Distribute.IT Disaster - lessons to be learned

[Kym]

Warning: This thread is about learning lessons not bitching about Distribute.IT

Background:

Distribute.IT an Australian hosting company were cyber attacked and and as a result 4,800 sites were wiped out.
The gory details are in the following two links.

http://www.distributeit.com.au/
http://www.smartcompany.com.au/inter...-disaster.html

So what should I be doing about my hosted sites/blogs etc.?

In a word backup!
I don't just mean relying on your hosting providers backup, but also implementing your own secondary backup.
FYI AP runs a daily backup and that is also copied daily to another site on the other side of the planet from our hosting provider.

It is also worth noting that I don't actually care about backups...
I ONLY care about restore!
So make sure you can restore from what ever backup you use. Test it regularly.

If you have a gallery or other site, you should think about implementing some form of backup that you have control of.
This is especially true if you run any form of online commerce site.