Hosting a website sounds simple – just get your own server and you never have to worry about paying a hosting company like FindLaw. While it sounds reasonable, I ran into an attorney recently who tried this and rues the day he attempted it. This particular attorney is no novice when it came to technical ability. In fact, the software engineer turned lawyer is something of a web savant having built a number of sites and BLOGs over the years. His knowledge of the Internet is voluminous – having pointed out a few tricks to me during our meeting.
The problem came when someone hacked into his server and maliciously started optimizing his site for pornographic keywords. Besides the obvious problem of showing up on the first page for derogatory terms, Google labeled his site as pornographic. This meant that Google would only show to people who had the adult content filter checked off – meaning the majority of Americans would never see his site. A shame since the site is extremely well written and offers a great search experience for his particular area of practice.
Thomson Reuters FindLaw takes server security extremely seriously. In addition to having multiple levels of redundancy built in, many of our servers are housed in an underground shelter that is both bomb and airplane crash proof.