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How safe and secure is our data on PythonAnywhere?

This is a very common question asked by many of our non-developer clients, who expect laypeople explanations.

Safe: against accidental data loss

Secure: against malicious attacks (causing e.g., data loss, data breach, etc.)

Sample answers for laypeople:

  1. PythonAnywhere (PA) is audited by certified cybersecurity experts who conduct various security tests to ensure safety and security of the platform
  2. PA is deployed on AWS, which is one of the leading cloud service providers with world-class security
  3. PA has 2 redundant database copies with backups performed twice a week and has never had a history of accidental data loss
  4. PA is owned by Anaconda, Inc which is.. [convincing statements]
  5. ...others as relevant

I hope these samples help to give an idea of what kind of answer they're expecting. How would you explain? Appreciate your advise.

Have a look at our help page here https://help.pythonanywhere.com/pages/SecuringYourAccount/ You may be able to use something from that.

Would you advise users to periodically backup and download their database in case of data loss? Or perhaps PA already has excellent methods of backup already?

We have backups for system-wide disaster recovery, but not for individual needs. See https://help.pythonanywhere.com/pages/MySQLBackupRestore

Link to another descriptive answer on this, for reference:

https://www.pythonanywhere.com/forums/topic/27629/#id_post_80671

That too!