Data Center and Colocation Blog

In my last post, we discussed the latest habit of non-IT departments in organizations large and small: hatching rogue IT operations on the cloud, taking your company’s data for a spin in the Wild, Wild Web — unpatched, unprotected, and nearly undetectable.

To recap, this trend involves departments buying IT services online through vendors like Amazon Web Services, Google Services, Microsoft Azure and others, setting up off-the-books IT operations outside of your organization’s boundaries.

These departments have come to rely on these services to conduct business. Shutting them off is not an

“The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.”—FedRamp website

That sounds positive, but getting approved for the FedRAMP certification is far tougher than most cloud providers anticipated. In fact, few organizations are truly capable of making it through the process. As shared by an article in GCN:

“Of more than 80 cloud providers who have applied to go through the FedRAMP certification, more than half are not yet ready to

As the internet of things (IoT) gains in popularity, so does edge computing — with futurists projecting that they will grow in tandem. An alternative to cloud computing, edge computing has been identified as a way to process and store data closer to end users.

But first, what is edge computing? With edge computing, IT professionals can provide data processing power at the edge of a network instead of maintaining it in a cloud or a central data warehouse. That’s why it has been considered a viable option for IoT applications,

Data center managers welcomed news that the ASHRAE, which sets requirements for energy-efficient building designs, has released updates to its data center efficiency standard, recognizing that they are different than other buildings.

Since 1975, the data center industry has been measured by the “Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings” or ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1. The update, which is called the “Energy Standard for Data Centers” or Standard 90.4-2016, provides a performance-based solution. Rather than identify a prescriptive approach, the new standard provides the levels of performance the data centers need

Anyone in the data center industry understands the importance of uptime. Recent statistics show that it costs us, on average, $7,900 each minute that we experience a data center outage — an essential reason to minimize the incidents that cause downtime.

While there’s already pressure for IT professionals and data center managers to maintain a high rate of uptime, the demand will be even more intense in the 2020s. The expectation will be for 100 percent uptime, as internet connectivity — especially with the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT)

Lifeline is excited to share some great news from our partner, MidWest-IX:

MidWest-IX is excited to announce a Netflix OCA node is online with our Indianapolis peering fabric.  This will speed up access to Netflix content for any of our members.  Streaming content can account for up to 80% of a network’s traffic, and Netflix is a big part of that for many networks.  Network operators are always looking for the quickest ways to deliver content to their users and being a MidWest-IX customer is a great way to eliminate network bottlenecks.

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With the incidences of cyber attacks escalating for business and institutions of all sizes, IT and security experts are busy enough setting up barriers against what have become garden variety-type cyber attacks — including denial-of-service attacks, malware and phishing.

But rare cyberattacks, which are currently under the radar for most companies, are worth analyzing because they could have much more devastating effects, according to a recent report.

Here’s why companies, banks, hospitals, and other institutions should be paying attention to these type of cyberattacks; they’re expected to start happening more often. In

With all the measures IT professionals and security experts are taking to fight cyber attacks, they are unprepared for the type that could lead to a widespread catastrophe, an international think tank said in a recent report.

Satellites are vulnerable to cyber attacks, said Chatham House, which could lead to extensive outages for the businesses, trade, and government and financial institutions that are dependent upon them to operate. And such an attack could make many of them vulnerable to widespread criminal acts.

It’s time for a radical view of cyber security, according

As many companies have already discovered, it’s only a matter time before you’re hit with a cyber attack of some sort. The question is how will you respond. A strategic plan could make the difference between your company quickly recovering — or faced with the possibility of losing millions of dollars.

According to the latest statistics, cybercrime is costing companies around the world damages to the tune of $450 billion a year. Along with that, the media cost of cybercrime has increased at a rate of nearly 200 percent during the

Data center experts have known for some time that employees have been among the top concerns when it comes to vulnerabilities to cyberattacks.

However, a recent report revealed that the problem may be more extensive than previously suspected. According to QinetiQ, companies are vulnerable to many cyberattacks because they don’t have an understanding of how to manage employee behavior — from negligence to more purposeful intrusions.

The British company said that programs designed to equip employees to be alert about security risks are essential as part of efforts to cut down on