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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Infrastructure as a service

Cloud hosting services

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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Infrastructure as a service

Cloud Computing in India 

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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Cloud Computing Services 

Network penetration testing 

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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Colocation Services India

Data Center in Chennai