The Private Cloud – Growing in Popularity
According to Gartner, the cloud computing market will grow to $150 billion by 2013. This is not surprising since cloud computing is changing the way small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can access and leverage their data and IT networks.
Cloud hosting enables an SMB to run its websites or any other computing service on one or more virtual servers. Since it is an on-demand subscription model, an SMB pays only for the resources it uses, making cloud hosting an extremely popular and valuable service. Most businesses are looking for ways to keep costs under control and the cloud helps businesses to do so.
It is important to highlight the three types of clouds: private, public and hybrid:
There’s no I in IT
Last week, Dataprise held its annual All-Hands inter-company meeting where our company’s executives and directors took to the stage and spoke to where we’ve been as a company and where we’re going. The day was moderated by our COO, and my friend, Scott Gordon who started the day off by telling our DP family the story of how it all began, that is, how Dataprise came to be, launching some 17 years ago. Scott talked about taking a leap of faith — how he prepared and educated himself by way of cramming in as much research as one possibly could the weekend leading up to the defining meeting, which ultimately lead to our first client win in 1995. Read more »
IT Waxes Continuity
Business continuity planning is a process that helps organizations prepare for catastrophic occurrences. A business continuity plan (BCP) is essential for small– and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Business continuity plans are comprehensive tested designs, processes and strategies developed to keep your business operational should the unthinkable occur— IT crashes, supply chain problems, power failures, etc. Simply put, with a strong business continuity plan, a business will stay in business.
Designing a strong business continuity plan is dependent upon myriad factors and for this reason companies need to consider running a business impact analysis (BIA). A business impact analysis zeroes in on your business’s most critical processes as well as the effect an outage would have on the business. IT, security, and business leaders should work together to determine the kind of plan necessary and to decide which businesses and systems are most crucial to the company. For one, businesses inherently can’t run without the people. Aforementioned leaders will ultimately decide not only which employees are responsible for declaring a disruptive event, but also need to design a process for communicating and locating or relocating as it were.
Data Security in 2012
Filed under: Tech Tips | Tags: business, networking, security, tips
Leave a Comment What does security mean for small– and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in 2012? It’s a multifaceted subject to consider, and one that we in IT management will no doubt be contending with ongoing. To look at the latest security trends in the coming year, let’s first take a step back to see where we were in order to gauge how we might better protect digital information in 2012.
A New Retention Compliance Paradigm
In October, I touched upon the importance for businesses to comply with relevant federal regulations with regard to records and information archiving, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Both public and private companies are expected to comply with SOX, and institutions need to consider all regulatory rules governing records retention with their industry. The federal government views any type of company information as a business record.
Retention benefits your business by mitigating risk, raising the awareness of corporate governance and internal controls, and can improve an organization’s ability to respond to changing business circumstances. For example, a strong business analytics solution can reduce costs by exposing problems much earlier. Moreover, creating an indexed and searchable email or communications storage system creates a unique company knowledgebase. Secure archiving stores intellectual property and acts as your business blue print — creating an undeletable record of how your company operates, interacts with customers, etc.
Before discussing with a client about how to implement a customized email archiving plan, it’s first critical to establish an email retention policy, as a retention policy is the basis for most of the technological decisions on a project. An email retention policy keeps archiving projects on track and helps inform most technological decisions along the way. Additionally, it is also intended to help employees determine what information sent or received by email should be retained and for how long. For instance, the chosen storage media will depend largely on whether the archiving project is meant solely to reduce the strain on existing storage units, or whether the client also requires it for potential lawsuits or regulatory compliance audits. Retention policies differ from company to company, and often depend on factors like the regulatory laws that govern each company’s industry, so it’s important to make sure businesses data lifecycle management policies don’t short-circuit its email retention policy.
Disaster Recovery Planning for SMBs
According to a recent Symantec study, one in two small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have no disaster recovery (DR) plan in place in the event of a network outage, loss of data or other IT disaster. SMBs are putting themselves at risk of losing their businesses if they have not designed a plan to protect their data (emails, accounting data, patient and client files, company records, legal records and other important documents and information).
Representatives from all departments in a business should be involved in the development of a plan to ensure all critical systems and processes can recover from any possible data loss activity.
Here are tips on what is needed in a DR “tool kit” to help minimize a disaster’s impact on a business’ IT assets: Read more »
The Need for Email Archiving
For many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), unlimited storage of emails is nearly impossible; there are budget constraints, hardware limitations and bandwidth quotas that will never allow enough storage. But there is a solution, email archiving. Archiving refers to a centralized storage plan where items are arranged in a logical and accessible manner that files the emails, but removes them from the server and backs them up safely for future reference.
Telecommuting Securely
Filed under: Tech Tips | Tags: business, cloud, networking, tips
Leave a Comment Based on research provided by the Telework Research Network, it is estimated that 20 to 30 million people currently work from home at least one day a week. Telecommuting offers many benefits to the employer, employee and the environment.
Advancements in technology, such as remote access, mobile platforms, and virtual private network (VPN), allow employees to work from virtually anywhere. Whether a business allows employees to work remotely once-a-week or several days per week, it is essential that a business sets up a comprehensive telecommuting plan.
Read more »
Tips on Being IT Secure
The computer network is probably the most important tool in any company. For that reason, the security of computers is crucial for its success. If information is stolen or lost, proprietary information about the company may be revealed. The more a business does to keep their computers secure, the safer the information will remain.
Here are 10 ways a business can best protect its computers, the data and its networks: Read more »
Announcing the NEW Dataprise.com Web Site
I’m very excited to announce the new and improvded Dataprise.com web site. I hope you will check it out!
