Category Archive for : ‘Hardened Data Center’

For IT leadership, choosing a colocation data center may create anxiety similar to what parents feel when deciding where their children will go to school. In either situation, you’re entrusting a third party with a big responsibility. And even though an organization may present itself well online or in brochures, you need to do some investigative work before making a decision.

Any reputable colocation facility will welcome inquiries and be happy to show you around. So think about what’s important to you, and make a list of questions to ask.

What You

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

At around lunchtime on July 8, 2015, trading at the New York Stock Exchange came to a halt when NYSE decision-makers recognized a “technical issue” associated with a software release. Reports since then have been vague regarding what the issue was and how it was remedied, but it seems symptomatic of problems that affect businesses of all sizes.

The NYSE outage could be the result of a coding problem. When code is flawed, businesses may not notice the problem until their security has already been compromised. And while many people with knowledge

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

The “Internet of Things” or “IoT” … what is it, and what does it mean to your company?

Simply put, the IoT describes what happens when you set off an alarm leaving a store, because a cashier forgot to deactivate the security tag on your item. The tag sends a signal to a receiver, which in turn triggers an alarm. Those two devices are communicating, without human involvement, and providing an additional measure of safety for a retailer. But devices that can communicate independent of humans could also compromise the safety

When you manage your company’s data center, your primary focus is keeping servers up and running. But if no one is checking the efficiency of those servers, you could be maintaining machines that offer little value in exchange for the power they consume.

In 2013, data centers in the United States consumed 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. Here’s how much power that actually is:

A 500-megawatt coal plant can produce 5 billion kilowatt-hours per year
5 billion kilowatt-hours is the approximate annual electricity usage of a city of 140,000 people
That means data centers

By the time businesses decide to move their data center, or consolidate multiple data centers at one location, they’re eager to get to work and finish the migration as soon as possible. But this task requires a lot of planning and coordination, and rushing the process can create big problems.

Following are some recommendations if you’re considering a data center migration.

Assign a project manager

The first step in your data center migration is assigning a project manager to oversee all aspects of the move. Depending on the level of expertise your IT

Running a startup requires a lot of guts, tempered with foresight. Great ideas aren’t enough. You need the right people to execute those ideas and a realistic budget. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs get so wrapped up in their vision, they forget about the steps needed to achieve it, and that’s when new businesses tend to fail.

While there are many reasons startups fail, one of the most common is running out of cash. One way to keep startup costs down is to rent office space that allows for growth without breaking the

When trying to decide whether to move a data center offsite, some CIOs may wonder whether the safety of their corporate data can be guaranteed. If you decide to build and manage your own remote data center, physically protecting your facility from harm can significantly add to the expense of your building. But if you choose to lease space in a data colocation center, protective measures are included in your overall rate.

Read on to find out some of the reasons why colocation is a safe and reliable option for your

When managing an outdated data center, there are improvements that may be out of the budget for your company. Keeping up with technology, equipment and servers alone are some of the most expensive updates you can make within your own facility. Other expenses such as remodeling the actual building and keeping up-to-date with security efforts will add to the already enormous expense. Justifying these improvements may be an issue for upper management, so here are three ways, identified by Robert McFarlane from Shen Milsom & Wilke LLC, you can extend the life of