Inside vs outside web management

[MasterRacker]

We currently have an external website that is managed and hosted by a third party. The current site essentially static content periodicaly updated by our Communications staff.

We are planning a complete site redesign/upgrade. One of the things we would like to add is some more active content such as allowing users to fill out forms/screens provided by internal systems.

If we are going to develop links into our internal systems, our IT staff feels we should take the server in-house and manage it ourselves. Obviously, any vendor will say they can make everything completely secure, etc., but of course we can't randomly allow outside vendors themselves open access to our internal systems. We don't feel we can "guarantee" the security of our network unless we are managing the web server ourselves.

What we're having trouble communicating to non-technical people is why we shouldn't blindly farm this out. Has anyone seen a whitepaper or other document addressing these issues?

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Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[akalinowski]

when it comes to websites, i say keep everything external, but if you need to keep the partners/vendors website internal i would create a subdomain called partners.company.com and keep

http://www.company.com

and company.com and if you have an ecomm site store.company.com outside. mainly because if your network or internet or power goes down, your public face goes down and that looks bad, most hosting companies are redundant network, power and servers help prevent downtime significantly.



akalinowski

MCSE 2000, A+, N+, LCP, CNE

 

[MasterRacker]

That's a good point, but we're just talking the physical server(s). Management wise we still want control over things ourselves, so we can fully control what internal resources are accessed.

_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]