At its simplest, how do I deal with “the bad guy” is another version of what do I do when things go wrong, when it breaks.

Breaks means, of course, that it used to work. That’s what you want back. With websites and web applications, that “used to work” is the combination of what the people who host your website provide and your website. Usually the people who host your website will also back it up. So, some disasters, are simply a matter of calling them and asking them to restore it from their backups

Except when they can’t or won’t. The company that, at the time of the attack, hosted one of our customer’s sites didn’t restore the website and our login until almost a month after the attack. I don’t think they were hanging out at the pub trading stories instead of handling our trouble ticket. Or maybe they were. Either way, if your website is down for almost a month, you’ve got a problem.

Going forward, part of ours is providing independent restoration of those websites. In other words, if their support people can’t be reached, we can restore things. And, if they’re completely down, we can restore the website to a completely different website. And in about the same time.

Now for the fun bit. Even if “the bad guy” (yes I’m enjoying putting that in quotes) gets inside the walls, destroys the hosting company and takes us out, too, there’s Plan C (or Plan 9…).

Google actually keeps a copy of every page it indexes. If people can find your site, Google has cached part or all of it. And you can pull it out.