Symantec offers advice on website backup

18/08/2008

Businesses must ensure they have a plan in place to deal with the possibility that their website may become inaccessible to internet users.

This is according to Symantec chief scientist Guy Bunker, who noted that setting up a second website to make live in case the main site fails can be one way of coping with such a problem - a practice that may be particularly relevant for those engaging in e-commerce web design.

He explained: "This is common in disaster recovery and business continuity planning – but sometimes companies forget about their websites and how important they can be."

Mr Bunker went on to state that while website monitoring can be of benefit to businesses, it is only useful when there is a capability in place to automatically respond to any issues as soon as they are detected.

The comments came after UK supermarket Sainsbury's suffered significant downtime in June and July, which may have resulted in its regular online customers looking elsewhere for their groceries, according to Blue Oar analyst Greg Lawless.