Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Why Should Companies Invest In BCDR Plans?

It has been proven that in the recent times that business continuity disaster recovery is essential to the overall security of an organization. However, the creation and the maintenance of a sound business continuity and disaster recovery plan is a complicated process that includes some essential steps.
 
Before the plan is set up, it is essential to take into consideration the potential influences of disaster and having a clear understanding of underlying concerns. These are the basics on which a sound business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) plan needs to be built. Following this the plan needs to be constructed and then needs to be tested, maintained and audited to make sure that it stays apt to the enterprise requirements.
 
Hence, the vital step in a BCDR plan is to analyze the potential influences of every type of event or a disaster. This is crucial to understand that you cannot aptly plan for a disaster if you have a limited knowledge about the impact of the same for your business. Once you have figured out the impact it is essential to consider the degree of risk that could result in these impacts. It will help you to delineate scenarios that are most likely to take place and that should be given major attention during the planning stage. A sound BCDR plan is important to secure the well being of an enterprise and yet there are organizations that overlook this and concentrate on other activities. An important reason is the complexity of the task and the lack of a suitable vendor to help in the same.
 
Keeping this in mind today managed service providers have introduced efficient BCDR services that make use of the appropriate tools to assist you to set up a disaster recovery plan specific for your organization. Therefore, you can now protect your organization against probable threats, minimize the operational and disruption losses, manage the recovery operation in an effective and organized way. The plan provides you security against natural disaster and the systematic ones such as accidental deletion of crucial data or a system failure on a massive scale. Effective BCDR plans help to restore the integrity of your software, hardware, and data and also help you to resume the system operations quicker. All this helps in bringing down any damage done to your reputation. Furthermore, you are able to retrieve your lost data easily and stay protected from unwarranted threats.
 


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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Plan – A Safety-Belt

Every business environment is prone to interruptions that may be caused by natural disasters or man made problems such as terrorist attacks, sabotages, accidents or fire. However, today's business environment with its widely networked and technologically sound workspaces also faces interruptions due to failure of IT infrastructure, cyber crimes, malicious attacks, virus and Trojans. Irrespective of the reason for interruptions, the survival of the business enterprises is dependent on its  business continuity and disaster recovery plan.

Enterprises need to be prepared for all disruption that can be predicted and also for that which strikes without notice. Disruptions create great havoc on the business and ranges from insured and tangible losses to capital losses, customer dissatisfaction, desertion and complete insolvency. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are practices that promote an organization’s preparation for unforeseen risks and help to continue operations. The combination of business continuity disaster recovery being considered as single function has resulted from the close collaboration of top executives and technical experts working on the same platform.

A business continuity strategy of an organization is a high-value high-maintenance proposition that embraces a broad spectrum of technologies from old, paper-based, manual and individual to new, electronic, automated and integrated ones. Today's business scenario being highly competitive, the top management needs to develop a systematic action plan that can prepare organizations to face any disaster and provide support the during emergencies. The business continuity disaster recovery plan once put in place should be able to help enterprises retrieve lost data swiftly and smoothly and protect the business against unpredictable losses. Besides providing security against natural disasters such strategies also need to offer recovery of critical data in case of accidental deletion or large scale system failure.

Further with most of the small and medium enterprises using the services of data centers either as shared hosting services or colocation services, the data center service providers need to have a robust business continuity disaster recovery plan in place.  Damages to the infrastructure of the data centers because of natural calamities, electrical defaults or man-made disasters may all lead to loss of data and disruption of the business for all the enterprises that depend on these data centers.

A robust plan therefore is one which will protect vital data against potential threats, minimize operational losses, help to manage an effective recovery operation, restore confidence among the stakeholders as well as manage brand image and reputation. With business continuity disaster recovery being a continuous process leading service providers with their expertise have worked out  end-to-end services from strategy consulting to implementation and maintenance. Further using tools such as impact analysis, review reports and cost-benefit analysis, the enterprises can identify threats and its impact, facilitating customization of disaster recovery solution in tune with business needs.


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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Control Your Web Servers with Collocation Services

There are many reasons why businesses choose to colocate their devices in a data center. One of them is having access to the management services offered by the service provider. A provider monitoring a data center can provide services to its clients that would be unavailable to the client otherwise. Some of these services comprise readily accessible and expandable bandwidth, improved security and technical assistance and a comprehensive experience base. In the majority of cases, clients collocating in an organized data center will never require to access their devices directly. Though it is not an imperative to access your devices regularly, most colocation service providers will offer access arrangements as a part of their service portfolio.

Concerns related to Colocation Management
As you decide to colocate your device, it is essential to consider the fact that you might be required to maintain the same. Some generic needs include the following:

* Equipment reboots
* Hardware replacements
* Hardware upgrades
* Operating system security updates, patches and enhancements
* Routine file system maintenance
* Routine database maintenance
* Software updates and patches
* Backups

Hence it is essential to determine your business requirements and the way to attain the important tasks at hand. The way out is working with a colocation service provider that offers the required tools for efficient collocation management. Today colocation services in India offer a wide selection of space options from racks to cages, with increased power and bandwidth for various web hosting applications. These solutions offer you total control of your server along with a reliable network, highest uptimes, improved security and high end 24 x 7 assistance.

Other features include the following:

Rack space Features
* Per-server (U-wise) Colocation Service
* Quarter Rack
* Half Rack
* Full Rack(s)
* Cage

Rack space Benefits
* Highest Uptime - 99.99% uptime SLA
* Custom-designed racks such as quarter, half, or full-rack spaces
* Highest levels of security for total protection, fully enclosed and locked
* Robust connectivity

Monitoring
* URL / Network Monitoring
* MRTG, for online Bandwidth utilization
* Web statistics and Reports

Advanced Monitoring
* CPU Memory, File Area utilization
* Process restarts
* Threshold alarms

Support
* Server Reboots
* Business Day Advanced Support
* 24x7 Advanced Support

Hence, we see that collocation services are the apt option for businesses that own their own servers and are looking forward to outsource. Collocation service providers also offer safe server collocation space for web servers and other allied hardware in their state-of-the-art internet data centers.


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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Network Penetration Testing and Its Importance

In today’s fiercely competitive business environment with ever-present and pervasive cyber-threats, it is becoming increasingly difficult for enterprises to keep their corporate image intact. The following are some data breach statistics that prove it beyond doubt. 
 
* As per Identity Theft Resource Center’s ‘2011 Breach Report’, malicious attacks (defined as a combination of hacking and insider theft) accounted for nearly 40 percent of the recorded breaches in 2011. Hacking attacks were responsible for more than one-quarter (25.8 percent) of the data breaches recorded.
 
* According to Symantec’s ‘Internet Security Threat Report’, approximately 1.1 million identities were exposed per breach worldwide, mainly owing to the large number of identities breached through hacking attacks. More than 232.4 million identities were exposed overall during 2011. Deliberate breaches mainly targeted customer-related information, primarily because it can be used for fraud. 
 
* As per Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s ‘A Chronology of Data Breaches’, total number of records containing sensitive personal information involved in security breaches in the U.S. is 562,943,732 in 3,241 data breaches since January 2005. 

With new vulnerabilities emerging each passing day, enterprises need effective security solutions to continuously monitor and manage their security network and systems. That is where network penetration testing comes useful. Wikipedia defines it as “a method of evaluating the security of a computer system or network by simulating an attack from malicious outsiders (who do not have an authorized means of accessing the organization's systems) and malicious insiders (who have some level of authorized access).” It helps to ensure the highest safety levels by initiating a real world attack on the network and systems.

Thanks to managed service providers, enterprises today can perform network penetration testing easily without making any upfront investment. The vulnerability assessment and network penetration testing service being an on-demand solution makes it convenient to run tests over the Internet anywhere, anytime. The following are some of its features.

  • Covers all WASC, OWASP Top 10, CVE / NVDB / SANS Top 20 vulnerabilities including data-in-motion leakages
  • Coverage of all attack paths through loophole correlation 
  • Threat Modeling and expert validation along with automated exploitation 
  • Automated Testing 
  • Business logic verification
  • Online vulnerability management dashboard
  • Transparent, monthly/quarterly charges
  • PCI and ISO27001 compliance friendly reporting
  • Research driven delivery

Such IT infrastructure management and monitoring services are necessary for enterprises to ensure that their infrastructure is always up and running 24x7.


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Friday, November 30, 2012

Services Of Colocation Hosting Solutions In India

In the recent times, collocation is a technological advancement that has been helping businesses setting up servers in a huge, well-connected data center for the businesses to have access to bandwidth.
In the recent times, collocation is a technological advancement that has been helping businesses setting up servers in a huge, well-connected data center for the businesses to have access to bandwidth. Colocation enables enterprises to keep the server machine in some other rack and share someone else’s bandwidth as their own. It also helps them to connect with a huge selection of network and telecommunication providers.
With colocation services India gradually gaining prominence, an investment in this kind of a facility comes with numerous advantages for consumers and end users. The colocation servers are the real web servers that are placed in the data centers of any web hosting company. The architecture is located in the data centers to be utilized in collocation services. When it is important for the server to become stronger, than what is generally offered by the standard web hosting, collocation is usually considered as the ideal option.
Today a huge number of enterprise’s have been realizing the benefits of colocating their crucial assets within a data center. This is mostly because of the time and cost savings, businesses can utilize shared server connections. Furthermore, it is a meaningful choice for the small business concerns as well that are willing to acquire a large web presence but does not want to get involved in a huge amount of items like network connections.
Leading solution providers of shared hosting services today offers a host of space options for instance racks to cages, with sufficient bandwidth and power for web hosting applications. With advanced colocation service user can have the total control on their own servers, reliable network, highest uptimes, improved security and greater assistance. Other service and benefits offered are as follows:
Rack space Features
* Per-server colocation Service
* Quarter Rack
* Half Rack
* Full Rack
* Cage
Rack space advantages
* High uptime i.e. 99.99% uptime SLA
* Custom-designed racks in per-device increments of 1U, 2U, 3U
* Highest levels of Security
* Robust Connectivity
Monitoring
* URL / Network Monitoring
* MRTG, for online Bandwidth utilization
* Web statistics and Reports
Advanced Monitoring
* CPU Memory, File Area utilization
* Process restarts
* Threshold alarms
Support
* Server Reboots
* Business Day Advanced Support
* 24×7 Advanced Support
Colocation services in India offers the medium through which your company can grow proactively, and attain its objective with consistency thereby attaining financial success as well. Today there are multiple expert solution providers of colocation services in India that have the capacity to offer additional security for your machines simultaneously ensuring that the server is placed and well maintained in a secure datacenter.

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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Understanding The Relevance Of Network Penetration Testing

Computer system safety is an essential concern both for individuals and professionals. Any kind of intrusions can pose serious risk to critical data and user identity. Utilizing the apt tools such as network penetration testing can help companies and individuals recognize how safe they actually are. It is a fact that the strength of a network affects the safety of enterprise data and is a crucial concern area. 

Security breaches on any computing device can allow unauthorized users to have access to critical data. This in turn can make the critical data vulnerable to a host of insecure situations. Therefore, with appropriate security measures organization’s can safeguard this data and the overall network from any third party attacks. When sensitive data is accessed by malicious hackers or stolen by fraudulent internal workers it affects a business in a huge way. There have been several instances where organization’s have encountered data thefts that resulted in loss of employee private data as well as enterprise data such as tender quotes, marketing strategies, employee PF codes and the like. There are times when the data is hard to retrieve and results in monetary losses, brand erosion and loss of consumer goodwill.

Hence, network penetration testing along with other security measures and assessments is effective in highlighting vulnerable and gray areas within a network. One can only correct and fix them when there sufficient information about the situation. With adequate information you can therefore take a step closer to the solution and attain a secure network. 

Securing the users, data and the system hosts will result in an efficient and secure working environment. Today leading solution providers specializing in business continuity disaster recovery solutions have introduced innovative network penetration testing programs. They offer benefits such as: 

·         Covers all kinds of WASC, OWASP Top 10, CVE / NVDB / SANS and other major vulnerabilities comprising data-in-motion leakages 
·         Provides coverage of all attack paths via loophole correlation 
·         There is threat modeling and expert validation, and automated exploitation
·         Offers automated testing
·         Provides business logic verification
·         There is an online vulnerability management dashboard
·         The charges are transparent that apply monthly/quarterly
·         Research driven delivery

Have you been facing network vulnerabilities that are limiting your business capacities? If yes, then it is time to upgrade your security system and resort to advanced network penetration testing solutions that provides you with the capacity to manage and monitor your security systems and network on an ongoing basis without any expensive investments. Advanced network penetration testing programs are more of an on-demand solution that runs tests over the internet anytime and anywhere seamlessly. The program is hybrid that is a balance of security expert analysis and automated testing.


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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Complete Security with Efficient Network Penetration Testing

With organizations being frequently beleaguered by security threats and vulnerabilities that can hinder their business capacities and overall productivity, security solutions have become imperative. Not only should the defense mechanisms protect against current threats, but they must also provide protection from future threats and vulnerabilities should also be anticipated. Most organizations hence opt in for security solutions that can manage and monitor the security network and systems on an ongoing basis.

Perimeter defense is the first component that must be contemplated, when designing a secure network. This is where network penetration testing comes into action as it enables organizations to run the tests over the internet easily. Penetration testing can reveal to what extent the security of IT systems is threatened by attacks by hackers, and whether the security measures in place are currently capable of ensuring IT security. Network penetration testing also known as ethical hacking, carries out tests on by a group of security experts who have been sanctioned by the organization to hack the network in an initiative to recognize the probable vulnerabilities. As and when the vulnerabilities are discovered it becomes easy for the enterprise to safeguard itself against any further network attacks. 
      
Such a security assessment can be used to evaluate the security of the network and also keep the network from hackers and other illegal sources. Network penetration testing assesses the security risks exposed by computer systems operating on a network. Networks with weak security can allow attackers to penetrate network defenses and gain access to internal networks and critical systems. Regular network penetration testing can reduce the threat of these attacks, and save time and money in the aftermath of a security breach. Security penetration testing is very vital for small and big businesses alike. With confidential customer data to be protected by intruders, it comes vital to perform rigorous network security penetration testing to ensure highest safety levels.

Network penetration testing typically works by replicating an attack on the network and making a valuation of the weakness of active networks. By carrying out a network penetration test, you go one step ahead of others in securing your customer's data. The information can be of various types, ranging from employee information, customer details, down to company's confidential report. Performing regular penetration tests enables your company to comply with industry standards and also help to identify and remediate high-risk security vulnerabilities before they are exploited by malicious attackers.
Look for a service provider who can ensure automated testing along with security expert analysis. For businesses looking for hosting solutions in the data center, there are several service providers who are geared up to deliver to the best service standards.    


Thursday, November 1, 2012

Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Aids Business Survival

Data is a vital component in the business environment and so is survival of the business. Business survival necessitates planning for every type of disruption in business operation. Earlier business critical data used to be stored in physical files and folders and kept in security vaults to avoid security issues. Today as the data takes in a digital form; this is stored on virtual files and folders in storage servers. However, research shows that though the digital data is more prone to be affected by any disaster, almost 60 % of an organization's mission-critical data is not stored in the servers and databases but on end-user workstations and laptops.

However, innovative IT infrastructure may be, it is prone to be affected by disaster as and when it strikes. Disaster, in form of any natural calamity, human intervention or error, software and hardware malfunctioning and latest being cyber attacks. , may affect the functioning of the organization's individual workstations to even the world-class datacenter. Whatever be the form, this has a serious impact on the business operations and leads to loss in profit and revenue. 
 
The September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City tested the business continuity disaster recovery plans of American businesses houses to an unanticipated degree.Companies that had business continuity plans were able to continue business with minimum loss of data and downtime. This has led the global enterprises to look for high-end recovery solutions. Further with the growth of e-commerce and cloud computing services driving system availability round the clock, the expectations of recovery time now ranges between two and 24 hours.

The technologically enabled organizations today thus need to be well equipped to meet the challenges of any form of disaster. This is possible with a robust business continuity disaster recovery plan that will help enterprises restore the data and critical information and its IT infrastructure and help enterprises get its foot back into the competitive business world. 
 
Effective business continuity disaster recovery plans from leading service providers offer enterprises security against natural disasters as well as accidental deletion of any critical data caused by human error or system failure. Retrieval of business data swiftly and smoothly will help protect the business against unpredictable losses. With the right set of tools, the service providers benefit the users in maintaining business continuity in face of challenges by

* Protecting against potential threats
* Minimizing disruption and operational losses
* Managing the recovery operation in an organized and effective manner
* Restoring and building back confidence of investors, stakeholders and customers
* Managing brand image and reputation and survival in a competitive world 
 
The business continuity disaster recovery service is an ongoing process which begins during development of operational strategies. Further, organizations need to follow international benchmarks in discovery solutions and management and create a culture to safeguard the much valued data and infrastructure.


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