The Communications Vault

You cringe as you open the company website and are greeted by a number of rapidly flashing images. You click and the page explodes into kaleidoscopic text that pulsates with different colors. The phone rings and your e-mail dings, but you already know what they are going to say: The company site has been hacked. This is a corporate nightmare and to think…it all could have been avoided.

There is no question that a hackers’ post can easily ruin a perfectly good day. And it never fails to amaze my clients that their 24-7 billboard to the world is so widely visible. The smallest company can be inundated by phone calls when a security breach takes place. SQL Injection is one of the many web attack mechanisms used by hackers to gain access to the data held within your database.

SQL Injection allows a hacker to pass SQL commands (statements) through a web application for execution by the backend database. If not setup properly, SQL Injection attacks allow hackers to view information from the database and/or even wipe it out. Older sites that take advantage of dynamic scripting languages, such as ASP, PHP, JSP, and CGI are especially vulnerable. A hacker merely needs a web browser, knowledge of SQL queries and creative guesswork to wreak havoc. (more…)

Week One: The president calls, he’s just noticed there is a typo on the main page of the company website. You scramble to have your web development company fix the error.

Week Two: Fran, over in Accounting, e-mails to let you know that her extension is incorrectly listed in the corporate directory. How is she ever supposed to get a date if her number isn’t listed properly in the corporate directory?

Week Three: Microsoft releases a new browser and suddenly the site is displaying gobblygook. There’s a mad dash to patch the problem.

Week Four: Someone just hacked into the company website and posted a compromising photo of Bob from last year’s Christmas party. A quick call into your web development company reveals a massive security hole that needs to be fixed asap.

When you’re in charge of the corporate website, these problems are more common than not. Technology is constantly changing and new problems are always cropping up. A text change here, a security patch there, and yet another text change and page addition; if you’re not careful, these problems can end up nickel and diming your company. But you can work to eliminate some of these costs by having a web maintenance plan in place.

A web maintenance plan, like the one we offer at JPL, is a contract for clients who need to make frequent updates and changes to their website. Web maintenance plans are similar to web hosting plans, in that you are charged a monthly fee based on your individual needs.

Benefits of a Web Maintenance Plan

• Work is done at a reduced rate. Unused time rolls over to the next month, until you get to the end of the year. It’s like a cell phone contract; you don’t lose any time until you get to the end of your contract.
• Plans include monthly stats, which are delivered to your e-mail address on the 1st of every month.
• A maintenance plan allows you to easily budget maintenance and improvement costs for the year. This is great for companies that need to secure a yearly budget.
• Best of all, a maintenance plan assures that you can make changes to your website at any time.

Of course a maintenance plan isn’t right for everyone; however if you are consistently making changes to your site, or simply want to secure your web budget and receive a discounted rate, a web maintenance plan may very well be the way to go.