My Australian daughter is currently distraught. Her Perth-based business hosted its website on Distribute.IT. Last week their servers were hacked. Since then, not only 'no website' but 'no emails' either. Distribute.IT have just issued a statement saying "In assessing the situation, our greatest fears have been confirmed that not only was the production data erased during the attack, but also key back-ups, snapshots and other information that would allow us to reconstruct these servers from the remaining data”. In other words, if you haven’t got your own backup you’re stuffed. Not only that but the company is so overwhelmed that they can’t host you again even if you wanted them too. See WAToday.
About 4800 other Ozzie firms are affected. Fortunately my daughter wasn’t actually trading via the website and there were email alternatives. But many Distribute.IT customers risk going out of business as a result.
Why Distribute.IT had no offsite tape or other backup is beyond me.
But it really does ‘make you think’. I wonder how many of us (both with our business and personal websites) would be able to recreate our websites on a new supplier after the total destruction of all offsite backup copies? I wonder how long it would take?
The WAToday reports ends "”I think I'm in shock ... I have lost everything .... I couldn’t possibly replicate all those years of work again ... my whole life’s work is gone down the drain."