Category Archive for : ‘Compliance’

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is the official measure institute for the United States. It is a non-regulatory government agency that belongs to the Department of Commerce. NIST is responsible for creating measurement standards to improve efficiency in data centers. The NIST has recently released Special Publication 800-171 which covers the security of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), specifically in Information Systems and Organizations outside of the government.

This new publication provides guidance on ensuring that systems designed to process, store, or transmit CUI information are properly secured. Compliance

Climate change is among the trends projected to impact the data center industry within the next 5 years, according to forecasts by researchers. And the growing acceptance of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices will continue to shape the future of data centers.

Research firm Gartner predicted that 90 percent of large data centers will respond to widespread environmental and socioeconomic trends by revising their strategies.

Based on research by Gartner and other industry experts, the following are changes that will force IT professionals to adapt through innovation:

Demand for increased security. While

Data breach events result in significant losses each year. In fact, one data breach can put you out of business.

Data security and compliance must be an integral part of every company’s risk management plan, and ignorance of the rules is not an excuse. Understanding the hidden regulatory risks of a data breach can keep your company from going out of business.

Daniel D. Bobilya of Bonahoom & Bobilya, LLC has put together a fantastic presentation on Data Security and Regulatory Compliance that we’d like to share with you. View the full

On June 30, 2015, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council rolled out a new assessment tool for financial organizations, with the aim of helping them detect and defend against security risks.

The Cybersecurity Assessment Tool walks users through the process of analyzing their own systems, personnel policies and technology infrastructure to determine how prepared they are to defend against threats like data theft and hacking.

The assessment is divided into two sections – Inherent Risk Profile, and Cybersecurity Maturity – with five points of focus for each section:

Inherent Risk Profile

This section of

Indiana is a state known for basketball, motorsports and vast expanses of farmland. But increasingly, it’s becoming a hot spot for tech startups. According to Forbes magazine, between 2001 and 2013, the Indianapolis-Carmel area ranked ninth of all cities in the United States for tech sector growth, with a 50.4 percent increase in overall tech industry employment.

It’s not just tech companies that are setting up shop in the Hoosier state. Some businesses have chosen to move their headquarters to Indiana, thanks to tax breaks and other incentives. And all of

The NYSE, along with United and WSJ.com, outages were cause for concern last week, raising a variety of questions in the midst of reports of “technical issues”. The official statement reads as follows:

“It was determined that the NYSE and NYSE MKT customer gateways were not loaded with the proper configuration compatible with the new release.”

Our very own Rich Banta, chief compliance officer and co-owner of Lifeline Data Centers, shared his own thoughts and comments in a recent TechTarget article regarding the outage.

“An attack is a technical issue you have to plan

With a rapidly changing business climate that includes data, cloud and analytics, data centers are expected to undergo numerous changes in the next few years to adapt. However, it can be difficult to predict what those changes might be.

Following are some of the biggest variables that could impact data centers in the immediate future.

Regulatory questions

The Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet rules forbid Internet service providers from favoring some Internet traffic in exchange for payment (that’s just one provision of the rules that are also known as net neutrality law). But

Are there windows in the shell of the building housing your data center? Let’s give this 5 milliseconds of serious thought, shall we?

First, relying strictly upon common sense, the #1 material threat to infrastructure in the Midwest is severe weather and/or tornadic activity. Large expanses of glass will likely be compromised in even an EF0 (Enhanced Fujita Category Zero) tornadic event. This likelihood is increased if the glass in question faces to the West. Also in the common sense category, if the weather doesn’t compromise the windows in the building

Ah, summertime – sunshine, vacations and occasional devastating power outages! That’s right – blackouts are poised to steal the #1 spot from mosquitoes, on the list of top summer nuisances. And a power outage can do a lot of damage, especially when your business relies on a functional server.

In January, the middle of summer in Australia, a heat wave caused a power outage that shut down the data center for iiNet, the country’s second-largest DSL provider. The Perth-based business was inoperable for six or seven hours, after several air conditioning

At home, an overflowing closet or cramped attic can be a clue that it’s time to rent a storage space (or have a garage sale). You don’t need access to all of your belongings, all the time. And the same is true of data.

When businesses begin to amass so much data that it becomes difficult to manage, it’s time to look at storage solutions. That could mean moving your entire data center offsite, but another option is shifting only your least-accessed data to an offsite server.

What’s hot, and what’s not

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