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The Problem: Your website has been hacked.
A while back a client came to us with a compromised website. Unbeknownst to her her website had been infected with malware. It wasn't until clients started calling to let her know their virus software was warning them about the site, that she was alerted to the problem. We took her on as a client and had her site cleaned up and back in business. But that's not the end of it. A mere few months later she calls again...same scenario. And again she had no idea until clients started complaining. Then AGAIN another few months later. Oy! So headaches aside, there are other reasons this is a significant problem.
Second, if the malware stays on the site too long the search engines WILL BLACKLIST YOUR SITE! Yes that's right.. we've seen it on a few occasions. When your site is blacklisted, you're in trouble. Users attempting to visit your site will get the warning from their browser that your site is not safe.. YIKES! No business for you today! Then you have to go through the hassle of finding someone to clean up the site, then submitting a request for removal from the blacklist. This can be expensive and definitely time consuming.
The Solution
After our client's 3rd malware attack... we recommended an alternative solution. Something in her hosting infrastructure, something beyond our control was allowing the malware attacks through. Could we clean it up again? Sure.. but there's a bigger issue. We can't predict when she will be hit again and when she will notice. The next time she may not notice until she's blacklisted. Step in Sucuri! We decided to try partnering with these guys a few months back, but we hadn't had a client try them yet. I explained to her that for less than what it was going to cost us to do the clean up, she could have a year of protection through Sucuri. What does that cover?
- Malware Cleanup (No page limit)
- Website Integrity Monitoring
- Email & Twitter Alerting
- Manual Website Scanning
- Blacklist Removal
That's right. Everything we would do for her in this one instance.. BUT they will also monitor the site and let you know right away if you are hit again so you can get cleaned up with as little impact as possible on your web traffic. If you happen to get blacklisted they'll take the steps to get your site removed from the blacklist.
Our client thought it seemed like a good value and decided to give them a shot. I asked her to shoot me an email after to let me know what she thought about the service. She emailed me back just a few hours later to let me know she was very happy with them. They cleaned her site up, got her on a monitoring schedule for the next year, and offered a list of suggestions for trying to plug the pesky security hole allowing the malware attack in the first place. She's happy, her site's clean and she has the peace of mind that if it happens again she'll know as soon as possible. If you ask me, this is an incredible value, and should be a no-brainer for all business websites. Do yourself a favor, give Sucuri a try now!
