Three myths about uptime monitoring

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. A few things about uptime monitoring that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

“It only matters for big sites”

You should not learn about downtime from a customer. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it.

“Our platform handles it”

Alerts nobody acts on are just noise. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

How to tell if yours is fine

The realistic threat for most small businesses is automated and opportunistic, not targeted. Three things worth confirming about uptime monitoring before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Monitor the checkout, not just the homepage — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.