Three Advanced Notification Features that Your Site Uptime Monitoring Vendor MUST Deliver

To say that site uptime vendors deliver notifications is about as insightful as saying that cars have steering wheels, planes have wings, or TikTok videos have cringe. It’s a given.  

But this doesn’t mean that all vendors use the same notification playbook. Some vendors offer basic (read: superficial) notification features, while others offer advanced notification features that include: 

1. Multiple Notification Methods

Within minutes of unresponsive site behavior (and after verification that the issue is not a “false positive”), a designated individual in your organization — such as a sysadmin, network specialist, etc. — should be notified of the problem via email, text and/or automated phone call. The use of multiple notification methods increases the chances of a quick response.  

2. Customizable Notifications

If a detected failure continues, you have the ability to configure your monitor settings to notify even more members of your team, or other departments. This assures you that long-lasting events get all the eyes on them as needed.

3. Comprehensive Site Issue Notification

There is more to site uptime than just availability. In other words: a site may be online and accessible, but certain processes within the site — such as those involving checkout, signing-in, customer portals, etc. — may be malfunctioning. You need to be notified of these issues as well, since they can be just as costly and damaging to your reputation as your entire site going down.

The Bottom Line

Site uptime notification is essentially about one thing: discovering issues BEFORE your customers and visitors, so that you can rapidly target and solve the problem(s). Choosing a vendor that checks both of these boxes is not only a good idea, considering the potential costs and consequences to your revenue and reputation, it is a mandatory move.

AlertBot’s advanced notification feature supports: multiple notification methods (email, text and phone), automatic notification escalation, and comprehensive site issue notification. Discover why leading organizations around the world choose AlertBot. Launch your free trial.  

“We’ve been using AlertBot for over eight years now. We were sick of finding out about problems with our website from end users first. While there are varying levels of complexity to AlertBot monitors, even the simple alerts let us know almost instantly when we have an issue. The prioritization of alerting groups and timing allow us to automatically escalate the notifications if someone is not immediately able to respond.” – Chris C., IT Director 

Read other verified customer reviews here!

We all know the pleasure we feel when we dig into an old pair of jeans and pull out a crumpled $5 bill, or when we finally get around to vacuuming our car (“Hey, I don’t remember eating onion rings in here”) and find a few bucks in loose change. It’s as if the universe has taken a moment to smile on us.

Now imagine that, instead of finding enough money to buy some more onion rings (“Oh yeah, I remember when I ate onion rings in here — wow, that was a long time ago”), you get your hands on a cool $1.85 million. Pleasure isn’t the word for that. Euphoria is.

Well, in a sense, that is what owners, investors, and anyone else who has a financial stake in your organization could feel if you choose a superior site uptime monitoring solution. Why? Because new research has revealed that $1.85 million is the average price tag that organizations pay to recover from a ransomware attack — a figure that has more than doubled in the last year. Let’s unpack this by taking a look at ransomware, and then explaining the link to site uptime monitoring.

What is Ransomware?

Essentially, ransomware is a type of malware that infects a computer, and blocks access to it unless victims pay a fee (a.k.a. a ransom). And if that was not nefarious enough, there are two other things about ransomware that need to be part of the story.

The first is that victims are given a very limited amount of time to pay up. If they fail to do so, then the threat — which is often carried out — is they will permanently lose access to their data, or their data will end up being disclosed on the dark web or elsewhere. The second is that even after they pay the ransom in full, only 8% of victims get 100% of their data back, and 29% get up to 50% of their data back. In the legitimate business world, this kind of chronic non-fulfilment would lead to excessive customer loss, and probably lawsuits and investigations. But on the cybercrime landscape, it’s standard operating procedure. There is no complaints department or review site (“We were very disappointed in this hacker who failed to return all of our data, but we are adding a star because communication was prompt”).

Where a Site Uptime Monitoring Solution Enters the Picture

A superior site uptime monitoring solution cannot block ransomware attacks. For strategies and tactics on that front, we recommend this helpful article at eSecurityPlanet.com, and this site by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

However, a superior site monitoring solutions CAN do something that hackers earnestly hope that potential victims do not realize: immediately alert them to a ransomware attack — even if it’s at 3:00am — so they can rapidly roll-out an uncorrupted back-up and carry on without disruption or (and here is the euphoric part) having to pay $1.85 million or more in ransom/recovery costs.

Then, the organization can move to fortify cybersecurity defenses and reduce the size of the attack surface (probably by deploying many of the recommendations highlighted by the sources listed above), ultimately reducing the likelihood of future ransomware attacks.

The Bottom Line

Ransomware is on the rise, with the number of reported incidents surging 183% between the first two quarters of 2021. A superior site uptime monitoring solution won’t stop these attacks or frankly even slow them down. Hackers are notorious for doing things over and over again until they stop working — and unfortunately, ransomware is quite profitable. But it can give organizations the warning and time they need to strengthen their defenses, and in the process potentially save an average of $1.85 million.

Launch a free trial of AlertBot’s superior site uptime monitoring solution. No credit card. Nothing to download. Setup in minutes.