Understanding website monitoring notifications
Responding quickly to any issues with your DNS, SSL, server uptime, and security is important. This article can help you understand why website monitoring notifications appear and what to do about them.
DNS Changes
The DNS monitoring option will check for changes in your DNS records, such as: nameserver records (NS), the IP address of your website (A or AAAA), and your mail (MX) records.
It's important to understand that a DNS change doesn't necessarily indicate a problem and the DNS monitor only checks for DNS changes, not the validity of the change, and some legitimate DNS changes can be triggered automatically.
Here are some reasons you might have received a DNS change notification:
- You enabled your firewall service.
- You changed web hosts.
- You changed your email service.
- Your domain registration expired.
If you see an unexpected DNS change, check with your host or DNS management service for more clarification on the change.
SSL Changes
An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a certificate on the website that allows for the safe passage of encrypted information from the client to the host server. It's important to note that the SSL scanner can only detect changes, not why they occurred.
You can check your certificate details here.
You will receive an SSL alert when you change or renew your certificate. If you have unexpected SSL certificate changes, we suggest that you contact your hosting provider.
Uptime Changes
Uptime monitoring is a service that checks if a website is online and will send you an alert if your website is "down." After additional checks, an alert will be sent again when the website is back "up."
A website is considered to be down if the host server returns an error or it times out.
- HTTP error code 40x or 50x
- Response timeout > 30 seconds
- Connection timeout > 10 seconds
A site is considered up when the host server responds with the following:
- HTTP response 20x or 30x
- 403 for sites behind Sucuri Firewall
There can be many reasons why you receive a website "down" notification. The most common reason is a temporary issue connecting to your website. If this occurs, the best option is to check the error logs on the hosting server to find the reason for the downtime.
It's also important to note that the downtime notification means our monitoring platform couldn't access the site, it doesn't necessarily mean that the site is inaccessible globally.
Security Changes
The automatic malware scan will check for the following:
- Malware
- Vulnerabilities
- Web Trust
- Defacements
- Injected Spam
If you are notified of any of these, and your security plan includes malware cleanup, please open a malware removal request.
If you have any questions regarding notifications you receive, please feel free to request website security help.
