NYCPHP Meetup

[Hans Zaunere]

> > How do you protect yourself against liability, and more importantly
> > how do you give
> >
> >
> >Get a lawyer - get a dedicated box (or even a jail).  Doing the latter will require
> less of the former :)
> >
> 
> Completely true about dedicated server, but if you do your own box then
> you can't share liability with the host, right? You are responsible for
> making that box secure, in addition to your app.
> 
> Isn't it more fun to spread the liability across a number of deep
> pockets, distributing the risk and making a case for common practice etc?

It sure is, and this is even more doable with a dedicated host than with shared.  Simple reason:  hosting providers tend to give better SLAs when you pay them more money.  Dedicated hosting with Verio, for instance, would give you more security and monitoring than you could do yourself, let alone some mom+pop shared hosting.

Dedicated hosting isn't necessarily collocation; it's often their hardware, and their job to maintain the box.

But this brings another good point.  Even if you do need/want to go with shared hosting for sensitive information, pick a big name provider - with big pockets and their own team of lawyers.

While this isn't always true, chances are the big names have more security, monitoring, and experience than the smaller companies.  This is by no means against the small hosting firms, but sometimes size does matter.

There are blue chips of hosting, and just like no one ever got fired for buying IBM, not many have gotten fired for buying Rackspace, Verio, etc.


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Hans Zaunere
President, Founder

New York PHP
http://www.nyphp.org

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