use the Apple example again, imagine if instead of apple.com, their website was called applephonesandmacs.com…Not exactly easy to remember.

Often this will come down to how you want your brand to be seen. Major international brands will spend a lot of time and money making sure that they own all international versions of a domain name e.g:

• apple.com                   
• apple.co.uk
• apple.es              
• apple.cn
• apple.de

 

Email Domain Name

If possible it is important to get your email domain to be in your own name too. This is for mostly the same reasons as above. Having your own email looks a lot more professional in someone’s inbox too. For example, let’s compare:

[email protected] vs [email protected]

The second option looks more like a personal email account, rather than a business. Just something to consider.

Data protection for a small business owner is not a one-off project. It is a handful of habits, layered together, that quietly reduce your risk. Here are the tips that pay back the most for the time they take.

Tip 1: Treat your laptop as the weakest link

For most small business owners, the laptop is the single most valuable asset and the easiest to lose. Full disk encryption (BitLocker on Windows, FileVault on macOS) is free and on by default on modern devices, but worth checking. A lost or stolen laptop with encryption on is an annoying replacement cost. Without it, it is a data breach.

Tip 2: Use a password manager, not your browser’s password store

Browser password stores are convenient but easier to compromise. A dedicated password manager (1Password, Bitwarden, KeePass) makes unique strong passwords genuinely usable and is the single biggest reduction in account takeover risk you can buy for £5 a month.

Tip 3: Turn on multi-factor authentication everywhere

Email, banking, accounting software, cloud storage, business social accounts. Authenticator app or hardware key, not SMS. If an account has anything worth protecting, MFA goes on it.

Tip 4: Patch within two weeks

Operating system, browser, accounting software, any line-of-business app. Set automatic updates where the vendor offers them. Ransomware almost always enters through unpatched software, not zero-days.

Tip 5: Add an offsite backup

If your business data lives on one device, or on one server, or in one cloud service, you have a single point of failure. Local backup helps with drive failure. Offsite backup is what you need for fire, flood, theft, ransomware, or accidental deletion. Our UK Cloud Backup starts at £14 per TB per month, billed in 0.5 TB increments, hosted in our ISO 27001 Sheffield data centre.

Tip 6: Back up Microsoft 365 separately

Microsoft does not protect you against deletion (accidental or malicious), ransomware syncing through OneDrive, or a leaver wiping their own mailbox. A third-party backup of Microsoft 365 catches all of these. We can fold it into our Managed Backup Services if you want it managed end-to-end.

Tip 7: Know your UK GDPR obligations

If you hold personal data on UK residents, GDPR applies. Document what you collect, why, how long you keep it, and who you share it with. The ICO has small business guidance specifically. Breach notification within 72 hours is the rule you do not want to be caught out on.

Tip 8: Test your restore once a quarter

A backup you have not tested is not a backup. Set a calendar reminder to restore one file or one folder from your backup every three months. If it works, great. If it does not, you have found a problem at a quiet moment instead of during a crisis.

Tip 9: Write down what happens if you get hit

Three pages of plain text covering: who notices, who you call, what you tell customers, how you isolate, how you restore. Print it. Add your insurance broker, your IT supplier, the ICO breach reporting URL, and the Action Fraud number. The middle of an incident is the worst time to draft this.

Tip 10: Make security boring

The best security setup is one your future self does not have to think about. Automatic patching, automatic backups, MFA enrolled on every account once. Boring is good. Constant manual intervention is how habits slip.

Where HA Hosting fits

Tip 5 and Tip 6 above are the controls we cover end-to-end. Managed Backup Services for businesses that want the offsite backup running without them touching it. UK Cloud Backup for businesses that want the storage and will run the backup tool themselves. Both UK-resident, UK-managed, in our ISO 27001 Sheffield data centre.

Always Looking to Improve

In our last blog post, we mentioned encouraging our team members to pursue training to help develop their skills – benefiting both them as an individual and HA Hosting as a business (and hopefully a knock-on effect to our customers).

Carrying on from that we wanted to highlight some of the training one of our Tech Team, Marc, has completed recently.

 

Developing as a Network Specialist

Marc’s training was centered around developing as a Network Security Specialist. A course that Marc originally found during lockdown last year. Obviously we thought it was a good idea considering the nature of what we do here at HA Hosting. Nice find Marc!

The course basically consisted of network security content. Ranging from firewall configuration to the appropriate standards that surround network security.

 

“It was a self-paced course, so ultimately went as well as it did. Didn’t really do much of it at work; most was done at home in my spare time. The rate was about a module a week, not including time spent not doing it!”

 

How This Will Help in the Future

With its focus on network security, it’ll help by allowing Marc to look at things like our firewall config with a wider vision. So instead of “what can we do to get this working now”, he can look at it from “what can we do to get it working now, and keep it secure without needing to come back to it in the future?”. Obviously, this is a very useful skill to have for the long-term health of HA’s infrastructure and means Marc can discuss problems and solutions with the Tech Team at a higher level than before.

“Alongside this, I’ll be able to bring other aspects that I’ve learned into my day-to-day work.”

Always Trying to Improve

One thing we always try to do here at HA Hosting is to keep improving in all aspects that we can.

This could be technology, processes, skills, etc. Included in this is Staff training – and not just in learning more IT-Based skills. We try and help develop our Team in various aspects so that they can achieve their own personal goals.

 

Blake’s Recent Training

A recent example of that is with some training that Blake did in Team Leading & some other areas of general business.

“I felt it went well, I had to do things I’ve never done before giving me a new insight.

It helped me to pinpoint areas where we can improve as a business or introduce things we don’t currently have in place.
I gained new knowledge in businesses and how they operate as well as gaining leadership skills I didn’t have previously.

It’s also helped me to boost my confidence and learn how to better word things to ensure everyone has an understanding.”

 

Developing for the Future

Not only has this training helped Blake as an individual to develop, but also through his new skills and understanding, will help to push and improve aspects of HA Hosting in the future.

The obvious impact you will see from this, from a client perspective, is a slow increase in the levels of service quality and professionalism across the business – especially as we encourage more of our Team to keep learning and developing!

 

Good job completing the training, Blake!

Veeam Cloud Connect – What Is It?

In our last blog post, we spoke about how HA Hosting is partnering up with Veeam. And how this would let us provide more and better backup solutions for you to use. As stated in that blog post, we’re now talking about Veeam Cloud Connect.

 

What is Veeam Cloud Connect?

Veeam Cloud Connect is a solution that makes it easy to get backups and replicas off-site to a Backup as a Service (BaaS) or Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) provider without the cost and complexity of managing a second infrastructure.

Basically, if you have an existing Veeam backup, Cloud Connect allows you to “link” that to our Data Centre easily. From here you can use the off-site replica to backup and restore from as normal.

It’s as easy as selecting a service provider from our global network of partners and pointing backup or replica jobs to the cloud with a few simple clicks. There’s no separate console, and data is fully encrypted at every step. Backups are as safe and confidential as they would be in a dedicated off-site repository so that data of ALL types are completely protected and easy to recover.

 

Why Use Veeam Cloud Connect?

If you’re familiar with the 3-2-1 rule for data security you probably know why off-site backup is so key.

For those who aren’t here is a quick summary:

• 3 – Have 3 copies of your data (Live data, a local copy & an off-site copy)
• 2 – Store your data on 2 different types of media (e.g. an external and internal hard drive)
• 1 – 1 copy of your data needs to be stored off-site for extra added protection

This ‘rule’ is basically a standard within the IT world to ensure Data security. Cloud Connect works within this because it lets you have off-site backup easily. So using Cloud Connect makes following this 3-2-1 practice easy, thanks to how their systems integrate your existing backup to an off-site location.

Once you have Cloud Connect set up, you would ideally:

• Use a local backup copy to restore from quickly
• Use your off-site backup copy to restore from when the local copy is compromised

Using both of these allows you to keep hitting your RTO/RPO goals.

 

If you want to find out more about Veeam Cloud Connect, you can visit our webpage or Veeam’s own page.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us.