In this Help Net Security video, Chip Gibbons, CISO at Thrive, illustrates the differences between a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan.
You may have heard about a 3-2-1 Backup rule before. It is considered a best practice method at a minimum for protecting your business’s data. It boils down to having three copies of your data; the original and two or more backups. The two backups should be on two different types of storage and one copy must be offsite. An example of this setup could be a snapshot on a SAN, a backup to a NAS and then sync that backup to a third party or a second office.
(more…)
“While natural disasters capture headlines and national attention short-term, the work of recovery and rebuilding is long-term.” 
-Sylvia Mathews Burwell
It doesn’t take a natural disaster to bring down the systems your business relies on. It could be something very simple and it could happen at any time. The cloud has made it easy for anyone to protect themselves from disaster. The bigger question is, how long will it take to recover when disaster strikes?
Recovery time and acceptable data loss are often overlooked. How long will it take you to recover business critical systems? How much data are you willing to lose? Restoring data can be tedious and in a lot of situations, takes far too long.
There is nothing any business fears more than a complete collapse of its IT systems. The financial cost of such an outage can be great, and additionally retrieving the data and rebuilding the system into its former state is often an extremely time consuming and logistically complex proposition. Businesses have literally gone under due to such IT issues, and although this is something that many companies dread, often SMEs don’t have sufficient provisions in place to provide effective disaster recovery.
It is a basic facet of human psychology that we often assume that the best case scenario will occur, and nothing fundamentally will go wrong. This tendency is amplified in the case of disaster recovery, where providing satisfactory backup for a business can involve a certain financial outlay.
Regardless of your industry, staying proactive with patch management can be a time consuming but extremely important effort. This is where a managed patching provider can be an invaluable resource.
If you were to conduct a survey of businesses to discover whether or not they are happy with their patch management strategy, the majority of them would likely say that they struggle with patch management processes and are overall dissatisfied with their patch management system. If you are one of the businesses that is constantly burdened by patch management, here are a few of the most common issues companies face and how a managed patching provider can help.
Quality network security is an essential part of the operations for your business and meeting data protection compliance and regulatory requirements. It sounds really simple to say you just want to “keep the criminals out” while keeping your business in productive mode. Unfortunately, with the increased demands for technology and information security, this can result in a significant time investment.
Network security is no longer about just deploying firewalls and an antivirus program. Regardless of the size of your business, the latest threats are very advanced. This is why many companies are opting to use enterprise-class network security protection services to increase protection while saving time and money.
If you have never used this type of service for your company or small business, here is an overview of the core levels of protection that a network security protection service can provide.
With more businesses deploying different types of technology to increase productivity, it can become a monumental challenge to stay current with every IT process that requires support. If you are struggling to keep up with the increased demand for IT, the good news is that there are professional IT support services available that can help you relieve the burden of trying to stay on top of every aspect of your IT infrastructure.
It is important to note that the size of your business will be the key factor which determines the type of IT support you require. If you are a small business it is less likely you have a comprehensive IT support staff. For medium to large sized businesses you may have a partial IT support team or a full-fledged department that may be over extended.
To choose the approach that is best for your business it helps to know what options are available to you when it comes to outsourcing IT support. Many quality IT support services will work with you to plan the best approach however, here is an overview of the different types of IT support services to help you get started.
IT Support for Small Business
While some companies prefer to employ an in-house IT team others find it more cost effective to outsource IT support. This leaves more time for new IT initiatives which support company growth and revenue. Here are some of the ways that you can outsource IT support to a qualified IT support provider: (more…)
Every company is aware that the proper data protection measures are of utmost importance. Yet many businesses still utilize older methods of data backup such as tape systems, costly onsite backup methods, and offsite systems that may mean several days until recovery takes place. These methods consume resources and pose more risks of failure in addition to being complex, costly, and labor intensive.
New data backup and recovery technologies eliminate (more…)
In the current economic downturn where IT budgets are declining and the demand for IT resources is increasing, the expectations for many companies are you must accomplish more with less. As a result, many businesses and enterprises are working to find ways to cut costs without compromising productivity while remaining competitive. With all of these pressures and responsibilities how do you ensure ongoing growth while meeting compliance requirements and your service level agreements?
The answer to this dilemma is the incorporation of new technologies into your IT infrastructure. Although this may sound like you are increasing IT capital expenditures you are actually cutting costs while increasing productivity in response to the ever changing market. Here are some thoughts on how to reduce costs while still maintaining the competitive advantage. (more…)
Lightning can strike any time, and in any form. It can be a power surge leaving your hard disk useless or an over flooded bathroom sink leaving your equipment blown out. It can also be as simple as lack of attention. Whatever the deal is, it will certainly bring one question to your mind – do you have a backup of your data? Sadly the answer usually is no. Many people lose several months and sometimes years of work in such situations.
Why you need a Backup
A backup is your safety net in case of a disaster. Data can be lost due to corruption such as unauthorized access, viral spyware, accidents and mistakes. Any of these can happen any time and cause you problems and not to mention – mental stress. To avoid such difficult situations it is best to get a (more…)