There is a lot that must be taken into account when evaluating e-commerce web hosting solutions for your small business.  Among several key factors, reliability needs to be considered as well as security to make sure you web transactions and customer data are protected from hackers and criminals looking to commit identify theft.  It is important to know that there are many options available to you in regard to the type of service.  Two of the most common approaches involve running your small business on a shared or dedicated server.  Each method has its advantages and disadvantages, which we will discuss in this article.

Reasons to Opt for Shared Hosting

Shared hosting offers numerous benefits and several of them extend into the e-commerce sector.  For one, it is very affordable as you can easily find a feature-loaded plan for under $10 per month.  In addition to that, you typically receive all the tools and services you need to get your online storefront up and running.  This includes shopping cart programs, web analytic tools and support for SSL certificates to secure your business transactions.  However, while shared hosting can provide you with a relatively secure platform, it can never assure the level of protection and reliability that can be obtained from a dedicated server.

The Dedicated Advantage

Though an advanced and often more complex hosting solution, a dedicated server is not exclusively geared towards larger companies.  In fact, it can deliver the same benefits to small businesses and entrepreneurs looking to establish and grow their presence on the web.  Leasing a dedicated server will cost you more than a shared hosting plan, but it can also guarantee you better overall security and reliability, both of which are vital for anyone who wants to be make sure there business is always available.  For many companies, their website serves as the revenue generator that keeps the business going.  If these are your plans, you need to make it a priority to invest in a solution that ensures your site can be accessed at all times and provides the secure environment your customers need to feel safe.

Capacity and Complexity

When leasing a dedicated server for your small business, you are assured a guaranteed allotment of essential resources such as disk space, RAM and bandwidth.  These features alone can give you a website that performs exceptionally better than it would in the shared hosting environment.  However, you should keep in mind that dedicated hosting is one of the most complex types of web hosting you can sign on for.  Unless you opt for a managed service, you will be responsible ensuring and monitoring security, performing configurations and backups, installing software and general maintenance of the server.

There are quite a few small businesses that can thrive with a shared hosting platform and several others that cannot.  Making a choice is difficult and the final decision will depend on various factors, including your budget, level of expertise and the requirements of your business.  Most importantly, it will boil down to the overall quality of the host providing you with service.

Source: http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/09/22/server-options-for-e-commerce-hosting/

Email hosting is designed for businesses that cannot or simply do not want to spend their precious time and resources on setting up and managing an internal messaging infrastructure. This is very understandable because the continued maintenance and support can raise costs and also greatly increase the probability of virus infections, hardware and software problems. All of these issues could leave your business without email functionality for hours and possibly days.

There are many benefits to outsourcing your messaging needs to a professional hosting company. This article will go over some of the most significant.

Secure Webmail Access

Email hosting providers generally equip their mail servers with industry standard 128-bit encryption, which is active during the entire webmail session. This essentially means that any data sent to and from the server is encrypted from the moment you sign in, until the moment you sign out. With this proven security protocol, you can ensure that your sensitive messages will not be intercepted or compromised in any way.

Secure IMAP and POP Access

Businesses are increasingly opting for email hosting solutions because they enable secure access to desktop email clients through IMAP or POP. All email traffic is encrypted, including user names and passwords sent from the email client to the mail server for authentication. The best hosting providers support all the popular mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird and Apple Mail. Some even offer support for Linux and BSD clients as well as PDAs and pocket PCs. Whether you prefer to manage your mail on or offline, an email hosting plan can ensure that is done in an efficient and secure manner.

Adequate Storage Space

When signing up a for an email hosting account, you typically get a robust amount of storage for each mailbox created. Some give you MB of storage, others give you GB per mailbox. All tend to provide you with more than enough to efficiently store tens of thousands of messages. A more flexible solution will allow you to easily upgrade as your storage needs increase.

Spam and Virus Filtering

A quality email hosting solution blocks potentially harmful mail before it even enters the network. Anti-virus scanners are usually integrated into the host’s SMTP gateways while spam is dealt with in numerous ways. A company that truly wants to help keep spam out your life will employ filtering methods such as blacklisting, whitelisting and greylisting, and allow you to make configurations that automatically sends it to a quarantine folder instead of your inbox.

Shared Address Book

The Address Book is a very useful feature in many email clients as it provides the user with a convenient way to store contact data for easy retrieval and use. Most email hosts offer both a private and shared address book, along with access to public network directory services. In many cases, the shared address book can be used with any mail client that supports LDAP directory services.

Email is such a prevalent method of communication that it can easily get out of hand over time. If you are no longer able to control your messaging infrastructure from within, it might be time to consider email hosting.

Source: http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/07/30/the-benefits-of-email-hosting/

People are using the internet to commit malicious crimes everyday.  And while virus infections and scams pose a significant threat, one of the biggest problems of all is website hacking.  If you’re running a business online, losing sensitive data to a security breach could be enough to shut you down for good.  If you truly want to know how secure your business website, we suggest posing the following questions to yourself:

What are your trying to secure? For most companies, this includes confidential data such as customer records and payroll information.  However, you shouldn’t forget all the essentials like staff morale and most importantly, your company’s reputation.

What are your risks? The scope of today’s threat model is larger than it has ever been.  Not only do you have to worry about malicious software and hackers, but internal theft and physical threats as well.

Who is responsible for security? Do you have an experienced system administrator or are you going at it alone?  Many companies leave themselves wide open all because they do not have the internal resources needed to enable adequate security.

What are your doing about security? What are your plans for security?  Have you installed the appropriate software technologies to protect your network?  Are you enforcing security policies and training staff to make sure they know the risks?

Making sure your business website can be a full-time job.  Fortunately, there are several preventive measures that can be taken to prevent a disaster.  While some of it only seems practical, far too many companies overlook the intangibles and increase their likelihood of being victimized.  This checklist will help you understand what you need to do right now to start protecting your business.

Invest in Physical Security - While cyber crimes have become highly sophisticated, the easiest way to disrupt any business is to still their PC or server.  You can make this far more difficult by physically locking your office and coupling that with motion detectors and alarms.

Frequent Backups - The importance of data backups is something that just can’t be stressed enough.  Even is disaster does strike, you can ensure a speedy recovering by regularly backing up critical data and storing it in an off site location.

Implement Access Controls – As unfortunate as it is, everyone can’t be trusted – even some of the members on your staff. You should only provide employees with access to confidential data on a need-to-know basis in accordance to their role in the organization.  Nothing is guaranteed but this can dramatically minimize the risk of sabotage and data theft.

Continuous Training and Policy Enforcement – The mere behavior of your staff can be a major security risk.  Make sure your staff has a clear understanding of what they are and are not to be doing online.  Put some policies in place to ensure that everyone is operating with security in mind and come up with some repercussions for those who don’t comply.

Protect Your Website - When doing business online, the website is what forms the foundation for your organization.  The more you rely on your site, the bigger target it will become.  Therefore, it is critical to do everything to possible to make sure your applications and the site itself is secure.

Source: http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/04/14/is-your-business-website-secure/

People are using the internet to commit malicious crimes everyday.  And while virus infections and scams pose a significant threat, one of the biggest problems of all is website hacking.  If you’re running a business online, losing sensitive data to a security breach could be enough to shut you down for good.  If you truly want to know how secure your business website, we suggest posing the following questions to yourself:

What are your trying to secure? For most companies, this includes confidential data such as customer records and payroll information.  However, you shouldn’t forget all the essentials like staff morale and most importantly, your company’s reputation.

What are your risks? The scope of today’s threat model is larger than it has ever been.  Not only do you have to worry about malicious software and hackers, but internal theft and physical threats as well.

Who is responsible for security? Do you have an experienced system administrator or are you going at it alone?  Many companies leave themselves wide open all because they do not have the internal resources needed to enable adequate security.

What are your doing about security? What are your plans for security?  Have you installed the appropriate software technologies to protect your network?  Are you enforcing security policies and training staff to make sure they know the risks?

Making sure your business website can be a full-time job.  Fortunately, there are several preventive measures that can be taken to prevent a disaster.  While some of it only seems practical, far too many companies overlook the intangibles and increase their likelihood of being victimized.  This checklist will help you understand what you need to do right now to start protecting your business.

Invest in Physical Security - While cyber crimes have become highly sophisticated, the easiest way to disrupt any business is to still their PC or server.  You can make this far more difficult by physically locking your office and coupling that with motion detectors and alarms.

Frequent Backups - The importance of data backups is something that just can’t be stressed enough.  Even is disaster does strike, you can ensure a speedy recovering by regularly backing up critical data and storing it in an off site location.

Implement Access Controls – As unfortunate as it is, everyone can’t be trusted – even some of the members on your staff. You should only provide employees with access to confidential data on a need-to-know basis in accordance to their role in the organization.  Nothing is guaranteed but this can dramatically minimize the risk of sabotage and data theft.

Continuous Training and Policy Enforcement – The mere behavior of your staff can be a major security risk.  Make sure your staff has a clear understanding of what they are and are not to be doing online.  Put some policies in place to ensure that everyone is operating with security in mind and come up with some repercussions for those who don’t comply.

Protect Your Website - When doing business online, the website is what forms the foundation for your organization.  The more you rely on your site, the bigger target it will become.  Therefore, it is critical to do everything to possible to make sure your applications and the site itself is secure.

Source: http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/04/14/is-your-business-website-secure/