Data Centers and Their Role in Business Continuity

Technological enhancements have led business enterprises communicate through a networked environment.  With the need for large amount of data to be transferred through these wide networks spanning across geographies, enterprises need to have an equally good and high-end IT infrastructure that are either housed in exclusive IT zones within the corporate or are housed externally in data centers.

However, the networked environment which is accessible through dedicated servers or shared hosting data centers is always under the threat of security breaches. Thus enterprises need to make provisions for securing its IT infrastructure and prevent unwanted and unauthorized access of their confidential data by malicious users.  With hacking being  a popular phenomenon among malicious users for gaining unlawful access to critical business information, large corporations have built in exclusive data centers to house their  dedicated servers, storage racks and networking equipments to prevent unlawful access  to the sensitive data. However, development of data centers is not a fruitful proposition for small and medium enterprises. These enterprises make use of techniques such as network penetration testing for identifying vulnerabilities.

Further, these technologically enabled enterprises also face the challenges of managing business continuity in  case of any disasters.  Since business continuity disaster recovery is an ongoing process enterprises outsource IT infrastructure management to data center service providers. These service providers with new age data center facilities ensure that the data centers  have a  robust business continuity  disaster recovery plan to meet any form of disaster. Further, such preparedness on the part of the data center service providers will help enterprises restore the data and critical information and help   them back into the competitive business world.

Datacenters facilitates greater business agility and flexibility in IT operations, with reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and a more efficient IT infrastructure footprint.  The swift and smooth retrieval of business data from the data centers help protect the business against unpredictable losses. Thus with the right set of tools, the service providers benefits enterprises in maintaining business continuity in face of various challenges. Further, by aligning itself to the needs of the customer and the market, the data center offers industry leading services such as

·             Dedicated Hosting services
·             Cloud computing services
·             SAP Application Hosting
·             eCommerce Portal Hosting
·             Colocation services

The dedicated and shared hosting services caters to the requirements of industrial businesses, e-Commerce portals and a number of IT organizations.  Through these services, data center providers help enterprises by protecting  their data against potential threats, minimizes disruption and operational losses, manages recovery operation, restores  and builds  back confidence of investors, stakeholders and customers besides maintaining the brand  reputation for  survival in a competitive world. 

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Network penetration testing 

The Real Power of Cloud Computing

Wikipedia defines cloud computing as “the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet).” Cloud computing has the potential to reduce IT operational costs as the users need not bother about maintenance or support costs. The users need to part with a subscription fee in return for accessing application software and databases. It is the cloud computing providers who need to manage, maintain and support the infrastructure and platforms on which the applications run. Besides reducing IT costs, enterprises benefit from increased revenue as the reallocation of IT operations enable them to focus on their core competencies. In addition, since the application is hosted centrally, users need not install new software when new software updates are released.
 

Thus, cloud computing is a convenient, on-demand model for network access, wherein costs are significantly reduced, storage availability increased, and extensive flexibility and control of data. It allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance. The high automation eliminates worries about keeping applications up to date. Apart from that, there is higher reliability and increased uptime and mobility, which allow organizations to access information anytime, anywhere. In short, cloud computing enables IT to adjust resources more rapidly to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand.
 

Though cloud computing facilitates delivery of convenient technology solutions cost-effectively and hassle-free over the cloud, the biggest drawback is with respect to security. Since the data is stored on the cloud provider’s server, it can result in unauthorized access to the data. Hence, enterprises need to partner with those service providers whose cloud computing services they can depend on with the same confidence and assurance that they would have on any physical IT infrastructure at their end. Here is a look at some of the benefits offered by the service providers of cloud computing in India.
 

• Allows you to self-provision servers, network, storage infrastructure real-time from anywhere, anytime Resources accessed over a secure connection
• Facilitates instant deployment of new Servers with zero capital expenditure on hardware and software
• Highly-available multi-tenant environment
• Next-stage IaaS platform – ‘VPDC’
• On-demand Compute and Storage
• Complete self-provisioning
• Instant scalability- Have the same network topology and policies that are
• Pay-as-you-use existent in your own datacenter
• Elastic services – scale servers and storage in real time
• Industry leading SLAs backed by service credits

Thus, if the enterprises get the support of a good service provider, then they can enjoy the real power of the cloud at their fingertips.

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Shared Hosting Services

Network Penetration Testing- Safeguarding the Global Corporate

Technological innovations and advancements over the years has made information technology an integral part of today's business environment. As organizations moved to becoming global enterprises, the virtualization of the desktops as well as anywhere anytime access to the workstations and corporate networks through cloud computing services became the trend. However, such access to the corporate data and network also brought with it challenges for the enterprises in the form of network security lapses and vulnerability to the business critical data.

In today's aggressively competitive environment, enterprises need to take measures to withstand the cyber threats that can penetrate the network through any security lapses. enterprises thus make use of number of testing tools and vulnerability scanners to locate any loopholes in the network security systems. With new vulnerabilities emerging each passing day, enterprises need to make use of network penetration testing solutions to continuously monitor and manage their network and systems. Statistics of data breaches showcases that malicious attacks accounted for nearly 40 percent of the recorded breaches in 2011 and nearly one-quarter (25.8 percent) of the data breaches are results of hacking attacks( source: Identity Theft Resource Center's '2011 Breach Report).

Wikipedia defines network penetration testing 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)." In an era when enterprises adopt remote data access techniques through cloud computing services, the network penetration tools or the ethical hacking tools allow enterprises to discover information about networks by interfering with traffic on the network.

The managed service providers make use of the network penetration testing software to check the security or performance gaps in a client network. With a set of standard functions which includes gathering information about a network's topology, scanning for port vulnerabilities and launching denial-of-service attacks the network penetration tool gives an overview of the network and facilitates to pinpoint the weak links along the network. Today as the corporate LAN/WAN environments allows end-users anytime access to the network and critical information with fewer security controls, internal threats poses greatest risk for today's widely networked organizations. Most data centers with large and complex infrastructure catering to either one corporate or a number of small and medium enterprises use traditional penetration testing disciplines such as the network penetration testing and the server penetration testing.

The network penetration testing techniques are used to check the vulnerabilities and loophole in routers switches, and firewalls. The server pen test on the other hand is used for checking the operating systems and applications. Further, with advancement in technology, has brought in advanced tools for application penetration, wireless, virtualization as well as database.

Related Links

Dedicated Hosting India

Data Centers -Vital for Business Continuity

Globalization and technological growth along with the changing customer demands led to organizations requiring faster internet connectivity and non-stop operation. For enterprises with the global presence, responding to customers demands from a different timezone needed the enterprises to be working 24/7. Further the large amount of data transferred and stored digitally enterprises needed to install high-end infrastructure and networking equipment to always remain connected. This led to the development of internet data centers.

However, the boom of the data centers came in with the dot-com bubble. With new technologies and practices designed to handle the vast data interchange  along with the large scale operation of the global enterprise, the IT operations are a crucial aspect of every organization. However,  a major cause of concern for these enterprise is business continuity disaster recovery, as they  rely on their information systems to run their operations. 

Non-availability of the system hinders organizational operations. Thus to provide a reliable infrastructure for IT operations, and  to minimize chances of disruption, the facilities of data management moved towards third party data centers  service providers

As the business world converses electronically through widely networked IT infrastructure, security of information and business critical data is of great concern.

A minor data breach  can lead to heavy losses for the enterprise.  Data centers with their   origins from the early computer era in the form of exclusive computer rooms have today  taken over the role of ensuring security and accessibility  of the critical business data irrespective of the size of the enterprise.   Further, technological innovations have paved way for  cloud computing services led environment with  applications and data being transferred through the cloud.  Business enterprises and government organizations thus need to scrutinize the level of security and compliance to the regulatory standards.

The modern  data center therefore maintain high standards of security, integrity and functionality of its hosted computer environment which is accomplished through redundancy of  fiber optic cables and emergency backup power generation. The  internet Data Centers from leading service providers besides catering for the entire IT infrastructure requirements also offer colocation services and dedicated hosting to firewall and backup solutions thus helping enterprise with a  safe, supported and world-class facilities accessible anytime.  

The data centers  with their shared hosting service facilities provide a scalable bandwidth across local area network along with  load balancing of the servers and advanced firewall protection. The co-location services ensure  speed, reliability and security,  whereas the high-performance dedicated servers by  hosting  the mission-critical and resource-intensive applications  makes vital business information  accessible to the networked teams.  All these services  together ensure  business continuity and disaster recovery for the global enterprise.

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Datacenter 

Infrastructure as a service

Network Penetration Testing- Safeguarding the Global Corporate

Technological innovations and advancements over the years has made information technology an integral part of today's business environment. As organizations moved to becoming global enterprises, the virtualization of the desktops as well as anywhere anytime access to the workstations and corporate networks through cloud computing services became the trend. However, such access to the corporate data and network also brought with it challenges for the enterprises in the form of network security lapses and vulnerability to the business critical data.

In today's aggressively competitive environment, enterprises need to take measures to withstand the cyber threats that can penetrate the network through any security lapses. enterprises thus make use of number of testing tools and vulnerability scanners to locate any loopholes in the network security systems. With new vulnerabilities emerging each passing day, enterprises need to make use of network penetration testing solutions to continuously monitor and manage their network and systems. Statistics of data breaches showcases that malicious attacks accounted for nearly 40 percent of the recorded breaches in 2011 and nearly one-quarter (25.8 percent) of the data breaches are results of hacking attacks( source: Identity Theft Resource Center's '2011 Breach Report).

Wikipedia defines network penetration testing 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)." In an era when enterprises adopt remote data access techniques through cloud computing services, the network penetration tools or the ethical hacking tools allow enterprises to discover information about networks by interfering with traffic on the network.

The managed service providers make use of the network penetration testing software to check the security or performance gaps in a client network. With a set of standard functions which includes gathering information about a network's topology, scanning for port vulnerabilities and launching denial-of-service attacks the network penetration tool gives an overview of the network and facilitates to pinpoint the weak links along the network. Today as the corporate LAN/WAN environments allows end-users anytime access to the network and critical information with fewer security controls, internal threats poses greatest risk for today's widely networked organizations . Most data centers with large and complex infrastructure catering to either one corporate or a number of small and medium enterprises use traditional penetration testing disciplines such as the network penetration testing and the server penetration testing.

The network penetration testing techniques are used to check the vulnerabilities and loophole in routers switches, and firewalls. The server pen test on the other hand is used for checking the operating systems and applications. Further, with advancement in technology, has brought in advanced tools for application penetration, wireless, virtualization as well as database.

Other Links

Shared Hosting Services 

Infrastructure as a service