Posts Tagged ‘disaster recovery’

EVault Survey: Mobile Devices Rule the Roost, but Data is in Security Limbo

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

This is it! The final post about our survey results that unearthed a wealth of information about the data protection habits of SMB IT managers. In the first post we gave an overview of the findings and in last week’s post we looked at the frighteningly casual attitudes many IT managers have towards disaster recovery.

This week we’re going to focus on an issue that’s relevant for businesses of all types and sizes: mobile device security. Given our on-the-go workforce the results might surprise you…

Part 3: Mobile Devices Need Protecting Too

More and more employees are working on mobile devices – smartphones, laptops, tablets – at work, at home and everything in between. Mobile devices have become the accessories for work; they go with people on business trips, into meetings, coffee shops, soccer games, which means sensitive and important company data has also become remote in nature. And just like company data that lives on desktops at the office, it must be properly backed up and secured outside of the four corners of the office as well.

Unfortunately, our survey found that too many businesses are leaving these devices unprotected without any type of data insurance. We found that an overwhelming majority, 95 percent, of US IT managers surveyed said company data resides on mobile devices of their employees. But the alarming finding was that a whopping 40 percent of those have NO plan to protect mobile data. Larger organizations (1,000+ employees) are even more likely to lack a plan than smaller ones.

If we needed yet another reason to protect our mobile platforms, the fact is that laptops and mobile phones are stolen or lost at a much higher rate than on-premise computers and servers. If you think about, who really wants a desktop these days. The world is mobile!

According to a study done by the Ponemon Institute, 329 organizations collectively lost over 86,000 laptops in 2010. That’s an astounding number, especially considering the monetary value associated with a lost or stolen laptop is not just the hardware but more important what’s lives inside. The same study estimated the average cost of a lost laptop at about $49,000. There aren’t too many laptops out there that retail for that much money – which means the estimated cost of data loss, while difficult to quantify, is in the tens of thousands.

What our EVault study shows is that far too many companies overlook the vital security of endpoint devices. We’ve become such a mobile workforce that we’ve become complacent with the protection that must go hand-in-hand with these new workplace liberties. The good news is that there is plenty of data protection solutions available to organizations, including our own EVault Endpoint Protection, that are focused on protecting and securing mobile devices. Failing to protect just one of those mediums can spell trouble for a business and severely jeopardized data security and business continuity.

Final Thoughts: Data Insurance

Switching gears a bit and looking at the survey broadly, it got me thinking about what SMBs value and where they allocate resources, which in some cases can be limited. I’m guessing if we were to ask the people surveyed whether the company had liability insurance the majority would likely say yes. So it begs the question, why aren’t we insuring the most important business asset: data! Data is the lifeblood of every organization and must be properly insured. Today, the options are flexible, affordable, and secure, which means that no one should be without the peace of mind knowing their company information is safe and sound.

We hope you enjoyed our three-part series about the realities of data security among SMBs. We’re going to be writing more on our blog, so please check back soon for more relevant and interesting tidbits!

Posted by Dave Hallmen

Tags: backup and recovery, corporate laptop backup, Data Protection, disaster recovery, endpoint protection, mobile devices, mobility, pc backup
Posted in Recovery Best Practices | No Comments »

EVault Survey: Is your Business Disaster Ready?

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

Last week we looked at some of the key findings from an independent survey we commissioned around data protection habits of SMBs. In this second piece, we’ll dive a bit deeper to focus on what we learned about disaster recovery (DR), and provide some tips on ways that organizations can remedy any shortcomings that they might have.

Part 2: Disaster Recovery

Last year, Forrester’s report, State Of Enterprise Disaster Recovery Preparedness (Q1 2011), revealed some alarming news: “Companies are not only consolidating their backup sites, they’re also decreasing the distance between them.” Our survey found a similar trend: while 95 percent of US SMBs have some type of DR plan in place, a mere 44 percent had remote, cloud-based DR capabilities.

What does this mean? As Forrester notes, “This is a red flag for companies whose DR sites are close enough that they could be affected by the same disaster.” It’s absolutely imperative to have a disaster recovery plan that protects your company’s systems and data off-site in the cloud and/or at a remote location.

Why? Imagine your business is on the Eastern seaboard and a massive hurricane floods your building, bringing down all your servers. Or imagine the communities in Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa that saw a slate of tornadoes rip through in April. If your systems and data were backed up to a site only 10 miles away, it likely was also affected by that same hurricane or tornado. By protecting systems and data in the cloud and/or at an off-site, remote location at least 100 miles away, your ability to recover and effectively safeguard your company’s important information assets increases in the event of a disaster.

Our survey also found that larger organizations (1,000+ employees) are more likely than smaller businesses to have a remote DR plan in place. This makes sense considering larger companies generally have more IT resources than those of smaller businesses. The irony here is that those smaller organizations are also the companies that can’t afford to be down very long.

If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that the cloud is becoming more and more affordable and reliable. While some SMBs still believe that a move to the cloud is cost-prohibitive, in reality, there is a wide range of solutions available that are not only within budget, but can prevent financially devastating data loss.

Now, shifting gears to some more promising news. Of the businesses we surveyed that didn’t have a remote, cloud-based DR plan, three-fourths said they are considering making it a reality in 2012. It’s clear there are huge opportunities to help businesses better understand that the security, reliability and economic concerns have been alleviated by years of technological advances. We’ve been at the forefront of these advances and continue to pioneer ways to deliver better service and solutions to our customers.

We hope we’ve piqued your interest because the third and final part of our series next week will be even more shocking! We’ll share what we learned about how businesses are protecting mobile devices.

Posted by Dave Hallmen

Tags: backup and recovery, cloud, Data Protection, disaster recovery, Security
Posted in Cloud Connected, Recovery Best Practices | No Comments »

EVault Survey: Data Protection Is Costlier Than We Thought

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

At EVault, we hear many horror stories about data loss due to a wide range of causes, including natural disasters, power outages and plain old insufficient protection of company data. So to better understand the scope and scale of the prevalence and cost of data loss, we went to the IT experts on the front lines to learn more about what they are seeing and experiencing. What our survey found was pretty eye opening.

We want to share the insights that we gleaned and hopefully prevent more unnecessary data loss. Since our survey brought to light so many gems of insight, today’s post is just the first of a three-part series.

Let’s dive right in to the details.

Part 1: An Overview

As we culled through the data, there were three major threads that emerged: data loss, disaster protection and mobile security.

Data Loss

According to the survey, lost data is costing SMBs nearly a half a billion dollars annually. That number might not seem all that large, but when you think about it, most small and medium-sized businesses don’t have $400 million in revenue in a single year. As we dug deeper, we found that over 20 percent of IT organizations that manage 2-7 TB of data have lost data at least once in the past year, with over half of those folks loosing data 2-3 times in the past year.

This problem of rampant data loss (and the substantial cost that’s associated) can be easily solved. Unfortunately, IT needs tend to be lower on the priority list, especially at a SMB. Hopefully this news – while not good – will be a wake up call, especially for businesses that 1) rely on their data to meet business goals and 2) have a fixed budget where any type of loss impedes operational sustainability.

Data Protection Planning

The letters ‘D’ and ‘R’ are familiar to those of us in the IT world, but our survey showed that too many SMB IT managers aren’t familiar enough with disaster recovery (DR), especially when it comes to utilizing the cloud. Our survey found that 95 percent of U.S. IT managers have some type of DR plan in place, but a mere 44 percent have remote, cloud-based DR capabilities. Of those that don’t have a remote Cloud service, ¾ say they are considering making cloud-based DR a reality in 2012. As we know, all businesses – no matter the size – need a remote and cloud-based DR strategy so as a pioneer in Recovery as a Service market, it’s great seeing organizations starting to understand the value of remote DR capabilities.

Protecting Mobile Devices

Across the board, business operates on a mobile, social and global playing field. SMB employees work on-the-go, utilizing laptops, smartphones and tablets for business purposes. This means that there’s an increasing amount of company data on mobile devices – in fact, 95 percent of U.S. companies have data on mobile devices, according to our survey. Of those companies, 40 percent have no plans to protect mobile data, with larger organizations (<1,000 employees) more likely to lack a plan than smaller ones.

Clearly, too many businesses are neglecting endpoint security and putting company data at risk of getting into the wrong hands. Laptops and mobile phones are stolen or lost at a much higher rate than on-premise devices, but the data on them is just as significant and vast. With an increasingly mobile workforce, we encourage companies to start making endpoint protection a 2012-2013 IT priority.

While I touched on some of the broader takeaways today, next week I’ll dive a bit deeper into the disaster recovery realm. Hope you enjoyed; come back for more!

Posted by Dave Hallmen

Tags: backup and recovery, data loss, Data Protection, disaster recovery, endpoint protection, SMB
Posted in Cloud Connected, Recovery Best Practices | No Comments »

Getting Serious about Safeguarding Small Business Data

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

Many of our customers are small-medium businesses (SMBs) who lack the resources of larger companies when it comes to IT functions. As a result, many of them outsource their backup and recovery operations. While there are a number of reputable vendors out there, your data is your company’s lifeblood and steps to properly secure it should never be taken lightly.

Dave Hallmen, our VP of worldwide sales and marketing, recently wrote an article for CRN outlining 10 steps SMBs should take to make sure their data is secured properly. In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap of the most important takeaways:

Protect Mobile Devices

Despite an increasingly mobile workforce, companies are still failing to adequately protect the critical company data that lives on mobile devices (here’s a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute). Smart phones, tablets and laptops need to be protected just like on-site devices, so SMBs should select a single vendor whose coverage extends to mobile technologies.

Disaster-Proof Your Data

With a slew of recent hurricanes, earthquakes and floods, businesses have become more aware of their data’s vulnerability to natural disasters. To protect your data against the unexpected, back up to a remote, off-site data center.

Make Sure Your Data is Recoverable

Though SMBs manage a lot of important information that needs to be recovered 24/7, they often take a simplified approach to backup and recovery. Avoid all recovery issues by making sure your backup approach is failsafe and reliable.

Ensure Your Backups are Secure and Compliant

Understand regulations like SSAE 16, SOX, GLBA, HIPPA. They’re important and choosing a vendor who conforms to them is critical.

Pick a Reputable Vendor

Take the same approach to your vendor selection process as you would for buying a car. Talk to vendors and ask to speak to some of their customers. Talk to fellow IT managers and ask for recommendations. If you have no idea where to start, the Internet is flooded with great third-party resources that provide solid recommendations and guidance, like CRN and ESG.

Tags: backup and recovery, Cloud backup, Data Protection, disaster recovery, GLBA, HIPPA, recovery time objective, Security, SMB, SOX, SSAE 16
Posted in Recovery Best Practices | No Comments »

4 Hour Cloud Disaster Recovery Service – Guaranteed!

Monday, March 26th, 2012

Very exciting news today as our RaaS industry-pioneering EVault Cloud Disaster Recovery Service (CDR) is now available with a 4 Hour Service Level Agreement (SLA) that is guaranteed*. EVault CDR, previously known as EVault Remote Disaster Recovery (RDR), is a cloud-based, managed service designed to help customers quickly recover their organization’s critical systems (and data) after a site outage or disaster, and gain remote access to those systems in a secure, virtual environment in the EVault cloud.

Guided by a team of EVault DR experts, who help customers extend their IT resources, and implement, plan, test and execute the entire disaster recovery process 24/7/365, the new 4-Hour RTO option takes disaster recovery to the next level, providing mid-market customers with an affordable hot cloud site for fast, guaranteed recovery in 4 hours or less. The EVault CDR 4-hour service is particularly beneficial for businesses in heavily regulated industries, such as health care, financial services, and legal services, that cannot tolerate outages of critical systems for very long in the event of a site outage or disaster.

The new EVault CDR option complements our existing 24-, and 48-hour RTO packages and further extends our industry leadership and portfolio of cloud-connected backup and recovery offerings. For more information about EVault CDR and today’s announcement, go here for the press release.

Posted by Shawn Swanson

* The guarantee is set forth in the EVault CDR Service Level Agreement, and includes service credits and the right to terminate if the guarantee is not met.

Tags: backup and recovery, cloud computing, Cloud-Connected, disaster recovery, disaster recovery testing, DR, DR Plan, DR test, EVault, managed services, RaaS, recovery time objective, Remote Disaster Recovery, RTO, SLA
Posted in Cloud Connected, Recovery Best Practices | No Comments »

What you Need to Know About Cloud Compliance

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

A few weeks ago we hosted a webinar on cloud compliance that was very well-received and offered up some great information about cloud adoption, regulations and compliance and a slew of other topics aimed at helping organizations understand what is involved when moving to the cloud. We’ve boiled down the information to bring you the nuts and bolts of what was discussed & the most important takeaways you should keep in mind to safely move to the cloud.

To Cloud or Not to Cloud?

Half of midsized companies are either pursuing cloud-based services as part of their business practices, or are in their near-term implementation. The biggest issue when determining whether to move to the cloud is data security.

Customer Trust

Cloud consumers and cloud providers have an intimate relationship in which cloud consumers are entrusting their data to the cloud provider. Customers expect their cloud provider to give them some assurance from a third party that they are actually doing the right things.

Mounting a Strong Defense with Information Security and Compliance

Cloud computing is very complex and companies must look at all areas of secure environments. Companies with a cloud infrastructure must protect and secure information using technology, firewalls and access controls for incident response, disaster recovery and business continuity.

Define an Information Security Policy

Many organizations don’t have a written formal security policy, which jeopardizes communication and planning with service providers. The Internet is full of standards and policy templates, including the ISO 27001 and a template from SANS.

Classify All Information Assets

After defining what information is being protected, you must define your assets, which outlines where your sensitive and critical information is and who (including your cloud service provider) needs have to have access to it.

Data Location and Regulations

Cloud consumers want to know exactly where their data is and don’t want it to cross borders without being notified. As a customer, you have to depend on the cloud provider to make sure they understand your needs for data location and notification. If you don’t have the policies in place for these controls, you cannot hold the service provider accountable.

Perform a Risk Assessment

For the last step involved when sending your data to the cloud, find out what are the business practices you need to continue to operate and look for threats. This should be done on a recurring basis and consulting services can help.

Trust and Verify

You must be able to trust and verify your service provider. In the late 90s , the financial community had an open organization called BITS. The organization looks to ensure that a service provider’s offerings are analyzed for their security controls and to make sure that you had a standard audit process. “Good” companies are doing SAS 70 or their SSAE 16 at a SOC level 2 that encompasses all security features. “Excellent” ones went through an ISO 27001 certification by the international community, though they are very rare.

Summary

These are some of things you need to know when moving your organization to the cloud including compliance and security within the cloud, defining an information security policy, defining your assets and how to verify and choose a cloud service provider.

For a full webcast replay of the webinar, check out the recording on our website here.

Posted by Felix Santos

Tags: cloud, compliance, disaster recovery, Security
Posted in Recovery Best Practices | No Comments »

Updated: The Situs Companies Hurricane-Proofs Systems and Data with EVault Cloud-Connected Storage Services

Friday, August 26th, 2011

As the East Coast braces for Hurricane Irene, here is a checklist from ITworld on what to do before and during a hurricane to protect your organization’s technology assets. (For customers/partners on the Eastern Seaboard, as you make final preparations for the hurricane, please ensure your business is protected by verifying your EVault backups. Our support team is on call ready to assist with any failed backup messages found in your logs. Please contact EVault Customer Support via phone, 1.866-855-9555, or email Support@evault.com should you need help with your backups.)

On the same topic, CIO Magazine just published this article about how our customer, The Situs Companies in Houston, Texas, hurricane-proofed their systems and data by implementing EVault Cloud-Connected storage services, after they narrowly escaped the full wrath of Hurricane Ike in 2008. Hurricane Ike ravaged the U.S. Gulf region and caused some $37.6 billion in damages. Among those affected was the real estate advisory firm, which lost all of its power in the disaster and nearly lost its local data center.

Luckily, it didn’t but the close call made Situs’ director of global information technology Bill McCown reconsider its approach to data protection and recovery.

“We realized that if the data center had actually gone offline, we had everything backed up to tape. The data was stored and secure but there was no way to recall our backup tapes, and there would be no way for us to get at any of that information, or get it out to another location if the power was down.”

Situs turned to EVault storage services for a hybrid Cloud-connected approach to data backup and disaster recovery in 2010, replacing its old legacy tape-based data protection for its nearly 100 servers. And since making the move, the company has dramatically improved the speed and reliability of backups and significantly reduced IT costs. Said McCown:

“Overall, this single monthly cost was very similar to what we had been paying tape-wise. But we got the additional benefits of not having to acquire a secondary data center for our DR [disaster recovery] purposes and have someone manage that for us.“

The CIO article concluded with

“Situs, in short, is getting much more value for a similar cost. For the most part, the company’s move to the cloud has been seamless. While McCown hopes never to witness another disaster like Hurricane Ike, he is confident that if it does happen, Situs and its IT operations can weather the storm.”

Is your business’ systems and data disaster-proof?

Tags: backup and recovery, Cloud-Connected, disaster recovery, Disk-to-Disk Backup, EVault Data Protection, hurricanes, hybrid solutions, tape
Posted in Recovery Best Practices | No Comments »

Recognizing Our IT Heroes

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

We all grew up watching superhero and action movies. As kids and even as adults, we’ve replayed scenes over and over in our heads imagining we were heroes saving the day. Though we might not have cool gadgets or a cape, we have tools and responsibilities in our everyday jobs where we really get to be heroes.

In my 5+ years at i365, I have spoken with hundreds of unsung customers, who helped save the day at their company by using EVault products and services. Sometimes it was a simple as restoring files accidentally deleted by a user, and other times recovering critical systems and data after some sort of natural disaster caused an outage. Regardless, it is the IT employees and EVault working together that saved the day.

We recently launched a “Nice Save” contest to promote these unsung IT heroes and share their numerous untold stories with the world! Entries will be judged by popular vote. We are accepting entries through September 14, 2011. Customers and partners (on behalf) can upload videos and submit essay entries. To view contest details and submissions and/or submit an entry, visit http://www.i365.com/nice_save/contest.html.

We’re offering great prizes to the three winners chosen for best written essays and three for best video submissions with the grand prize winner receiving a trip to the San Francisco Bay Area for two, which will include round trip airfare, a hotel for two nights, transportation, dinner with the i365 executive team, and $500 in cash.

We are very excited to offer an opportunity to highlight our greatest asset, our customers; and we look forward to sharing many stories over the course of the next few months. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the video about our beloved “Cloud” and “On-Premise” Backup Brothers as they put their rivalry aside to help save the day…

Posted by Stacie Del Castello

Tags: backup and recovery, Cloud backup, Cloud Storage, corporate laptop backup, Data Protection, disaster recovery, pc backup
Posted in Recovery Best Practices | No Comments »

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