Monday, March 25, 2013

Changes in Data Center Management

Over the past few years, the data centers have evolved and have come up with cooled rooms that can store several servers. These new age data centers therefore aim to reduce the overall footprint have high density servers that require high-end power and cooling systems. In addition to that, due to the ongoing security threats, data centers also have advanced security systems that are monitored and managed from remote locations.

Today the technology advancements and innovative IT systems have also given rise to certain complicacies that have made data center management a laborious process. Traditionally, data centers have remained static over a period of time. Most enterprises that went on to become IT enabled have set up data centers with numerous or less physical servers by following a simple approach in monitoring the set up.

Generally the IT enabled team would be accountable for the server sprawl while the facilities team taking charge of the cooling, power and building management. These two teams interacted with each other when a group was recording certain concerns to any element being managed by the other group, making modifications in the data center. These groups did not have instant insight into the other’s practices and initiatives.

However, based on the research and results on energy needs, organizations today most often overprovision power and cooling capabilities with an objective to fulfill forthcoming demands. This apart, some enterprises utilize OEM software management solutions offered by data center solution providers to monitor the respective data center programs.

Industry Offerings for Data Center Solutions
The majority of organizations prefer their IT architecture to assist them to expand without dragging down their capacity leading to excess spending on maintenance requirements. No enterprises wants to experience bottlenecks such as shrinking storage space, overloaded servers, complaining IT engineers, recurring IT hurdles that would lead to waste of money, time and vital resources. To be able to keep operating in today’s competitive market, most enterprises should invest in advanced data center solutions. Today cloud computing service providers have come up with advanced data center solutions offering:

·         Dedicated hosting
·         Shared hosting services
·         Co-location services
·         Bandwidth services
·         Load balancing
·         Disaster recovery services
·         Advanced firewall services

With the ongoing economic change data center space too have attained a premium that made power expenses to go high. Organizations found it difficult to detect a space to establish additional server capacity and provision power cost-efficiently. Addressing this space concern, organizations in order to reduce space requirements opted in for blade servers that effectively toned down a server in to a compact form so that multiple servers can be stored in one rack space.

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Monday, March 18, 2013

Monitor Security Network and Systems with Network Penetration Testing

Every day there is news of a website being hacked and the personal details of hundreds and millions of users being exposed. No enterprise or organization is safe in today’s business set up where data breach incidents are growing every day. Though external threats do exist, according to Forrester, “Most data breach incidents come from inside.” As per the findings of Forrester, of the different data breach incidents reported external attacks only represented approximately 25 percent, lost or stolen devices accounted for 31 percent while inadvertent misuse by an employee accounted for 27 percent. This shows that 58 percent of incidents aren't caused by malicious entities. Besides that, as per the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, a dictionary of publicly known information security vulnerabilities and exposures, there are 60,000+ common vulnerabilities, 900+ common weaknesses, 1014+ common configuration errors, over 150,000 security related events, and a large number of application related errors.

With threats and vulnerabilities manifesting themselves in the least expected place at the least expected hour, enterprises need a solution that provides the ability to continuously monitor and manage their security network and systems without locking them into any upfront investment. This is possible by partnering with managed service providers who provide vulnerability assessment and 
network penetration testing services. A hybrid solution which blends automated testing with security expert analysis, this solution identifies all possible attack vectors and makes it convenient to run tests over the Internet anywhere, anytime. Here is a look at some of the features and benefits of the vulnerability assessment and network penetration testing (VAPT) services provided by the leading managed services in India.
  • Covering 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
  • Comprehensive Testing for Applications and Networks
  • Identifies the weakest link in the chain
  • Eliminates false positives and prioritizes real threats
  • Detection of attack paths missed through manual testing. Facilitates regular and frequent scans
  • Secures against business logic flaws
  • Flexible scheduling, online access to reports or through encrypted email
  • Extremely low TCO
  • Increased ROI on IT security
  • Access to zero-day vulnerability research
Thus with vulnerability assessment and network penetration testing, enterprises can feel safe in today’s world of unforeseen traps in the form of vulnerabilities and threats.


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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Network Penetration Testing-Securing the Corporate Data


The globalized business today has a widely networked corporate environment made up of world-class servers, storage devices, printers and other networking equipment. The technologically enabled enterprises communicate digitally through their corporate network. However, as business expands there arises a need for upgrading the storage devices and servers to accommodate the vast flow of data that can be accessed from any locations. This also calls the enterprises to be conscious of the security of data. 

As preventive measures most of the large enterprises move their critical data storage devices, servers and entire networking equipments into data centers. The smaller enterprises also make use of the shared hosting services offered by the data centers. Irrespective of the fact that the corporate network is made accessible through dedicated hosting data centers or shared hosting datacenters, security breaches are issues that the enterprises need to consider. Understanding the fact that security breaches can result from both internal and external sources, enterprises need to make provisions for securing its network and critical data from malicious attacks. Network penetration testing is an efficient and cost-effective method that can be used by the enterprises to identify the security vulnerabilities in the corporate network.

Often called as "pen test”, network penetration testing is a process conducted to review the perimeters of a network for security breaches and other vulnerabilities. This process which is carried out by security experts is also known as ethical hacking as the professionals hack the network to recognize the vulnerabilities.  Discovering the vulnerabilities will help enterprises to take measures to safeguard their mission critical data from any attacks. Today's techno savvy malicious users look for even the slightest existence of vulnerability within the corporate network to gain unauthorized access to confidential data.  

To combat the security issues and help enterprises concentrate on the core business issues,  the leading service providers offer enterprises a network penetration testing solution which is an on-demand automated testing solution along  with analysis from the security experts. These services help enterprises in

  • Understanding the loopholes in the network
  • Deal with downtime issues and also cut down costs.
  • Abiding by the mandatory regulations and be compliant while being economical
  • Using internal penetration test solutions to meet the different business needs and ensuring minimal adverse impact from any internal threats.
  • Recognizing the real risks in the wireless networks missed out from the manual testing.
  • Providing access to zero day vulnerability search
For the network vulnerabilities arising due to the use of smartphones and embedded devices to access the corporate data, network penetration testing reviews help enterprises to foil any attempt of data access by unauthorized users. The network penetration testing solutions have today become an effective way to keep the hackers at bay.


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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Importance of Web Hosting Services

If you own a website of your own, then it is essential to be aware that your business is not totally secure. It is vulnerable to malpractices of the cyber criminals and other third party attacks. Hence, it is essential to retain the security of one’s website and other online and ecommerce businesses. There have been situations when a company’s competitors might attempt to lessen the performance by stealing confidential data. On the other hand, if your website is a non-Commerce one, then also you require web hosting security that helps to secure the website in long run.
 
Today there are various companies that provide secure and organized web hosting services, shared web hosting and web hosting server. These companies have an important part to play in keeping the hosting platform safe from sudden threats. Web hosting today is available in multiple kinds for instance managed or shared hosting.
 
A shared hosting service is often termed as virtual hosting service. Here a group of websites are kept on one web hosting server connected online. Every website stay in their respective section on the server to remain distinguished from the other set. This arrangement is taken to be an economical one in terms of web hosting. In addition to that, there are organization’s that have a preference for a systematic and simplified arrangement than shared hosting services. In such cases, it is better to resort to managed hosting or dedicated hosting services that are personalized and fulfills the end user’s individual needs.
 
However, it is extremely essential to assess your IT architecture and analyze if it is going to support any future expansion activities. Just in case you feel with the present IT architecture you are likely to face or are facing operational bottlenecks in terms of costly maintenance needs, overloaded servers, shrinking storage space and the like then it is important that you resort to high-end web hosting services.
 
Today there are many cloud computing providers that have introduced advanced dedicated and managed hosting services. These companies with their solutions take responsibility of managing and supervising your critical mission IT infrastructure. Furthermore, with their  data centers they are capable of fulfilling all the modern day IT architecture requirements from dedicated hosting, colocation services, firewall services, network penetration testing as well as back up recovery solutions. This helps your organization to stay safe for the rest of the year experiencing high quality services, industry leading SLA’s that provide you a competitive advantage over others.
 

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