Downtime, A Valuable Lesson

For the past week Tek has been down. We found out on Monday Night 8th June that our site had been hacked. While this immediately had me feeling rather angry I wish that rather than wasting my time I had just moved forward what we had intended, which was to shift our hosting to a NZ based company and improve our overall security.

While the feeling of violation meant I got angry with people I did have backups and the only thing lost was the uploaded images from the database which we were informed was corrupted. (I should have backed that up too I know)

So now we are back and faster than ever. We have learned a lot from the experience and while I won’t detail what we have done here feel free to ask via twitter or IM if you want to know more.

Our backup regime has now had a major overhaul and we will no longer be relying on the web-host to keep archives. Rather we will download the database and relevant file ourselves. Now I know where all that 1 TB storage that I brought can be used. Hey maybe I’ll be allowed to buy that Drobo I’ve been thinking about.

This also provided a teaching point for my ICT students as away from their realms of bit torrent and pesky Virus’ this was a real example of how their skills when used in a negative way can cause a lot of disruption. All in all an experience that has perhaps made me change my somewhat cavalier attitude towards security.