Backups, security, & privacy

Backups

Ensuring that your files are safe is a very important part of having your own website, which is why it is very important to choose web hosting providers that will offer you the ability to back up your files.  Some companies will do this locally (i.e. scheduled tape backups), and other companies may instead provide compressed file archives for you to download (this is more common with shared hosting providers).  In addition, it is important that your web host also backs up your databases — file backups are not enough to be ready for disaster recovery.  Whitelancer Web Development always looks into these issues and will help arrange automated backups so you can be sure they are in a safe environment.  In this vein, we work with you and your web hosting provider to determine what is both safe and convenient for your company and will make recommendations to ensure your website is online and functioning quickly in case of misfortune.

Security & Privacy

Security is a very important topic to be aware of in today's society of e-transactions.  Simply enabling SSL (Secure-socket-layer) transactions, which you see in your browser by "https://", is not enough to be sure your website is keeping your clients safe, and it can't always protect you from rogue programmers out to do damage or steal information.  Whitelancer Web Development has experience in how to program and test websites to keep your information safe.  We suggest not storing sensitive data such as credit card information whenever possible, and when such data is necessary, to always use very strong encryption — one-way encryption when possible, so it's impossible to retrieve (such as passwords).  We test for SQL injection hacks, and sanitize any data being transferred by the system.  Even unknowing clients could potentially be a threat, so it's important that any data your website retrives from (or gives to) clients is always checked first to prevent as many problems as possible.  We take security very seriously and want you and your customers to be well protected.