Security is a key concern with business websites. You should be especially vigilant if you are an online retailer and wish to take credit card sales on your site. Servers aren’t often hacked, but it is a legitimate fear.
If you are handling very sensitive information and feel you require a high security system, you may feel more comfortable developing and hosting your CMS in-house. Security in the form of firewalls and TLS/SSL monitoring will be prime considerations. Just make you’re your site is resilient to penetration testing: many providers can test this for you.
Generally though, if your system is hosted – and most are, particularly when it comes to smaller, start up companies – it’s the website provider’s responsibility to make sure your site is secure. In fact, hosting companies have a legal requirement to make their sites secure and will have tested their system so that the server should not be accessible to unintended parties.
Adinda Sima of GOSS Interactive, a CMS software and website development company that also provides hosting, explains: “It depends on the organisation obviously. People worry when they are integrating third party solutions. Usually, they are happier to have it installed in-house because then they have control over the connection between the in-house server and the third party software.
“Whereas if it’s software solutions (SaaS), it’s always hosted externally. It’s really about how comfortable you are letting the control of your site go. When your site is hosted, the data and applications live outside the firewall. It’s a fear that people have, but really, servers aren’t often hacked.”