Data Foundry Blog

As organizations and businesses increasingly rely on the Internet to conduct standard business operations and generate revenue, DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service) are the obvious choice for malicious actors to disrupt the status quo, make a statement, and/or cause serious financial consequences for their targets. Each year, it has become easier to hire third parties online to carry out attacks for a relatively low fee. These are some of the reasons DDoS attacks continue to increase year over year. As we are approaching the end of 2018, we’ve analyzed reports from leading DDoS mitigation providers to spot the top 7 DDoS trends over the last twelve months.

Digital disruption makes businesses more competitive for many reasons, some of which include a reduction in the need for physical assets and materials and increased efficiency and agility. For example, Nest eliminated the need to have both an HVAC and security monitoring system, smart phones took the place of calculators, alarm clocks and cameras. These innovations disrupt entire industries because they are the obvious convenient choice for consumers. They also provide agility through scalable platforms that make it easy for companies to add and offer new services.

On Thursday, October 25, we hosted an open house lunch in the technology briefing center at our Houston 2 data center on Greens Parkway. The event was a gathering of Data Foundry’s staff, founders, current customers, acquaintances and longtime colleagues in the IT and telecom industries.

As some of you may already know, elections aren’t the only thing Russian hackers are meddling in. They’ve infiltrated our energy and manufacturing sectors as well. This year, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security announced Russian government actors have hacked into energy, nuclear, water and critical manufacturing sectors. In July, they announced Russian hackers had infiltrated utility control rooms where they could have thrown switches if they chose to do so. Russia aside, it has become painfully obvious our industrial IoT (IIoT) and infrastructure are vulnerable.

You may think your home’s smart devices only send data about temperatures or your exercise activities, so why does it really matter who sees it? Data in aggregate can reveal more than you think about yourself and your family, but even if privacy doesn’t matter to you, lack of data protection isn’t the only risk. Hackers can easily manipulate unsecured IoT-connected devices, get into your network and infiltrate other devices, such as your home computer. Every unsecured device you own is a potential inroad to your home network. Hackers can also take control of your devices and use them to conduct large-scale attacks on businesses and other organizations, such as was the case with the Mirai botnet. We all have a responsibility to improve our nation’s cybersecurity, and we can start with home network security.

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.

For some companies, change management involves throwing things at a wall until something sticks. Needless to say, this is not the ideal system for implementing new technologies. As companies undergo digital transformations to remain competitive and to survive, mastering change management is essential. Because companies only reap the rewards of change after it has been implemented at the individual level, a successful change management process involves getting people on board in all levels of the company.

It appears we are reaching the zenith of the 2018 hurricane season. The most stressful part of an impending natural disaster is uncertainty, followed by lack of preparation. By preparing for an emergency like a flood or hurricane both in your professional and personal life, you can reduce the impact of a stressful situation on yourself and your family. September is National Preparedness Month – Disasters happen. Prepare now. Learn how. In line with this theme, we are providing a checklist of often forgotten tips to help you through hurricane season.

Compliance is confusing and mind-numbingly boring for most people. Before you can even finish explaining what SSAE stands for (Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements) eyes are glazing over. Unfortunately, data center compliance standards aren’t merely sleeping aids, and not following them is enough to break a company from fines and reputation damage.

When we think about what AI is today and what it will offer in just five years, the difference is drastic. Today we have algorithms that recognize images and interactive voice applications. In five years, digital personal assistants will likely be the norm, digital research assistants will scan documents and compile relevant data, medical assistants will help diagnose and treat patients, financial modeling of “what if” scenarios will grow increasingly complex and accurate, and repetitive tasks will become automated in multiple industries. So, what will the AI transformation mean for your data center or IT infrastructure model?