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Build Your Disaster Recovery Plan Before Disaster Strikes

info@e-janco.com — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:47:34 -0600

Build Your Disaster Recovery Plan Before Disaster Strikes. Hurricane season is still with us and earthquakes happen at un-predictable times.

Now you can apply industry recognized best practices without spending thousands on consultants. The Disaster Recovery Planning Template has everything that you need.

Go to http://www.e-janco.com/drp.htm

Disaster Recovery Plan versus Business Continuity Plan

Webmaster — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:16:47 -0600

Both the disaster recovery and the business continuity plan covers how employees will communicate, where they will go and how they will keep doing their jobs. The details can vary greatly, depending on the size and scope of a company and the way it does business. For some businesses, issues such as supply chain logistics are most crucial and are the focus on the plan. For others, information technology may play a more pivotal role, and the BC/DR plan may have more of a focus on systems recovery.

The critical point is that neither disaster recovery nor business continuity issues can be ignored. These IT and human resources plans cannot be developed in isolation from each other. The core of disaster recovery and business continuity is about constant communication. Business leaders and IT leaders should work together to determine what kind of plan is necessary and which systems and business units are most crucial to the company. Together, they should decide which people are responsible for declaring a disruptive event and mitigating its effects. Most importantly, the plan should establish a process for locating and communicating with employees after such an event. In a catastrophic event (Hurricane Katrina being a relatively recent example), the plan will also need to take into account that many of those employees will have more pressing concerns than getting back to work.

Hackers arrested in Spain

Webmaster — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:07:54 -0600

Authorities in Spain have arrested three men accused of operating a massive botnet composed of 12.7 million PCs, which stole credit card and bank log-in data and infected computers in half the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 banks, according to published reports.

The botnet 'Mariposa', which means butterfly in Spanish, first appeared in December 2008 and grew to be one of the largest botnets ever, The Associated Press reported. It spread the worm via removable drives, MSN Messenger and peer-to-peer programs, and targeted Windows XP and older systems.

Unlike many underground hackers, the alleged ringleaders of the operation were not skilled programmers, but had contacts who were, authorities said.

Microsoft sneaks code onto PCs with live update

Webmaster — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:27:19 -0600

Microsoft has started offering Windows 7 users an update to the company's anti-piracy software via Windows Update. Microsoft announced the revision was necessary to detect more than 70 "activation exploits," Microsoft's term for what others call "cracks" that sidestep the product activation process or use stolen keys to illegally activate counterfeit copies of Windows 7.

Windows 7 users who have Windows Update set to automatically download and install all updates will receive the WAT update -- tagged as KB971033. Users whose PCs have already downloaded and installed the WAT update can uninstall it from the Control Panel. The uninstall option is also new for Microsoft's anti-piracy software; in the past, once installed, WGA updates could not be removed.

Disaster recovery plans depend on working backups

Webmaster — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:16:35 -0600

Disaster recovery plans are impacted by data encryption. Encryption continues to be the topic on every CIO and IT person's lips nowadays. No one wants to end up in the news as the next victim of a privacy breach or the next company that did not protect its customers' information. If you conduct a news search using the words personal data breach, you will be alarmed at the number of instances where personal information such as social security and credit-card numbers have been exposed to possible theft. In a recent breach, a state government site allowed access to hundreds of thousands of records, including names, addresses, social security numbers and documents with signatures.

Whether it is government agencies, research facilities, banking institutions, credit card processing companies, hospitalsor your company's computers the risk of compromising private information is very high. The relationship business has with technology. -- business relies so heavily on technology today, business risk becomes technology dependent. The possibility of litigation is part of business. It has always been a risk of doing business, but because technology and today's business are so intertwined, business risk has a higher threat level. This has prompted many to encrypt workstations and mobile computers in order to protect critical business data.

If you have rolled out encryption, how do you maintain your IT service quality when the hard disk drive fails? How do you plan and prepare for a data loss when the users computer is encrypted? These are all issues that should be considered when putting together a data disaster plan. In addition, data recovery, one of the more common missing elements of a disaster recovery plan, should also be factored in because it can serve as the "Hail Mary" attempt when all other options have been exhausted.

IT organizations of all sizes contend with a growing data footprint with more data to manage, protect, and preserve for longer periods of time. Online primary storage, has focus a on fast low latency, reliable access to data while near-line secondary storage has a focus on low cost and high capacity. Long-term data retention requires a combination of ultra-low cost, good performance during storage and retrieval, and reduced footprint in terms of power, cooling, floor-space and economics (PCFE) - also known as a small green footprint - for inactive data.

Google's Chrome falls short

Webmaster — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:20:49 -0600

Shorttcomings of Goggl's Chrome are identified

Printing doesn't work well in Chrome
Google Chrome is "spyware" and gives Google a lot of information about who you are
Some websites don't work properly for example xml files like RSS feeds are not displayed properly
Lack of hardware integration (like fingerprint scanners)

CIOs need to measure and manage

Webmaster — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:07:44 -0600

Firms and government organizations are constantly buffeted by changes in their business environment - from changing customer tastes to economic changes affecting raw material prices to government regulations that make hitherto smart business strategies irrelevant. Firms must respond well to these changes to survive and thrive. While firms have used different business strategies to insulate themselves from the effect of change, CEOs are beginning to recognize the need for their firms to become more agile in detecting and making the changes to strategy, operations, and products. Turning agility from a buzzword into a business capability requires firms to measure and manage their ability to change - and agree on what agility means specifically for their enterprise.

The Metrics for the Internet, Information Technology, and Service Management HandiGuide® is the one tool that CIOs of any sized enterprise can use to meet these challenges.

iPhone loses luster

Webmaster — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:22:10 -0600

The new numbers come from ABI Research, an analytics firm based in New York. ABI measures sales of smartphones from quarter to quarter and works with manufacturers to ensure its data is in line with the companies' own estimates.

According to ABI, Apple's iPhone accounted for 18.1 percent of market share

in the third quarter of 2009. In the fourth quarter, that number dropped to 16.6 percent.

The change itself isn't enormous, but what is noteworthy is that smartphone sales overall grew by 26 percent -- yet, even with that significant growth in the market, Apple's iPhone sales fell.

"We're getting to a point where the iPhone is starting to look a little tired, a little dated," ABI said.

This is Apple's first quarter-to-quarter drop in smartphone market share in two years, ABI's research indicates. The last time the iPhone suffered a loss was in late 2008.

Compliance Management Complicated by Email

Webmaster — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:01:19 -0600

For the past decade or more, business people have faced a paradox regarding e-mail: it simultaneously makes their jobs easier and more difficult. In a globalized economy where rapid communication is an essential competitive element, e-mail has become the preferred method for communications and interchange of data driving exponential e-mail growth. Companies trying to control that growth through file size limitations, mailbox size limitations and other means such as e-mail archiving may be replacing one problem with another. Users may choose to send digital content outside of the company network, which could increase security threats or threaten regulatory compliance.

Numerous laws and regulatory mandates focus on corporate governance and accountability around sensitive information (specifically financial, non-public information and protected healthcare information). This has significantly impacted the underlying IT systems that support the applications and repositories holding this sensitive information. Organizations are continuously looking for help in

Disaster plans need to be reviewed

Webmaster — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:51:55 -0600

In response to the growing scope and complexity of crisis situations, communication and emergency notifi cation technology has evolved to meet the changing needs of emergency response. Emergency notification technology has become more sophisticated, moving from simple, one-way broadcast notifi cation capabilities to automated intelligent notifi cations and true bi-directional communication across multiple channels and devices. Most recently, emergency notification/communication technologies have broadened their focus to include tools that accelerate the resolution of events and enable better collaboration and coordination among crisis response teams.

In order to provide the best protection and safety for employees, constituents and communities, organizations should revisit and update their Disaster Recovery plans to include risk scenarios for new threats. In addition, organizations should seek to automate their disaster recovery plans with the latest technology that enables organizations, schools, local government, as well as multinational corporations to respond quickly and effectively when disaster strikes. Organizations should take advantage of advances in emergency notifi cation and crisis communication tools to ensure that they can locate their people and then move rapidly into managing and resolving the crisis. Preplanning combined with automated, immediate communication capabilities can help ensure that people are safe, informed, engaged and mobilized when an emergency situation arises.