Dave, when everybody calms down over there I hope you can ask for a technical explanation of wth happened.
It sounds like the site was hosted at some contracted facility, not inside Penton, so they may never tell. But a disaster of that magnitude - hundreds of websites - will likely get written up in some tech journal someday. Losing 8 months of backups at once is rare - I hope.
I used to do network administration on a far smaller scale - starting back before wifi and when a network card to put in your PC cost $100 if you wanted to set its IP manually with jumpers before installing it, or $200 if you wanted DHCP. (server assigns IP address to each connected device, now the general standard). We've come a long way but the basics of adequate, frequently tested backups remain just as relevant now. Our server was visible from a street window so physical theft was a realistic possibility. Backup tapes were always off site. If needed, I could have reloaded a tape onto replacement hardware and been back up quickly. It seems that hosting company never before had to prove this capability.
