Picking a reliable, affordable host can be a challenge – especially when there are so many companies and options to pick from! This begs the question – can they be trusted not to steal my data?
Let’s start by considering a few examples of data that can be stolen from a website:
- Personally identifiable information (PII) e.g. customer data
- Order data
- Product data
- Your bespoke designs
Obviously some of that data can be rather valuable (just consider how much a good web design costs – imagine if that got copied, tweaked and resold).
What can they access?
Everything, I’d expect. A good host should:
- vet their employees and contractors
- only provide access to site data if needed
- be regularly audited by an external company
- check they’re talking to you, and not a malicious person!
How can I pick a good host?
It’s hard to fully trust any company. I’d recommend:
- Hosting with a company that specialise in managed WordPress hosting.
- Checking the history of breaches on Google for that hosting company – do they have a bad reputation for data breaches?
- Checking their feedback on sites such as TrustPilot.
- Reading their terms and conditions carefully!