4 TIPS for a Seamless Cloud Transition
Posted on April 9, 2013
Whether you’re planning to adopt a cloud – based infrastructure for your business or to simply employ a virtualized IT environment, you need to deploy virtual servers. In this technologically progressive era, virtualization is inevitable. In fact, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) just signed a 10-year contract to build a private cloud infrastructure to help the agency improve its operations. According to a Gartner study, 27% of organizations are either using or planning to use cloud or software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings to expand their core business intelligence (BI) functions, while 17% indicate that they are currently replacing some of their on-premise BI systems with dynamic cloud services.
But, while cost-effective, this growing trend presents a set of complex security and management risks that can hinder your business from having a smooth transition from a physical environment to a virtualized network.
To help you make the shift, are some tips to successfully transition to the cloud:
Keep a close eye on all hardware and software adjustments.
Identify every element that needs to be changed to fit the virtualization model, however small they are. You are about to disrupt a deeply ingrained system status-quo, so you have to know every detail and the possible impacts of altering each tiny configuration. Take your time in determining these structural changes, because one wrong move can destroy the foundations of your current ecosystem. Don’t rush your virtualization process, as the key to a smooth desktop virtualization is a carefully planned transition.
Ensure infrastructure compliance.
There are standardizations that were crafted based on industry standards. Generally, compliance to these comes with a cost; but it is worth the spend, for it guarantees the legitimacy of your company’s operations and may even boost your brand’s reputation. Get a hold of this set of policies and faithfully comply with them.
Deploy a holistic security solution that caters to hybrid IT environments. One of the challenges of virtualization is fighting the new threats and vulnerabilities springing from this new platform. Because of budget issues and lack of awareness, most companies protect themselves using old enterprise security systems that prove to be ineffective in resisting the advanced threats and sophisticated malware cyber criminals use today. New hazards need new solutions. Look for an advanced defense against these emerging risks, defense built for IT environments that are in the process of going virtual.
Educate and train your employees about the new system. It’s not easy to understand the concept of virtualization, but you have to make your employees aware of its basic principles. At the very least, tell them how the new transformation will affect operations. Will the change add or remove steps in current processes? How big is the modification’s impact on the office workflow? How should your employees prepare for the threats this change brings? Ultimately, it’s best to share with them some best practices to help them walk their way through the new structure.
Educate and train your employees about the cloud.
It’s not easy to understand the concept of virtualization, but you have to make your employees aware of its basic principles. At the very least, tell them how the new transformation will affect operations. Will the change add or remove steps in current processes? How big is the modification’s impact on the office workflow? How should your employees prepare for the threats this change brings? Ultimately, it’s best to share with them some best practices to help them walk their way through the new structure.
There will soon be more smartphones than people on Earth
Posted on March 27, 2013
As mobile devices continue to expand to the point where there will soon be more smartphones than people on Earth, the need for better collaboration between people and devices grows as well. With the advent of social media, collaboration has gone beyond teams working on presentations to other areas both inside and outside the enterprise, from field sales teams working with colleagues and clients to support organizations that may span the globe while keeping in constant contact on issues and best practices that improve their performance and keep clients happy.
The private cloud offers the best solutions to manage the growth in mobile requirements, BYOD, and collaboration.
Essential Data Services offers private cloud services, data storage and recovery solutions through partnerships with IBM and Asigra. For more details, contact us today at 1.866.408.2737 or [email protected].
Worst IT Service Desk Horror Stories
Posted on March 22, 2013
Choosing the right help desk support is critical to your business. When examining the options, you really must do your due diligence, to ensure you are partnering with a solid group who are dedicated to providing service excellence. Horror stories are a fact of life, stuff happens. Aside from ensuring policies and procedures and securities are in place, having the right partners in place to recover, is the key factor.
Essential Data Services offers exceptional Help Desk Services. For more details, contact us today at 1.866.408.2737 or [email protected].
Well, That’s One Way to Retrieve a Forgotten Password
Back in the 90′s, one tech we know finished up a marathon weekend rollout, doing final testing and user training on Monday. The company had been informed that all employees would need to choose new passwords. A receptionist informed the staff.
As the install team was leaving, the tech happened by a company billboard and saw, out of the corner of his eye, a neatly printed list of every user password, posted for all to see. The same receptionist had requested each employee email her their passwords, and she had compiled a list so she could handle the inevitable forgotten passwords over the next few days. “I thought it would be easier to post them someplace,” she explained, “than to deal with all those password requests.”
A Dish Best Served Cold
This one came to us from a medical device company in Massachusetts, where a support tech was fired for an issue that ended up being the fault of a sales rep. It was not an amicable parting. The CEO yelled at the tech in a staff meeting, insulted him, and fired him on the spot, informing him in front of everyone that he would receive no severance. He was sent out of the room to pack his desk, unaccompanied. He did just that, and left with only his personal belongings.
But what he left behind was the real problem.
At 5:01 p.m., the storm broke loose. Every server the company owned began to rebuild itself, as did the desktop computers of the CEO, CFO and office manager. It took almost three days for the system to be restored, from backup tapes that were a week old. Emails and documents, even code samples in development were gone. And the scripts that ran to wreak all this havoc were gone, too, erasing the evidence.
No ID, No Credentials, No Problem
A repair tech walked into an office building in California just after 5:30 on a Friday. Everyone had gone home but the office manager. He wore a button-down shirt with the logo of the contract support company. He showed a “work order” to do some repair on the servers and informed the office manager that there might be some brief interruptions while he worked. The office manager glanced at the work order, hurriedly let the tech into the server room, and ran off to a long conference call.
Some time later, the office manager tried to send an email, and found she could not. She picked up the phone and called the support company, demanding they send their tech back out. The support company said they never sent a tech, and wouldn’t be able to send anyone for several hours. The company was dead in the water.
When the real support guys finally arrived, they found that hard drives, CPUs and system RAM had been removed from every server. Security cameras later showed the “tech” walked out the door, carrying them in his tool bag. They couldn’t even begin repairs until replacement hardware could be ordered.
The corporation blamed the support group; the support group blamed the corporation. It took two days (and the threat of a lawsuit) to get the company fully back up and running. On the bright side, security got a lot tighter after that.
Not Exactly a Bundle of Joy
For years, a large, well-known telecommunications company had bundled DSL service with landline phone service — you couldn’t get one without the other. At some point, this policy was changed — but in telco style, this was never clearly explained to customers, who kept paying for phone service that most of them never used.
One day, a large tech blog wrote an angry post on this policy, calling it “DSLGate.” They posted a phone number for customers to get their phone service unbundled from their DSL. The number they published, however, sent furious customers to the company’s internal support desk.
For eight horrific hours, the two dozen brave men and women in that support desk were flooded with calls from customers, demanding phone service to be cancelled and refunds to be issued. At first, the team tried to route all the calls back to customer support, but the phone systems had been “upgraded” over the weekend, and they could not forward calls. Literally, the “Forward” button did nothing.
It was a perfect storm, because the IT management team was out at a corporate event, trying to “manage” by sending unhelpful emails via Blackberry. “Write down the name and number of everyone who calls in,” the VP suggested, and that’s what they did for the next four hours. $200 million worth of technology, and they were writing down customer names in Google Docs.
But things got worse. Later in the day, there was a fire in the breakroom, and everyone had to be evacuated to the parking lot. None of them were sad to abandon their posts, and about half the department left early for drinks. Or maybe to shiver uncontrollably.
Why Your “Secret Question” Is Useless
Hackers broke into the website of a large electronics retailer, publishing the passwords of about 10,000 users, including company employees. The story made the homepage of CNN, setting off a media firestorm.
“The company was totally unprepared,” said Tom, the support desk manager on call that day. “They sent out an internal email that they were launching a ‘thorough investigation,’ but in the meantime, we were getting slammed with calls from employees who wanted to know whether their passwords had been compromised. We had no information.”
Tom’s team told users how to change their passwords, but as the company furiously tried to patch security holes, they accidentally disabled the password reset function. That sparked more calls, escalating the confusion.
“They also accidentally wiped out the password tables, a backup server was corrupted, and the offsite backups were more than a week old. It was a comedy of errors, except it wasn’t a comedy, but a nightmare.”
“Oh yeah,” Tom added, “Did I mention this all happened on the Friday before Memorial Day?”
Essential Data Services offers cloud data storage and recovery solutions through partnerships with IBM and Asigra. For more details, contact us today at 1.866.408.2737 or [email protected].
Cloud backup provides redundancy and security
Posted on March 21, 2013
Your data really isn’t safe unless you’re backing up properly and with lots of redundancy. The computer backup rule of three, also known as the Backup 3-2-1 rule, can help ensure that your data is safe.
Using just one kind of backup (e.g., an external hard drive or SD card backup) is really not a backup. For real protection you need off-site backup storage (e.g., an automated cloud solution), finding the right program for your business will prove to provide the right protection on the Cloud.
The Cloud and Leveraging BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
Posted on March 18, 2013
It is increasingly the case that employees are using their own technology—hardware, services and even applications—while on the job. This has become known as the “consumerization of IT,” and it represents a shift in how technology is discovered and adopted.
Historically, employees were introduced to new technology at the office and only adopted it at home when its value to their personal lives became clear and prices for the technology went down. But today, it’s more likely that employees discover new technologies on their own and bring them into the workplace as they see fit. There are several areas where employees use their own technology at work. On the hardware side, smart phones lead the way, although some employees are also taking advantage of tablets and video recorders.
Employees also routinely use Skype and other consumer communications services to place business calls and to stay in touch with friends and family when they are at work or traveling for business, or to place free conference calls if they do not have an enterprise-grade option available to them at the office. They are using file-sharing tools such as Dropbox to exchange documents. And they are taking advantage of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media sites to build stronger relationships, and share and see information. In the process, employees are opening up the organization to a new world of collaboration.
At first look, this trend looks good for businesses, as employees can save companies money by buying and using their own technology on the job and by using free services instead of those paid for by the company. However, it also leads to security and governance risks and a distinct lack of control over the technology and its use.
The cloud is the perfect solution when considering a BYOD friendly work space. Application sharing and network infrastructure in a cloud environment offers the best of both world, quick access, reliability, security and redundancy from where ever you are, on the planet.
Essential Data Services can help you maximize your potential.
Learn more about the benefits of the Cloud https://essentialdata.ca/cloud-computing/
Essential Data Services offers cloud data storage and recovery solutions through partnerships with IBM and Asigra. For more details, contact us today at 1.866.408.2737 or [email protected].
Small and medium businesses need the ability to securely collaborate and share information, but face tighter resource and budget constraints.
Posted on March 8, 2013
Simplify IT
- Reduce your PC-refresh budget by deploying virtual desktops instead of more expensive PC replacements – helping you save 60 percent in virtual desktop infrastructure.
- Protect sensitive information from loss and theft to meet privacy, compliance and risk management standards.
- Deploy apps with a rich, high-performance, high-definition experience – on any device.
Reduce Costs
- Deploy and manage our solutions with your existing staff.
- Cut IT costs by streamlining and consolidating desktop management.
- Reduce real estate, travel and labor costs through flex-work, telework and alternative workplace strategies.
Empower Users
- Work anywhere on any device using Windows PCs, Macs, and smartphone and tablet platforms such as Apple, Android, HP and RIM.
- Sync files across all your devices – mobile devices, tablets, laptops, and desktop.
- Securely and easily share files with anyone inside or outside the organization.
- Collaborate while on the go with Go ToMeetings, Go to MyPC, and Webinars.
Essential Data Solutions enable you to simplify IT, reduce costs, empower users and improve employee satisfaction by rapidly adapting to events such as expansion, budget cuts, off-shoring, and mergers and acquisitions.
Key Considerations for Making Your First Cloud Backup
Posted on November 22, 2012
Congratulations! After much thought and consideration, you have decided that you are ready to move your data into the cloud. You will soon start enjoying the benefits of cloud computing, including peace of mind that your data is safe and secure.
However, as an important step, you must first get your data to the cloud. Here are several tips for consideration that will help optimize your first cloud backup deployment.
Prioritize Your Data
When you decide to use cloud backup from Essential Data Services, we will first make an initial backup of your data before we start backing up your data incrementally. Depending on the amount of data you require to have backed up, this initial backup can take some time. As a result, it is important to prioritize your data – first backing up the most critical files as well as the files that are used most often.
Balance Your Bandwidth
When conducting the initial backup, steps can be taken to ensure that your network isn’t adversely affected during working hours – when your employees require access to the Internet. During the day, endeavor to strike a balance between completing the backup and having enough bandwidth for your employees. On weekends and after business hours you can increase your bandwidth to focus on your backups.
If your database is very big, Essential Data Services will first perform the initial backup locally. Data will then be imported to our remote backup systems, before proceeding with the incremental backup.
Deduplication
Deduplication is a process that ensures you don’t waste resources by backing up numerous copies of the same data, thus reducing bandwidth requirements and storage consumption. By keeping a digital signature of the files that have already been backed up previously, Essential Data Services makes sure that your backups are efficient.
Keep a Local Copy of Backup Files
Leveraging the cloud for backup will allow you to recover data in any situation when data loss occurs. However, creating a second local backup is ideal for accidental file deletion as well as quickly recovering a single server in your network.
Essential Data Services offers cloud data storage and recovery solutions through partnerships with IBM and Asigra. For more details, contact us today at 1.866.408.2737 or [email protected].
How Secure is Your Data?
Posted on November 7, 2012
Data breaches are a significant concern that all companies that should be cognizant of, particularly those that operate in highly regulated industries governed by stringent compliance requirements. Unfortunately many companies have been slow to truly understand and grasp the challenges associated with data security. Such companies are exposing themselves to risk in the event of a data breach, and the damage done could be devastating.
Every several weeks news of a significant data breach seems to make headlines. Most recently, TD Bank lost data that affected over 260K US account holders. In March several backup data tapes containing personal information, including account data and social security numbers, were misplaced. The tapes were unencrypted, meaning that anyone can access the data found in the tapes. Surprisingly, TD Bank waited for six months before they actually reported the incident to the attorney general for each affected state.
This once again reinforces the advantages in replacing a tape backup solution with a cloud backup solution. Tapes require human labor, through such actions as transporting tapes from one location to another. This need is removed by storing data in the cloud, thus preventing any chance of lost or stolen data. Moreover, tape data can potentially degrade over time – a concern that is alleviated by the cloud.
Essential Data Services offers cloud data backup and recovery solutions through partnerships with IBM and Asigra. We ensure that your data is encrypted at both rest and in flight using stringent FIPS 140-2 certification, a requirement in compliance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
For more details, contact us today at 1.866.408.2737 or [email protected].
The Benefits of Outsourced Data Storage and Recovery
Posted on October 25, 2012
When considering data backup and recovery plans, it’s important to realize it is possible to develop a customized solution based on your particular company’s needs. The fact is there is no such thing as a one-size-fits all data storage and recovery plan. A variety of factors must be taking into account – including, for example, your company’s size, the mobility of your workforce, and the required speed of access to data in the event of a recovery situation.
In developing a data backup and recovery plan, you should also consider whether it would be more beneficial to store the data in-house, at your company’s location, or offsite. Many companies choose to store data in-house, because they believe that doing so keeps sensitive data safe and is also cost efficient.
However, there are several very notable advantages in outsourcing your company’s data backup and recovery to an IT solutions provider.
Specialization and Experience
Perhaps you have an IT team that is very knowledgeable and well-versed in data backup and recovery. However, most IT teams have a diverse range of responsibilities within a company – data backup and recovery is only one of them. The fact is that data backup and recovery has evolved into a highly specialized field, given the complex range of options. Partnering with an IT solutions provider enables access to a team of specialists that you can’t get from within your company.
Safe and Secure Data Storage Infrastructure
IT solutions providers that possess expertise in data backup and recovery make use of facilities built with natural disasters in mind. Often, these facilities are located in safe and secure regions – ones that are not at risk of hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes. Further, data backup facilities are more likely to have been constructed with more advanced safety, stability and security features, in comparison to a typical office building. By storing your data offsite, in the event your office building is hit by a disaster, you can be assured that your data is safe.
Long-term Peace of Mind
It’s easy to consider data backup and recovery as being one more costly contract – but that’s not the case. If your company’s data backup and recovery isn’t handled correctly and securely, you risk the potential of incurring significant costs in the future in the event of lost data.
Essential Data Services offers cloud data storage and recovery solutions through partnerships with IBM and Asigra. For more details, contact us today at 1.866.408.2737 or [email protected].
IBM infrastructure key to our enterprise-class solutions
Posted on June 27, 2012
Several of our blog posts over the last few months have mentioned the fact that when we host your applications and data, we do so on our top of the line IBM hardware.
But why do we use IBM?
When we started out in 1999, partnering with IBM was the logical choice. At that time, IBM manufactured the most reliable hardware on the market and offered innovative products that delivered robust solutions for the complex needs of the business world. As well, they provided around the clock support for when we needed it.
By simply partnering with such a strong company, we became a stronger company. We became a leading provider of remote backup and Cloud Computing solutions for small and medium sized businesses across Canada.
The reasons why we chose to partner with IBM 13 years ago remain the same today. IBM products and systems are designed for 24/7 critical operations to ensure that your service is always running exactly the way you want and need it to be. IBM works with its clients (clients like us) to develop new business designs and technical architectures. This allows businesses (businesses like us) the flexibility to compete in today’s ever-changing and complex digital world. And it allows us to design a plan to host your applications and data that meets your needs and your budget.
By providing the reliable and innovative technology infrastructure we need, IBM allows us to offer you the safe and secure enterprise-class solutions that you need.
