Why you still need to think about Disaster Recovery in the Cloud.

Think putting your IT in the cloud means you don’t have to think about disaster recovery any more? Guess again.

The world of Information Technology (IT) has continued to grow and evolve at a rapid pace. Consumerization of IT and easy access to cloud technologies has had people from every functional area of businesses subscribing to new cloud services, bypassing IT’s almost legendary vice-like grip on technology and resources. This relatively inexpensive, easy to use technology has opened the doors of opportunity to businesses all around the world.

However, the cost of this easy access to cloud technologies has left a trail of out-of-control spending, data loss, hacking victims, data breaches, interruptions of service, public relations crises, and loss of business.

RTECecently, thanks to our hosts at TEC, I, and my fellow panelists, discussed issues incorporating the evolution of IT cloud services into disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) best practices.

Thanks to our moderator, Nathan Biggs, CEO for House of Brick Technologies and fellow co-presenters Alison Kassel, Chief Information Officer for Seaton CorpChris LaVesser, IT Risk and Compliance Solutions Leader for GE Healthcare, and Kiran Palla, Sr. Manager, IT Risk & Cost Optimization-Global Infrastructure Technology & Operations for DeVry Education Group, for engaging in such a vibrant discussion.

Here are just a few takeaways from this rich discussion.

When evaluating Cloud service providers:

  • Read the service level agreement (SLA) and make sure it meets or exceeds the SLA’s you have in place for your business and customers.
  • Understand and get the disclosure about security, access controls, and encryption of your companies data.
  • Investigate 3rd party API access to your cloud systems, so that it doesn’t over expose your companies data. (e.g. Google Apps for Business platform and Apps Marketplace)
  • Does the cloud provider provide adequate backup, DR, and BC of their own services? See how Code Space went out of business overnight because they got hacked in the cloud.

Technology Executives Club Event Details


Brian Greenberg
@bjgreenberg

programming languages

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The six stages of debugging.

Screenshot of the XSEd editor, used with the X...

The six stages of debugging.

For all my programmer and development friends out there, this was forwarded to me earlier today.

  1. What? That can’t happen.
  2. Well that doesn’t happen on my machine.
  3. That shouldn’t happen.
  4. Why does that happen?
  5. Oh…  I see.
  6. How did that ever work?
Source: http://plasmasturm.org/log/6debug/
 

Are your backup systems secure?

Tapes.no-background

This post first appeared at InfoSec Institute 6/2011.

All seemed well with backup operations at my company, until I got a visit from an operations center engineer.  The lock already hanging open, he was holding one of the “secure” transports that our off-site tape storage vendor uses to move backup tapes.  But this time, the tapes inside were not ours—someone else’s data was in our hands.  I couldn’t help but think: how many times have our tapes been sent into our competitors’ hands? Did they send them back immediately as I did—or did they land in less scrupulous places? In this article, I’m going to show you how systemic thinking helps identify security vulnerabilities like this one in your company’s data backup systems, particularly related to issues around backup tapes.

You will learn:

  • Factors to consider before you move to a tapeless data backup system
  • Encryption challenges and opportunities-related to keeping your off-site data secure
  • Approaches for backup tape reduction and legacy storage technology elimination

Read more of this post

Big Data Under Attack

Co-authored by Brian Greenberg and Tom Silva appearing in the Huffington PostPlease read it, like it, comment on it, and share it! Would love to hear your thoughts.

big-data

Big Data Under Attack

Once again, everybody is talking about China. On Feb. 19, Mandiant, an American security company issued a startling report – the result of a six-year investigation — that makes the claim that the United Sates is in a cyber war with a 12-story building in Shanghai. The private security analyst concluded that the building is home of China’s stealth cyber war division, the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398.

If this sounds like the movie, War Games, make no mistake – this is real. According to Mandiant, for the last seven years, Chinese hackers have stolen data from at least 141 companies across 20 major industries, including critical infrastructure sectors like energy and telecommunications. At least 115 of the companies were in the United States. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said classified intelligence documents support Mandiant’s claim.

Last year, we proclaimed this the Era of Big Data, and, in light of the dramatic events of the last few weeks, we thought it was an appropriate time to consider what’s happened since. In order to understand this from the inside, we invited a leading big data expert, Brian Greenberg, VP of Technology Operations at Total Attorneys and Founder of General System Dynamics, to help us parse fact from fiction or fantasy.

Hacking Today

First off, it doesn’t take China to do this. Hacking isn’t only done by governments and individuals; there are zombie hacker armies at work everywhere (Brian spent part of last week fighting off Russian hackers). What’s more, hackers will sometimes automate their efforts by writing programs that will try a laundry list of known security assaults (or exploits) on random computers throughout the globe — thousands of exploits on millions of computers. Once they hack their way into a computer, they automatically plant a seed of code on that computer that will spread the hacking maneuvers to more computers. Soon, thousands of computers are hacked and hacking thousands more computers. Most of the time, the owner of the hacked computer doesn’t even know she’s been hacked and is now part of a large zombie hacker army. Read more of this post

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