When the cloud wobbles: Why your web infrastructure must be ready

At Comprend, we help clients build infrastructure to cope with such situations. A reliable website today is not only about where it is hosted but also about how well it can handle failure when something goes wrong.

Beyond hosting: Building an intelligent edge

In traditional setups, websites serve visitors directly from their hosting platform. If the platform goes down, the site goes down too.

Modern infrastructure adds an intelligent edge between your hosting and your visitors. Services such as Cloudflare handle:

• Caching and global routing so that content can still be delivered even if the backend is slow or offline
• Load balancing and DDoS protection to reduce pressure on a single data centre
• Automatic failover that redirects users to a backup site when the main one is unavailable

With this in place, users might never notice if your hosting provider is having problems.

Smart DNS: Your first line of defence

Your DNS provider plays an equally important role. Old-fashioned DNS systems can take hours to update, but modern DNS management allows near-instant traffic redirection.

This means that if your main site becomes unavailable, you can immediately point visitors to an emergency site hosted elsewhere. It gives you time to fix the issue without leaving users or customers in the dark.

When downtime becomes a compliance issue

For listed companies, downtime is not only a technical problem. It can also become a compliance issue. Rules in most markets, including the EU’s Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and similar rules globally, require that investors receive timely and equal access to important information.

If your investor pages are down when you publish a press release, you may fail to meet those obligations. That is why every listed company should have a lightweight emergency site that can provide critical updates and disclosures, even when the main platform is down.

Sweden offers a good example of how seriously this is taken. Under Nasdaq Stockholm’s Rulebook for Issuers and the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen), listed companies must ensure that:

• Price-sensitive information is published quickly and in a non-discriminatory manner
• Disclosures are available on the company’s website for at least five years
• The website remains a reliable communication channel for investors

If your site is unavailable when you release important news, such as a financial report or a board decision, you risk breaching the rules of continuous disclosure. Having an emergency investor site, hosted on a separate platform or region, helps ensure the information is always accessible.

What an emergency site should include

An emergency site does not have to be complex. It should simply provide what is most important:

• Latest press releases and regulatory announcements
• Contact details for investor relations and media
• Financial reports and other key documents
• A clear message that this is a temporary version of the site

It can be hosted on another provider, a different cloud region or a static CDN. The important thing is that it is always reachable, up to date and tested regularly.

Resilience as a strategy

Digital resilience is not only a technical matter. It is also about governance, trust and transparency. Every company should ask itself:

• What happens if our hosting provider fails?
• Can we still provide information to our customers and investors?
• How quickly can we redirect traffic if needed?
• Have we tested our failover process?

By using intelligent edge services, modern DNS management and a well-prepared emergency site, companies can protect their reputation and meet regulatory expectations even when the unexpected happens.

In today’s connected world, the question is not whether a provider will fail but how ready you are when it does.

One of the solutions: WaaS by Comprend

At Comprend, we have developed WaaS – Website as a Service, a managed platform built on modern, resilient architecture. WaaS provides a secure and scalable foundation with automatic updates, monitoring and performance optimisation. WaaS is also fully integrated with solutions such as Cision, Modular Finance (Datablocks, MFN) and Euroland IR.

It is integrated with Cloudflare’s CDN and DNS platform helping to ensure business continuity even in challenging situations. Importantly, WaaS can also be used as an emergency site, providing a fast, independent environment for critical communication when a larger, enterprise-level website is affected.

This makes it an ideal complement for organisations with complex digital ecosystems that still need a simple, always-available backup solution. WaaS is one of several ways we help companies strengthen their digital presence and stay available to their audiences - always.

Our Cloudflare expertise and next steps

Comprend is an Enterprise Partner of Cloudflare, and our teams are experienced in designing, implementing and operating solutions directly on Cloudflare’s platform. We help clients make full use of its edge network, caching, performance and security features to improve both reliability and resilience.

Whether as part of a WaaS setup or a broader digital infrastructure strategy, our Cloudflare expertise ensures that our clients’ websites remain fast, secure and available – wherever their users are, and whatever happens behind the scenes.

Reliable digital infrastructure is about more than technology. It is about planning, foresight and trust – knowing that your website will continue to serve your audiences when it matters most.

If you want to learn more, discuss how WaaS or Cloudflare can fit into your digital strategy, or explore how to prepare an emergency site, please get in touch with me or the team at Comprend. We are always happy to help you get started.