BEST PRACTICES FOR MAINTAINING SITE UPTIME DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON

INTRODUCTION 3

BEST PRACTICE #1: OPTIMIZE YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE 4

BEST PRACTICE #2: MONITOR YOUR SITE 5

BEST PRACTICE #3: MITIGATE DDoS THREATS 6

BEST PRACTICE #4: HAVE A PLAN 7

CONCLUSION 8

CONTENTS

*www.blogs.gartner.com/andrew-lerner/2014/07/16/the-cost-of-downtime/#comments

INTRODUCTIONIf your site is down, your sales are down. It’s as simple as that.

According to Gartner, the average cost to companies for website downtime is $5,600/per minute, or more than $300K per hour.*

For large e-commerce sites earning millions every day during the holiday season, even a few minutes of downtime can lead to substantial financial losses, customer frustration and possible damage to your reputation. With the potential harm to your business, brand and revenue, your website’s availability needs to be a priority.

In this guide, we’ll discuss best practices that will help keep your website up and available during the busy holiday season, and all year-round.

BEST PRACTICE #1: OPTIMIZE YOUR INFRASTRUCTUREMore and more people are shopping online. And during the holidays, increased traffic will bring additional stress to your website.

Optimize the performance of your Internet infrastructure during this time with demonstrated management of the increased traffic load. Whether you manage it internally or through a vendor, a track record of satisfactory service levels during “slower” months may not be a reliable indicator that service levels can be maintained during peak times.

If scalability and performance of your infrastructure are not optimized, it could affect your reputation and bottom line at the worst possible time.

BEST PRACTICE #2: MONITOR YOUR SITEYour website is one of your most important assets. Monitor your site diligently to determine service health, and provide failover to back-up IP addresses or CNAMEs to ensure your site is always available.

During the holidays, your site will be stressed with increased traffic, so it’s even more critical you take the necessary steps to ensure your website is available and accessible 24/7.

Remember: any downtime could result in damage to your brand and reputation, loss of potential customers and future revenue.

* The Ponemon Institute: 2015 Cost of Cyber Crime: Global

BEST PRACTICE #3: MITIGATE DDoS THREATSDDoS attacks are a constant threat to all businesses. A recent report by the Ponemon Institute confirms that 51 percent of all cyber crimes are related to DDoS attacks.*

With such threats increasing in size and complexity every year, companies need to consider leveraging upstream service providers to protect both Web servers and DNS. If either goes down, a company could potentially go out of business.

Using a cloud-based approach to both DNS management and DDoS protection provides a cost-effective alternative to maintaining uptime.

To learn more about the latest DDoS trends, download the Verisign Quarterly DDoS Trends Report.

BEST PRACTICE #4: HAVE A PLANThe best defense against downtime is preparation.

Companies need to have a plan in place outlining the standard operating procedures for downtime, including establishing and training incident-response teams and cross-functional communications for internal and external players.

Developing a solid response plan can help reduce confusion and minimize potential negative impacts if your website goes down.

CONCLUSIONCompanies should review their own security operations after each holiday season (or peak sales period) to evaluate downtime costs, system reliability, and current defenses to see if they are aligned with business goals. Network usage and attacks are constantly evolving, so you need to make the right adjustments to stay ahead of the game!

Learn how Verisign can help you optimize website availability with Uptime Bundle, a suite of best-in-class cloud-based services that reduce network service downtime and improve infrastructure performance. For more on managed DNS services, visit www.Verisign.com/MDNS.

Verisign Public VRSN_Holiday_eBook_201512

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