There’s an old adage in IT that goes something like this: “people only notice/value technology when it doesn’t work as expected.” This is never truer than with the databases that sit behind so many of the applications we use every day. We expect applications to perform as quickly as we’ve grown accustomed to. We also expect the information contained in them to be kept securely, accurately, and for as long as we need it. A substantial part of an application’s capability to satisfy these baseline requirements depends on the database. So, while most of us never interact directly with databases, most of us become acquainted with them when they become slow, or worse, lose data to theft or other disaster. (more…)
Cyber Security: Back to the BasicsWhen I talk with people about cybersecurity, people get all excited and want to talk about the latest gizmo they read about that will stop cyber criminals, or how they can be protected from the “elite” hackers. The reality is, unless you are a Fortune 500 company, this is where you need to just, stop! Every once in a while, you need to take a step back and re-evaluate where you are, and what you are doing. Go back to the basics and make sure you have firm footing. As many farmers would say, “you need to pat down the ground for a firm foundation before you build anything on top of it”.
What is a Distributed Denial of Service Attack?Distributed denial of service or (DDoS) attacks typically make news when they are large enough to bring down a website, and the affected website belongs to a well-known organization. In 2017, the total number of DDOS attacks that were observed and reported was 7.5 million, up from 6.8 million in 2016. On average, companies are faced with 237 DDoS attacks per month. Most DDoS attacks are not large, volumetric attacks, and DDoS hackers target all kinds of organizations. No organization is immune to a DDoS attack, and any size DDoS attack should be cause for alarm.
Microsoft PowerApps: An Introduction
With the rise in application development over the past decade, the need for developers has increased at an exponential pace. In most cases, we simply cannot train developers fast enough to meet the needs of the business world. In reaction to this, many software companies have attempted take the highly trained developer out of the equation. PowerApps is Microsoft’s strategy on how to solve this problem.
How low are you willing to CybeRTO and CybeRPO? Part 3 of 3
In the first part of this series, we discussed CybeRTO (Sigh-Ber-To) and CybeRPO (Sigh-Ber-Po) and the general meanings of both. In the second part of the series, we took a deeper look at the two different ways to address the particular aspects of CybeRTO. In the third and final part of this series we’re going discuss CybeRPO, and identifying the point in time you’ll be recovering from in the event of data loss from a cyber attack. Another way to look at it is, how much data will I lose after a cyber attack has occurred?
Statistics are what football fans are obsessing over right now. Statistics don’t lie. But if you don’t know how to read them, then they won’t help you or your business, either. When used correctly though, they can help you see some of the clarity that otherwise would be a murky situation.
Selecting a Compute Platform for Virtualization Hosts
The digital revolution started off with vacuum tubes and punch cards, and machines the size of a building’s entire floor. For its time, Univac was a modern marvel but nowadays the phones we all have are significantly more powerful than the computers that flew man to the moon. In all fairness, it is unrealistic to compare the two given the decades of electronics developed from the space program’s initial work but the fact that the Apollo computers couldn’t crash meant all the difference.
With the constant drumbeat of security vulnerabilities and breaches in the news, protecting data is, or should be, on everybody’s mind. While we know that a firewall is essential to keeping the bad guys out, we’ve also learned that most data breaches happen from behind our firewalls. Good security defenses, then, are multi-tiered. Assuming that our firewalls and permission schemes will eventually be overcome or otherwise thwarted, an essential line of defense is strong data encryption.
For static files, such as a Microsoft Word or Excel document, drive or folder encryption is a viable option. However, SQL Server uses constantly active files with complex dependencies and interactions with other systems and applications. Therefore, the SQL service itself must implement an encryption scheme or schemes. Following is a quick comparison of the 5 kinds of encryption available within Microsoft SQL Server.
Benefits of Virtualization
Virtualization has been rising in popularity during the past few years due to its ability to provide a viable solution for companies to increase productivity while reducing IT infrastructure costs. By switching to virtualization, companies have been able to control workloads in data centers while reducing energy consumption and IT infrastructure.
Before we discuss the specific benefits of switching to virtualization let’s first define what virtualization is and some of the reasons why more companies are making the change.
Meltdown & Spectre Follow-upOver the last week, most of you have heard about the latest exploits that are potentially impacting your business, Meltdown and Spectre. These particular exploits target a system’s CPU. The news of this particular attack was initially reported to Intel and the broader IT community by a group of researchers, led by Google. While this is a very real issue, there have not been any reports of it being used in a malicious manner as of yet.