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DATA CENTER FOR BUSINESS CONTINUITY

DATA CENTER FOR BUSINESS CONTINUITY

The relationship between business continuity and data center is crucial in online services, whether they’re provided as cloud computing or through virtualized machines. It’s essential to define the services regarded as having priority that the data center should guarantee. This way, you avoid definitions that are too abstract or incomprehensible to non-experts.

The purpose of this approach is to determine an optimal quality level of the service provided by the company that owns, manages, or buys it from third-parties. Even more so, the request for professional guidance in finding the best data solutions is so high among companies that risk management has become a subject of university studies.

sistema-elaborazione-dati

A data center is a short name for a data processing center: the core of the activity carried out by high-level hosting services. It usually resides in huge rooms located either in the company’s headquarters or in external locations, sometimes under the surveillance of specialized staff.
Most of the time, this structure is organized in server racks–the “cabinets” in which the various machines are recessed, connected and programmed/managed by system engineers.
The connected servers can be controlled directly (which occurs in the case of resets, restarts, or some types of updates) or remotely (which guarantees maximum flexibility).
The operators are often called upon (sometimes at unpredictable times) for complex, but necessary, timely interventions. And it’s here that the idea of business continuity comes into play as an essential parameter to be optimized.

The concept of business continuity, on the other hand, is expressed in the enhanced capacity, guaranteed at any level, of being able to continue providing the service even in critical conditions or in the unfortunate event of damages or accidents.
Beyond what it entails at first glance relating to security (read: avoid losing your data forever), business continuity is essential for maintaining an adequate image of the company from the outside, avoiding receiving excessive criticism from unsatisfied users. In simple words, it’s a mix of good marketing and technical warranties that all companies operating on the web need to thrive.
As already noted in a previous article, business continuity is a more extensive concept than data recovery. Not only does business continuity imply the possibility of providing the service in all situations, but it also includes the ability to recover data thanks to a series of adequate procedures at a strategic, operational, and tactical level.

Once you understand the importance of it, how can you make sure that the data center guarantees business continuity? On an engineering level, this occurs in two different ways.

First, by equipping the infrastructure with an adequate level of electric machines capable of guaranteeing a constant voltage in the event of sudden changes or power outages (therefore, for example, uninterruptible power supplies). Second, through backup systems that should be present in multiple copies, possibly also in the cloud or on machines virtually inaccessible by any intruders or malware.

This discussion also includes various requirements on energy efficiency, to avoid waste and guarantee, at the service level, maximum productivity and safety for customers and data center operators.

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3 DATA BREACH HORROR STORIES

3 DATA BREACH HORROR STORIES

Surely you’ve heard about Data Breach and you already have an idea about its impact on business. Of course, stories you’ve heard make noise because talk about big corporations and scary numbers. For instance, it is estimated that a data breach cost more than $3 millions to a company.

But we need to be very clear about one thing: 43% of businesses shut down after a significant corporate data loss, both big or small-medium sized company.

Today we want tell you some stories about what means suffering a data loss for a business and how it can happen.

1. Toy Story 2 – (Almost) disaster

Talking about horror stories on relevant data loss, the epic fail of Pixar with “Toy Story 2” is on the top of our list. During the production, a line of code somehow deletes almost 90% of the movie. All Toy Story’s backups were recorded on tapes. But unfortunately, the Pixar didn’t test the system as they should and they notice that backups were broken only when they tried to restore data. Something went wrong with the tapes and all files were lost. The deadline for the release was extremely close and the Company just have a months old version of the file tree.

But the Pixar got lucky. One Company’s employee was working from home and have saved some movie’s copies on his personal computer a few weeks before. This way, the Pixar can restore all data and the movie was saved. Just one human error could cost the Pixar its reputation and an entire movie that eventually went on to gross nearly $500M and an Oscar nomination.

2. The Government is no exception

Stories about data loss are not necessarily outdated. Just a few years ago (2014, to be exact), when Cloud Computing and Disaster Recovery systems were already popular, the State Department of USA showed to the world how bad things could get without a Disaster Recovery plan.

A software patch update crashed the State Department’s Passports and Visa system, affecting over 200.000 travellers worldwide. When the system was down it was impossible to check any passport or Visa. The State Department have made the data backups but the system itself was not protected against that kind of incidents.

3. A short story of failure: Ma.gnolia

Remember when I said that 43% of companies go under after a significant data loss? Well, Ma.gonlia is one of them. Even if you may be don’t remember it, Ma.gnolia was a bookmark sharing website which works pretty good until 2009. Users could bookmark a website for a later view, both publicly and privately, without any need of local save. That means that users can access to their websites from any device. The company suffered a huge data loss which compromise the entire bookmarking system and user accounts. Althought the several expensive attempts to recover all data and save the business, the situation was really bad and Ma.gnolia had to shut down.

Better to be safe than sorry!

Longer your systems are down, more you pay your employees to sit down and wait. In addition, you will bring in less revenue because of the downtime. Data loss can hit any business in any moment, so it’s good to be well-prepared. If you really care about your business and you want to defend it from data loss with the proper Backup & Disaster Recovery measures, we can help you!

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DISASTER RECOVERY VS BUSINESS CONTINUITY: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

DISASTER RECOVERY VS BUSINESS CONTINUITY: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

Are Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity two terms referring to the same service?

In the last post we talked a lot about Disaster Recovery solutions, but probably some of you still has a doubt: what is the difference between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity? The Disaster Recovery concept is often associated to Business Continuity. What is the link between the two terms? Do they refer to the same service? The answer is no, they are different solutions, but interconnected. Now we’ll see in details the differences between the two solutions.

Disaster Recovery is a service indicating all the technical measures useful to manage a possible disaster which could hit the business information system and which could be generated from different causes: natural disasters as floods or earthquakes, human errors, thefts or hacking. The Disaster Recovery plan firstly lays down what are the critical processes for the company, naming which of them must be better protected and monitored. It defines the RTO and RPO parameters (recovery times and affordable level of data loss) according to the needs of each company and it plans the actions to take for the complete and fast restore of systems, data and applications in the case of accidents.

Business Continuity, instead, relates to a global solution which includes all the procedures and processes that have the purpose of assuring the business operation continuity and avoid the interruption of activities, either they are caused by IT downtimes or other events, as for instance legal accidents or failures due to the lack of the staff. In particular, a Business Continuity plan identifies the procedures to be followed:

-at the strategic level, by finding the processes for a timely and effective management of possible critical events in the future that could threaten the company’s survival
-at the tactical level, how to coordinate actions and referents involved in these activities with the aim of ensuring the operational continuity
-at the operative level, by specifying all the passages to be followed in the case of emergency

The purpose of Business Continuity strategy is to minimize the interruption of activities and its consequent damages, as well as assure the effectiveness of recovery procedures. Each plan of business Continuity is different and high-customized according to the kind of business and its particular requirements.

What is the difference between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity?

Disaster Recovery solution is linked to technical measures which have the aim of rapidly recover the IT field activities and it is a part of the wider Business Continuity strategy. Indeed, Business Continuity has to assure the firm’s global survival in the case of disasters and it includes not only the protection of IT system but the safeguard of all the business essential functions continuity. The Business Continuity strategy counts all the possible events which could threaten the company’s life and it is useful even with minor interruptions of activities. In addition, it is able to provide an overall strategic vision to increase the resilience of business and the competitiveness on the market.

Do you need more information about Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity? Reserve a free consulting with our experts!

 
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8 BENEFITS OF DISASTER RECOVERY FOR BUSINESS

8 VANTAGGI DEL DISASTER RECOVERY PER IL BUSINESS

Why use a Disaster Recovery solution?

Since last week we have been talking about Disaster Recovery, an essential solution to protect data and business information systems from possible disaster, as natural events, human errors, hacking, thefts or other incidents. We have shortly defined the Disaster Recovery service and we have seen how it works and what are the parameters to be defined to make the solution as effective as possible.

Today we will talk about the concrete benefits of Disaster Recovery for companies. We have seen that a DR has the main aim of protecting business data and systems, but how? What benefits can the implementation of a DR solution assure? We have identified 8 benefits of Disaster Recovery for companies:

1. Drastic reduction of restore times and lower RTO & RPO
Thanks to Disaster Recovery solution you have the warranty of restore systems, services and applications in short times and get significantly lower RTO and RPO. According to the parameters defined from DR plan, you could drastically reduce restore times on the basis of your needs, which would be completely impossible without using a Disaster Recovery solution.

2. Limit the losses due to revenue reduction or other costs
By reducing restore times of business information systems, you can limit the losses not only in terms of revenues, but even related to, for example, costs for possible damage caused by downtime and management or technical assistance expenditure.

3. Minimize the interruption of Critical Processes and safeguard business operations
Each company has critical processes that must be always active and are vital for the business continuity. Through a Disaster REcovery solution these kinds of processes will be preserved and possible interructions minimized, by allowing a short resume to operations.

4. Avoid to compromise the business reputation
As shortly said in the last posts, downtimes caused by unexpected incidents seriously threaten the firms’ reputation. A short recovery avoid to compromise the business strength as well as to cause irreversible damage to the corporate image.

5. Define symplified processes of action to face unexpected situations and predict a controlled resume to operations
Thanks to a detailed plan of Disaster Recovery, any action of intervention in case of emergency will be planned previously, by allowing a short restoration, controlled in all its stages.

6. Granular management
The DR solution enables to manage replications in a granular way (wich means restoration of data at file level or even smaller units), with tha aim of assuring a complete recovery of data and services.

7. No impact on performance
Replication of business infrastructure on one or more Disaster Recovery sites ensure no impact on performance. Indeed, thanks to the activation of Disaster Recovery, systems are constantly online.

8. Control and custmization of your own Disaster Recovery
Tha last benefit we talk about is the chance to customize and monitor your own Disaster Recovery. With the personalization of DR solutions, you can choose the replication frequency and establish the best recovery times for your business. In addition, you can control constantly your Disaster Recovery site.

Do you want to know more about our Disaster Recovery solutions? Reserve a free consulting with our experts!

 
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HOW TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN

HOW TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN

Unfortunately it is not possible to know with certainty when and if a disaster will hit our company or when it will be necessary to face a difficult period or situations that might affect the continuity of our online business. This is why in every business it is very important to create as soon as possible an effective business continuity plan.

However, Business Continuity goes beyond computer science, in fact, it is affecting the whole functionality and efficiency of a company, including physical and organizational aspects; it is therefore clear how the importance of business continuity planning, through a business continuity plan or BCP, represents one of the key aspects for a company. The lack of a Business Continuity Plan to manage unexpected scenarios would slow the company’s growth and even block the company’s economy for long periods of time.

Business Continuity Plan can be summarized in the sentence: “Prevention is better than cure.”

Now that we have clarified the need, let’s answer some of the questions that might rise from a first research.

What is a business continuity plan?

A Business Continuity Plan or BCP is a global process of primary importance for companies that aims to identify all possible threats and consequently all countermeasures that have to be taken to cope with possible adverse events (disasters, hacker attacks, data theft, etc…).

Where do you start and how do you make a business continuity plan?

There is no standard method or an ideal business continuity plan able to meet all the different needs of different companies. Each company is unique and, for this, requires the development of a specific Business Continuity plan. An important base from which to build an effective business continuity plan is a result of a complex planning process, which includes the identification of the scope and scale of the plan, the understanding of the business areas that it will protect, the identification of critical features and, finally, the creation of an effective plan that allows to perform all operations with minimal influence on the main operation process of the company.

A good business continuity plan, to be considered truly effective, must meet three main criteria: resilience, recovery and contingency.
Resilience: a Business Continuity Plan must provide the right answer to a specific question, absorbing the negative events without interrupting the main service.
Recovery: a BCP should be able to recover everything (data, information, etc..) gone damaged or lost, providing the original state of the process and its full functionality within the shortest time possible.
Contingency: offer a solution to every accidental circumstance. The Business Continuity Plan must provide the ability to survive at any sudden event without interrupting the operation or business growth.

 

To summarize, a comprehensive plan of business continuity requires a primary analysis, complete and thorough, of the company’s operation process, an understanding of how to recover the full efficiency, the analysis of possible scenarios that might occur and how to face them without interrupting, in any case, the overall business process.

Why Every Business Needs a Business Continuity Plan?

The period of time during a disaster can be long and stressful to deal with without the right preparation, in addition, the unreasonable decisions taken quickly and hastily can worsen the situation and cause further damage to your company. For this reason have a method or rather a pre-planned business continuity plan is a major factor. An adequate plan for business continuity, not only provides the ability to prevent disasters and limit the negative impact, but also offers companies a clearer overall picture of all the main aspects that make up their business.

Do you want an effective business continuity plan for your company?

The studied strategies and activities offered by CriticalCase are able to support and ensure the operation of your business processes and to cope with possible adverse events by ensuring business continuity of each company. Fill out the form you find below to be immediately contacted by one of our representatives who, without obligation, will provide you with the best solution for your specific need.

 
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