Olm Blog!

PCI Compliance

There has been a lot of talk recently about PCI compliance. Ask 10 people the same question about PCI and you’ll get 11 different answers. OLM has thousands of small business customers selling everything under the sun online and margins are stretched thin. And in this economy, the last thing a small business owner wants to hear is that they have to spend more money on something that “technically” gives them nothing in return.

There is a great thread going on over a WHT for anyone interested in the topic of PCI compliance. Click Here to read it.

And this post here pretty much sums up what we have to tell many customers who are expecting full PCI compliance on a shared hosting account or $99 server.

“Originally Posted by JohnCrowley  
Can’t wait to tell all of our smaller merchants that they need 4 dedicated appliances at a minimum to sell their candles online that bring in less than what it will cost to sell online now”

The standards for most small merchants are the self assessment questionnaire, and above that it gets very complicated and expensive.

But of course there are many things you should be doing as a normal course of online business to mitigate security risks such as:

—Keep everything (shopping cart, OS, any-virus, etc.) updated with latest patches.

—Don’t store CC, or any customer data online.

—Use up to date anti-virus on everything.

—Use a secure payment gateway.

—Use SSL for any data transmitted online.

—Use effective passwords (fido123 is not effective, #3re$0opS@ is).

—Back up everything, twice.

—Watch logs for suspicious behavior.

And these things are not just for your hosting plan or server, these precautions should be taken at home too. Right now, can someone break into your house or office and steal a computer with thousands of customer credit card numbers?

Maybe I’m off-base with my thoughts on PCI compliance… let me know what you think.

New “Off-Site” Dedicated Server Backups at OLM

Pretty much every dedicated server in our network has a backup drive, they are critical in ensuring your data is recoverable in the event of a hardware failure. And sooner or later it’s gonna happen so you need to be prepared.

Hardware failure is one of the reasons while Google’s infrastructure relies on hundreds of thousands of smaller servers rather than fewer large ones.

On that note, you do have copies of all your irreplaceable family photos that are on your PC, don’t you???

Well we just came out with a new and very cost effective way of backing up dedicated server data with USB thumb drives. Nothing is more secure than having the data that is on your dedicated server safe and sound in your own hands. We can send the USB drive right to your door, or you can have the leave solid-state drive attached to the server in case of primary disk drive failure. We can also rotate, two, so you are never without one.

USB Dedicated Server Backup Drives

Lot’s of options and you can check it out HERE.

And after you check it out, go buy yourself small inexpensive storage drive and back up those photos on your PC. Imagine losing years of photos and personal documents because of a $20 disc drive? Don’t let it happen.

New Transfer Switch …and just in time!

Our automatic transfer switches and generators get tested once a week automatcially (imagine that). But this week one of the transfer switches in our Stratford Data Center failed to cooperate. Unfortunately no amount of pleading and prodding would get it to work so we called in the professionals. They determined that the switch was “bad”. We hoped that the $$$ box of metal would have a better prognosis, but no such luck - it’s getting replaced Friday morning. Everyone who will be affected should have gotten an email with more details.

And the switch replacement came just in time because THIS HERE is headed our way!