Data Foundry Blog - Managed Services

Web application firewalls or WAFs can protect your website and web applications from a variety of attacks and intrusions that your network firewall can’t. Depending on the WAF your security team chooses, it can protect against XSS attacks, SQL injection, session hijacking and buffer overflows. If your website or application processes payments, it’s especially important to have a WAF, and it is a necessary standard to comply with PCI-DSS. Even if you don’t process payments, a WAF can protect against fraud and prevent malicious actors from tampering with your website and your applications.

“We build our computer systems the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.” – Ellen Ullman

If this sounds like your data center, it’s time for a change. That bird’s nest of cables costs you a little bit more every day in energy and productivity. Here’s why:

Ensuring you have a backup and recovery plan in place before the season’s hurricanes hit is essential for companies worried about business continuity. The last thing you want is to permanently lose data, or to experience several hours or days of downtime due to a power outage. If you don’t already have a backup system in place, there’s no time like the present to get started. Read our blog post on choosing a backup strategy for more information on how to begin. If you have a backup strategy, keep reading to see if your plan is sufficient to properly restore your systems and applications in the event of a local disaster. Just because you regularly perform backups does not necessarily mean your systems will be properly restored when the time comes.

Only six weeks after WannaCry, a similar type of ransomware has hit organizations and spread globally. Petya has mostly affected companies in Ukraine, but has also struck organizations in 64 other countries, including major companies in the U.S., such as Merck & Co and Mars, Inc. Experts are still working to understand Petya and its mechanisms of action, and no kill switch has been discovered yet. However, there are a few basic precautions announced by our partner Radware that your company or organization should take at a minimum to stop the spread of ransomware and other viruses.

Anonymous, a notorious international network of hacktivists, launched OpSacred on June 11, 2017. OpSacred is an organized DDoS attack effort on financial institutions around the world. Anonymous is known for its DDoS attacks on government and corporate websites, and they are self-described as having “a decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives.” OpSacred is the continuation of a larger operation called OpIcarus (Operation Icarus), and OpSacred is expected to continue until June 21.

Many business professionals who are seeking the most cost-effective and efficient solutions for their networks are unclear about the differences between Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and the benefits they provide. While they are two different concepts, they work together to provide an efficient and cost-effective network solution for a growing number of organizations.

As business continuity and data recovery become more essential for companies across the board, there is a growing demand for an efficient backup solution that can cover a variety of workloads. We’re pleased to announce a new managed service for our colocation customers, Managed Backup. Our Managed Backup service is a leading enterprise backup solution that allows users to backup or recover terabytes of data in minutes, not hours.

We’ve heard a lot lately about REIT data centers (Real Estate Investment Trust) and poor customer service. The underlying purpose of a REIT is buying, selling and leasing real estate, or data center space in this case. These companies are not service-focused, and they outsource the majority of their operations and customer support. For instance, many of the technicians, facility managers and security staff that work for the largest colocation companies are hired on a contract basis from third-party vendors.

As a colocation company that provides a DDoS Mitigation service to customers, we keep current with DDoS activity and emerging threats in our industry and others. We’ve noticed more frequent attacks in previous months, and medium to large companies aren’t the only ones dealing with the onslaught. Smaller organizations are increasingly getting hit with DDoS threats and attacks. In the final quarter of 2016, the U.S. slid into first place to become the number one source country for DDoS attacks.

Business owners and decision makers are always wondering what they can do to increase profitability. Suggestions generally reflect customer service enhancements, new business opportunities, and potential product initiatives. Something to consider is the value of business technology as it improves operations which increases profitability. One of the highest costs of implementing and maintaining these technologies is labor. You can increase profit margins simply by outsourcing IT.