Optimal WordPress Hosting for High-Stakes Websites

The threat of cyber attacks for enterprise companies is growing, with 70% reporting at least one threat in 2023. The impact of such attacks can be vast, with 1 in 8 businesses facing costs of $250,000 or more.

This reality emphasizes the need for a website hosting solution that ensures maximum uptime and ironclad security. Downtime is not just an inconvenience. It can lead to significant revenue loss and irreparable damage to a company’s reputation. 

Pantheon is a tailored solution for businesses where website performance is mission-critical.  Let’s take a look at how our platform enables sites to remain resilient in the face of cyber threats.

How Pantheon Rises to the Challenge of Hosting High-Stakes Websites 

Pantheon is a premier WebOps platform, renowned for providing the fastest hosting on the planet for WordPress and Drupal sites. 

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Yes, we’re super fast, and the ultimate solution for enterprises with ambition! Let’s take a look at what else a hosting plan with Pantheon brings you.

High, Reliable Uptime and Around-the-Clock Customer Support

Uptime is a critical component of success. For companies selling products or services online, uptime is money. Amazon statistics show that the brand makes approximately $1.094 million per minute in sales, so just one hour of downtime would cost them over $65.6 million!

Pantheon's high uptime guarantee ensures that mission-critical websites remain operational, minimizing the risk of costly downtime. This reliability is bolstered by our Multizone Failover feature. In case of data center failure, this protects your website by automatically switching to a secondary center, maintaining continuous availability.

Our commitment to excellence can be found in our customer support. With 24/7 access to WordPress experts, you can expect assistance as soon as an issue arises, reducing downtime and preserving your reputation. 

Unmatched Security With Advanced Global CDN and WAF

Pantheon's Advanced Global Content Delivery Network (AGCDN) – coupled with its Web Application Firewall (WAF) – provides an exceptional security framework. 

Pantheon understands the lifecycle of WordPress development, so we don’t have to think about the infrastructure. I don’t have to worry about CDN optimization or any last-minute things like security because Pantheon handles it all.” 

-Sree Balakrishnan, Technology Director, Innovation and Products at Travelopia.

The AGCDN enhances site security through several advanced features:

• Global reach and performance: Website content is distributed across a global network, reducing latency and improving load times.
• DDoS protection: DDoS attacks are handled by distributing traffic across its network, reducing the impact of any single point of attack.
• Internet Protocol (IP) blocklisting: Traffic is blocked from specific IP addresses known to be malicious.
• Geographic blocking: Location blocking can be crucial for compliance with local data protection regulations and removing region-specific threats.

Sites are also kept secure via fully managed HTTPS certificates. Data transmitted to and from the site is encrypted using high-grade TLS 1.3 encryption. This secures data and boosts consumer trust and site credibility, improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – 96% of pages indexed by Google and found through its Chrome browser are encrypted.

Moreover, our platform’s WAF inspects incoming requests and rapidly applies rules when needed. This protects against common web threats like Structured Query Language (SQL) injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).

By integrating these technologies, Pantheon provides an environment that defends against external threats and improves performance and reliability.

Pantheon in Action: Amyris 

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Amyris is the world’s leading manufacturer of sustainable ingredients, making environmentally-friendly products using synthetic biology. The company faced significant challenges with its previous web hosting setup regarding security and efficiency in managing external developers. Amyris needed a platform that could support a major website redesign, secure its development workflow and accommodate scalability. 

Pantheon's security features were particularly useful in managing Amyris’ external design teams and developers. By using our platform’s permission customization, Amyris could grant specific access rights to external collaborators during different stages of development. 

This ensured that sensitive information was protected, allowing Amyris to maintain control over its digital environment. Once these stages were completed, permissions could be readjusted to secure the development area, ensuring only authorized changes could be made. 

Furthermore, Pantheon’s Dev, Test, Live environments allowed Amyris to develop and test site updates without affecting the live site's availability. This separation reduced the risk of introducing errors into the live environment and provided a safe space for experimentation and development.

The transition to Pantheon solved Amyris' immediate security concerns and positioned the company for future growth and innovation.

The development stages, the security, the smooth migration and the nice speed boost were all big wins. With Pantheon, we have the quality WebOps foundation we need to deliver a digital experience that accurately reflects Amyris’ impact on people and the planet.” 

– Rhett Henderson, Senior Applications Engineer, Amyris

Taking Security to the Next Level With Pantheon

On top of what we’ve covered above, Pantheon has even more security features for high-stakes websites:

• Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Integration: SAML enforces policies like setting minimum password strength and enabling multi-factor authentication. These add extra layers of verification to ensure that access is only granted to legitimate users. 
• Automated and Manual Backup Systems: Both backups compress customer data and securely transfer it to cloud storage. Data is encrypted in transit/at rest using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cipher modes. Importantly, private keys and backup data are stored on separate servers.
• 1 million+ Daily Checks: Pantheon makes these checks across its network, servers and applications, proactively monitoring all resources. Such vigilance ensures that any potential issues are identified and addressed promptly, with updates available via our platform's status page. 

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With Pantheon, we can do a security update in 90 minutes on 100+ sites that used to take three days. We just click some buttons and magic happens.” 

- Stephanie Lynn, Senior IT Manager at Franklin College of Arts & Sciences

Automated Updates To Ensure Maximum Protection

Keeping WordPress core, themes and plugins up-to-date is vital for maintaining site security. Outdated components are subject to vulnerabilities, exposing sites to potential threats.

Pantheon's Autopilot feature addresses this issue by automatically detecting, testing, and deploying updates for your content management system (CMS), themes and extensions. 

This approach also ensures updates are implemented on time and thoroughly analyzed through visual regression testing (VRT). VRT checks for errors and inconsistencies before updates are deployed. Autopilot then alerts you if any issues are detected, allowing you to fix them before updating. See our webinar on Autopilot’s automated updates to find out more.

“Switching to Pantheon made all the sense in the world. We got much better service, which improved our team’s velocity by a wide margin. More so, Pantheon does all the core and security updates for us. It’s not something we have to worry about anymore and it’s saving us money.” Joel Cantalamessa, Senior Digital Marketer at Vertafore

Pantheon adds further security with its structured environments – Dev, Test and Live – which enable developers to push updates safely into production. 

In these environments, WordPress core, module and plugin code is write-protected in the Test and Live settings. This prevents unauthorized changes, safeguarding your site against threats that can occur from automated updates. 

Keeping it Compliant

Pantheon is committed to maintaining the highest standards of data and information security, undergoing regular reviews to ensure compliance. These include:

• Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2: This audit evaluates the design and operating effectiveness of an organization's controls related to security, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy. It provides assurance that an organization's systems and processes are adequately protecting customer data. 
• FERPA: The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. It grants students and parents the right to access, amend and control the disclosure of these records. Pantheon’s policies and infrastructure allow customers to be FERPA compliant.
• GDPR: Pantheon complies with all General Data Protection Regulation privacy laws. GDPR grants individuals control over their personal data, requiring businesses to obtain consent for collection and define how this data is protected.

Pantheon: The Most Secure Platform Out There?

Pantheon is an extremely secure hosting provider, going far beyond standard host security practices. Our platform is engineered and meticulously maintained to offer maximum protection at all times, with the following prominent features:

• Resource Isolation: Isolation techniques slow any single customer's issues from spreading and affecting others.
• Anti-Malware: Comprehensive anti-malware strategies actively scan and protect against malicious software, ensuring all systems remain clean and secure. 
• Datacenter Security: Datacenter security measures safeguard physical servers and infrastructure from unauthorized access.
• Patches and Updates: Our platform ensures all components are up-to-date with the latest security patches, minimizing vulnerabilities and boosting your site’s defense against new threats. 
• Incident Response: In case of a security incident, Pantheon's response is swift and effective, designed to remove risks and restore operations.
• Network Security and Intrusion Prevention: Pantheon uses x.509-based encrypted authentication and intrusion prevention systems to monitor and protect against unauthorized access.

Take Control of Your Website’s Future With Pantheon

Engineered for security, speed and reliability, Pantheon is the ideal hosting solution for high-stakes websites. Our platform’s enterprise-level security system includes a high uptime guarantee, ensuring website availability and meaning concern around downtime is a thing of the past.

Choosing Pantheon is an investment in a future-proof solution that’s tailored to grow as your business expands. Backed by exceptional customer support, Pantheon provides peace of mind with real-time assistance from experts whenever you need it. 

Discover how Pantheon can elevate your website’s potential by getting in touch today!