When you build a new website, going live is relatively easy. You get ahold of a domain name, point it at a webhost, put the website code there, and you're up and running!
After a site is live, it gets a lot more complicated.
Glitzy websites are all the rage these days. Everybody seems to be looking for easy ways to create multimedia-rich pages with ease.
Just ran across a sad story where Digital Ocean is accused of killing a startup:
New versions of Drupal core dropped today, to fix a file handling issue.
After assessing the patches, statements, and risks associated with this update, we have decided this is an important update to apply, but not urgent for most of the sites we manage.
A client asks about yet another hosting option:
The VPS-2000HA-S includes the following resources:
6GB RAM (burstable)
150GB SSD Disk space
5TB Monthly Bandwidth
4 free dedicated IP's
Have you ever heard the one about the web developer who goes in to make one last change to the site at 4:45PM on a Friday afternoon? It is SUCH an easy fix--he can get it done and go home for the weekend with his head held high. Ah, what a relaxing weekend it will be!
Come join us up on Nerd Mountain!
At 12:27pm, our alerts started firing. Multiple ones -- website down, server down, secondary monitoring -- one of our client's servers had completely disappeared off the Internet.
Here at Freelock, we are all in for web development. Truly, what could be more important for our clients in today's climate than a properly functioning and safe website?
No, you should not. You should let us worry about them, and go back to your business.
Seriously, we're getting questions from all kinds of people about whether this matters. I'm a bit surprised that there is any question about that. Would you be concerned if your top salesperson was selling for somebody else? If your cashiers were jotting down credit card numbers when they charged a card? If your office became a well-known spot for illicit drug or gun dealers? If your office had a bunch of scammers squatting and running a pyramid scheme? If your confidential client information could be revealed as easily as using a bic pen on an old Kryptonite lock?
We've seen some variation of every single one of those scenarios. And all of them are possible with a remote code execution flaw in a web application, like yesterday's Drupal security vulnerability.
And yet people still
It's only taken two years since the release of Drupal 8 for us to get our own site updated... Cobbler's children and all. But finally, we are proud to unveil our shiny new site!
But wait, don't you tell your clients you don't need a new site?
The news was supposed to come out Tuesday, but it leaked early. Last week we learned about three variations of a new class of attacks on modern computing, before many vendors could release a patch -- and we come to find out that the root cause may be entirely unpatchable, and can only be fixed by buying new computers.
Today Microsoft released a patch -- which they had to quickly pull when they discovered that it crashed computers with AMD chips.
Essentially Spectre and Meltdown demonstrate a new way of attacking your smartphone, your laptop, your company's web server, your desktop, maybe even your tv and refrigerator.
This all sounds dreadfully scary. And it is... but don't panic! Instead, read on to learn how this might affect you, your website, and what you can do to prevent bad things from getting worse.
