Need of End-to-End Solution to Ensure Information Security

Information security is defined as "The protection of information and information systems against unauthorized access or modification of information, whether in storage, processing, or transit, and against denial of service to authorized users. Information security includes those measures necessary to detect, document, and counter such threats." However, in today' corporate environment where companies and organizations need to exchange vital information among employees, suppliers, partners and customers, risk of data breaches and cyber attacks increases manifold. Apart from external attacks in the form of malware infections, phishing attacks, web application attacks and so on enterprises need to be wary of internal attacks by employees like unauthorized access to information, disgruntled employees, and password mismanagement.

 
Though financial implications are one of the greatest outcomes of cyber attacks, companies have to face other problems such as legal liabilities, bad reputation, reduced productivity, brand erosion, and customer loss. The following are shocking statistics of a recent IT security consulting survey conducted by Ponemon Research.

 
* Around 90% of businesses became victims to security breach at least once in the last year. More than half of the respondents faced two or more breaches in the last one year.
* The financial implications with regard to security breach came up to $500,000 and more for 41% of the respondents. The average cost of one data breach was $7.2 million and that of cyber attack was $6.4 million.

 
Today most companies and organizations depend on user names and passwords to protect their critical company information, employee details, financial transactions, client information and so on. However, in today's hacker-filled world this is not enough to provide the ultimate protection. What is actually needed is an end-to-end solution, which is exactly the solution suggested by 75% of the respondents in the same survey. However, apart from putting in place an effective strategy, companies and organizations must also need to take strict measures to execute it proactively.

 
Enterprises need to collaborate with eminent market players who have the capability to provide end-to-end spectrum of information security services and the ability to address information security life cycle need for enterprises from any industry vertical. What the enterprises need is a service desk provider who can provide financial, strategic and technical benefits by taking the organization to the desired state of the information security robustness.
However, enterprises need to consider some important factors before selecting a service provider. This includes service provider qualifications, capabilities, experience, and trustworthiness.

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Efficient Remote Infrastructure Management For Successful IT

With remote infrastructure service model, many businesses seeking alternative modes for increasing their prospects have produced appealing results. It has also become widely accepted as one of the means to earn attractive profits. IT support organizations, these days offer remote infrastructure management services with enhanced quality and affordability and Infrastructure Management has now become an Industry in itself. Effective IM helps the firms in many ways like reduction in the operation costs, savings in time & resources, effective planning for the core business process, availability of skilled staff.

How efficient remote infrastructure management helps

Remote infrastructure has become essential to help the mobile employees stay in touch and continue their normal work smoothly. Remote infrastructure management has also helped businesses to save their costs on IT asset management infrastructure. It is necessary to have a clear knowledge and understanding about your business environment and have a sound analysis of the customer needs and dependencies.  With remote infrastructure management, proper monitoring of the system performance and troubleshoot the problems should be done. These tools should follow an automated process that ensures maximization of processes and resources, and leverages efficiency.

IT businesses can enjoy the benefits of remote infrastructure services with the help of the cloud computing model. This model provides suitable conditions for high levels of integration in applications and infrastructures. The responses are rapid, and pertinent due to the real-time facilitation of latest and updated information. This is a huge advantage for businesses as they help make important decisions to enhance their performances. As the cloud computing platform is geared up to manage any requirement or demand, storage capacity is no longer a concern. It offers on-premise deployment facilities and furnishes on-demand services with no delays.

Choosing the Service Provider

The remote infrastructure management services have various types of service delivery models which can be used to accomplish the requirements of the customers. Although there have been different vendors as a provider of these services, it is necessary to be aware of the things to choose the right type of provider for business needs. It is firstly important to gain adequate information about the efficiency and the experience of the service desk provider and compare those skills and experience which you require for your firm with the vendor you are going to select. It is always beneficial to select a vendor who has expertise in remote operations as it can help the company to increase its profits.

Remote infrastructure management has been successfully used by large businesses with its combination of costs savings, mature business processes, and focus on business priorities, there is tremendous business growth potential.

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Trends in Cloud Computing Services

Today, the concept of cloud computing is nothing new and has brought about a great amount of commercial success in the past few years. It is expected that cloud computing will play a significant role on the ICT domain for the upcoming decade or even more. This is because the future systems will be equipped with the abilities of resource provisioning and managed services.

Cloud computing has generated enough commercial interest not only because it allows high chances of IT outsourcing for minimizing management overhead and expand the existing but limited IT infrastructure but also because they help to bring down the entrance barrier for the new service providers to provide their solutions in order to expand the market with a bare minimum entry price and infrastructure needs. It is a fact that the special capacities of the cloud architecture enable the providers with the chance to experiment with certain kinds of novel services simultaneously minimizing the chances of wasting resources.

However, today we have organizations that rank first in broaching up the subject of Applications and Infrastructure incorporation, and set up models for Business Ready Infrastructure as well partner with the ISV’s and technology based companies to come up with cloud computing services, service operating models and other delivery platforms. These companies act as the Cloud service partners for numerous global organizations with their systematized strategy and offerings.

The cloud computing solutions offered by these companies are all set to alter the manner in which the computing resources are being utilized. The service portfolio includes the following as listed below:-

* Cloud Assessment
* Cloud Implementation
* Cloud Migration
* Cloud Service Management for Private, Public or Hybrid Cloud

At the same time, these companies assist their clients to adopt Cloud by carrying on assessment services on the workloads and then transferring them to appropriate cloud environments. At the same they allow Enterprise Platform as a Service (EPaas) as well as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). They also specialize in innovative managed security services.

However, Cloud systems should not be confused with just any other type of resource provisioning architecture. Cloud computing services has definite features that distinguishes it from the conventional resource and other service provisioning environment and offers effortless management of Cloud as well as legacy architecture.

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Simplifying the Implementation of Identity and Access Management

Identity and access management (IAM) technology have become an integral part of security tools, and most enterprises are realizing the value of the same. IAM is fundamentally involved with the establishment of identity components in business processes and technology solutions so that it manages users' identities and offers logical admission to an organization's application. As this technology is used to initiate, capture, record and manage user identities and their associated access permissions in a preset fashion, it ensures that there is information security consulting, and that access privileges is granted according to one interpretation of policy and that all individuals and services are suitably authenticated.

The need for adopting IAM Processes
The need to comply with regulations such as HIPAA, SOX and PCI are driving users to adopt Identity Management technology. It is essential to establish the accountability around data access and management, and it is important that IT provide value to the company's employees by giving them smooth access to the business apps. Without the proper access an executive may not get the required information to close a sale.

Simplifying the Implementation of Identity and access management
An inadequately controlled IAM processes can lead to regulatory non-compliance for the reason that if the organization is audited, the management will not be able to prove that company data is not at risk for being misused. And hence it has become necessary for IT security operations groups to be paying specific attention to IAM providers that are focused on a strategy to simplify the implementation process.

An identity and access management (IAM) program consists of a technology solution interconnected with pertinent business processes, to manage the identity of users and their access to systems and applications in the organization. For any IT application, the access procedure commences with user confirmation and granting apposite access privileges based on the user's role. The automation of these measures is usually created in the IAM program. The IAM program needs to be attentively envisaged, by incorporating sound IT architectural vision to prevent being saddled with IAM silos in different departments.

A few tips for a successful TAM implementation
To avoid implementation challenges like federating identity, risk-based authorization and role management these tips can help.

1. It is important to know where the organization is headed with IAM implementation.
2. Getting the suitable people involved is essential.
3. Implement incrementally: use a phased approach that delivers value early and often.
4. Educate the end users, business and IT staff on the new technology and process changes.
5. An IAM solution needs routine attention to stay in top form.

Although the benefits of identity and access management implementation are significant, the organizations that are most likely to realize them are those that have a detailed, realistic implementation plan in place. And by making the implementation process simple, an organization stands to gain a lot.

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Bring Down Your Power Consumption by Datacenter Consolidation

With advancements in computer technology, one of the concepts that have gained prominence is datacenter consolidation. However, it was mentioned in an article in Federal Computer Week highlighted that "golden source of data around cost savings, around every data center that agencies own [and] a very specific road map for which data centers will be shut down by 2015."

There have been numerous analysis on the future of datacenter consolidation by various people. However, one thing is certain that process of datacenter consolidation is not so easy and simple as it appears. To derive the required results and benefits it is essential to choose an appropriate service provider for yourself.

Why do we need datacenter consolidation?

One of the crucial reasons for consolidating datacenters is to bring down the power consumption. This is based on the principle that lesser servers in lesser buildings need less electricity.

The new age service providers datacenter consolidation solutions needs to encompass well defined objectives, set up after carefully studying the client infrastructure requirements. Some of the objectives that are considered are listed below-

* Enhance service levels and lower expenses

* Support systems added in a merger or acquisition or merger

* Align systems with the enterprise's organization more appropriately known as segmenting

* Make strategic moves to or away from certain platform types

* Helps in relieving business managers from the accountability for server management, so that they are able to focus on business and other allied architecture and engineering issues

* Brings down staff levels and avoid further hiring

The Datacenter Consolidation Methodology

Renowned service providers of datacenter consolidation solutions follow a methodology that is based upon easy concepts of:-

* Assess

* Architect

* Implement

* Manage

Apart from these four stages, it also consists of short business based assessment in the front end. This serves as a feasibility study that enables the users to evaluate whether the consolidation is at all feasible or not. In addition to that, the service providers also offer efficient solutions in datacenter virtualization and datacenter hosting or collocation services. However, market analysts are of opinion that the need for datacenter consolidation will increase through 2011 and 2012.

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Get Managed Security Services for Your Enterprise

Whether you are a huge corporation providing critical services or a small business with aspirations to gain a foothold and join the success league, security concerns are of paramount significance. A business that can convey a convincing message to its customers regarding its security parameters and regularized initiatives is the one that can be assured of a flourishing future and boast of a repertoire of prestigious and loyal clientele.

Addressing the security concerns of your customers entails a well planned strategy that provides a structured process for efficiently and effectively dealing with managed security and compliance issues, that is in alignment with business objectives, that can help in curbing incidents that may jeopardize security, that can provide secured access to significantly sensitive data and that can provide complete protection for your enterprise.

Information security has become a compulsory prerogative in the current competitive environment, especially with mounting threats that can cause complete damage to your operations. You are dependent entirely on IT and you have a setup with a mix of applications and devices to meet the different needs of each customer. In an era of shrinking budgets and growing compliance demands such responsibility can be taxing and tiresome. Hence it is essential that you employ a comprehensive set of managed security services for your peace of mind as well as that of your customers.

By employing managed security services all your security issues can be addressed in an easy and simple fashion. This helps reduce threats considerably and provides you with the advantage of staying compliant with all regulatory standards. This solution offers real-time protection with non-stop monitoring of network and security devices, applications, servers, databases and endpoints. These tools are flexible and easy to use, and devoid of any complexities. The processes deployed fulfill the requirements of all compliance regulations, thus relieving you from the consequences of non-compliance.

Hence partnering with vendors offering managed security services can be immensely beneficial. Those enterprises which have resorted to information security services have experienced commendable growth by employing innovative technological solutions that help address security issues effectively, without incurring high costs, and have been capable of steering their business through smooth sailing.

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The Growing Need for IT Infrastructure Services

In the first generation mainframe era IT Infrastructures were based on local data centre in large corporate offices. Hardware of early computer systems was complex to operate and maintain, and therefore required a special environment to operate. Many cables were necessary to connect all the components and methods to accommodate and organize these were devised, such as standard racks to mount equipment, elevated floors, and cable trays (installed overhead or under the elevated floor).

During that time even old computers required a great deal of power, and had to be cooled to avoid overheating. An important consideration during that time was security because computers were expensive, and were often used for military purposes. Basic design guidelines for controlling access to the computer room were therefore devised.

Today, IT Infrastructure management of an enterprise includes wide range and variety of servers, storage devices, network devices, security devices and software components. Large enterprise have multiple sets of data centers connected together over variety of technologies such has dedicated link, VPN links, MPLS etc.

Cloud Computing & Data Centers

Cloud computing is basically the concept where computing is "in the cloud" i.e. that the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or static place(s). This is in contrast to the traditional computing where the processing takes place in one or more specific servers that are known. However, it must be noted that, the server location, place and controls are still known to someone who is a part in service delivery chain.

Cloud computing has enabled the availability of inexpensive networking equipment, coupled with new standards for network cabling and made it possible to use a hierarchical design that put the servers in a specific room inside the company. Cloud computing has also helped data centres to gain popular recognition.

Data centers gained more importance when companies needed fast Internet connectivity and nonstop operation to deploy systems and establish a presence on the Internet. Installing such equipment was not viable for many smaller companies. Many companies started building very large facilities, called Internet data centers (IDCs), which provide businesses with a range of solutions for systems deployment and operation.

New technologies and practices were designed to handle the scale and the operational requirements of such large-scale operations. These practices eventually migrated towards & lt datacenter hosting, and were adopted largely because of their practical results. Network consulting services provide datacenter services that can deliver more than ten times the network capacity of a large corporate city building. This capacity, coupled with highly specified environmental controls, can offer considerable savings on long-term capital and operational costs to enterprises.

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Changing Needs of IT Service Management

Changes in the IT Infrastructure landscape have led to massive changes in the needs of the IT Service Management scene. A formal help desk, for example, came only in the late 80s and early 90s. Client server computing brought a huge surge in application portfolios. Therefore practically anything and everything could be computerized. This further meant that the number of vendors also grew rapidly and a variety of services started getting outsourced. And the business of IT infrastructure outsourcing soared. With the growth IT service portfolios, there was an unprecedented increase in users as well as service providers. This ensured that complexities of IT services grew. One element in the service landscape could unknowingly impact the service from another element. Thus as the complexity of IT service management equations grew, the need to manage those equations for the purpose of managing the services became even more urgent and imperative. For example a growing number of products and services created a strong need for managing the compatibility matrix among those components.  

While the product compatibility matrix was very well understood and analyzed, the service compatibility matrix, in its real meaning, was not appropriately analyzed. Today the basic flaw in the IT Service Management world is that the technology management is seen as service management and therefore the deployment of tools to manage the technology is often relegated to simple process implementation. This flaw is even more expanded with clouds as more and more tools are coming in to manage clouds.  

Technology management, which is seen as a part of service management because it is the core part of producing the service, is not however seen as separate service management. With advances in virtualization and distributed computing, there are corporate network and datacenter administrators that have turned into service providers that try to meet the needs of their “customers” within the corporation.  

Now there are internal or private clouds that can emulate cloud computing on private networks. The private cloud (also called internal cloud or corporate cloud) is basically a marketing term employed for a proprietary computing architecture that provides hosted services to a limited number of people behind a firewall. But even with the private cloud there is little change in the service management equation in this environment over the legacy service management schemes. This essentially means that the support mechanism remains unchanged and the internal IT service desk will remain the same. Therefore rather than abandon the existing data centers and use the public cloud exclusively, or, conversely, rely on private cloud only and ignore the public cloud, enterprises should opt for a combination of private and public cloud, popularly known as the hybrid model. This allows it to keep control of its key IT services while leveraging cloud computing in places where it makes sense. For instance there are many companies which found it beneficial and economical to use Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) to store things like images, videos and documents. So even if one thinks that it makes sense to move most or all of your applications to the cloud, it might seem too risky to move everything all at once.  

When multiple enterprises are part in the service delivery chain then multiple groups in different companies will be the key actors in customer owned service delivery processes. It is therefore not unusual to notice that some of the service delivery processes are partly internal and partly external, making the process of ownership completely heterogeneous. So while it is true that multivendor ecosystems in  the traditional IT service environment have existed for a long time, our movement towards the cloud will further ensure that this ecosystem will by default exist and become even more complex because vendors could be unknown and hidden behind an opaque layer.

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Benefits of Datacentre Virtualization

In the recent times, there has been an overwhelming increase in the requirement for datacenter virtualization. The question arises is why there has been such a need? In this regard, we need to understand that if the key objective of enterprises today is business continuity, then it means running operations 24 x 7. All the best practices that are in operation, suggests the use of geographic redundancy to set up multiple data centers in various locations, with identical data and applications. Is there a need to duplicate everything here? Certainly, not. This is where datacenter virtualization comes into play.  

Major IT players that deal in datacenter virtualization, offer their clients and users a conventional network of consulting services that effectively virtualizes storage networks, desktops and servers. This is where the client’s hardware assets are taken over, and is virtualized and rented back to them on a per virtual, per month instance basis.  

Effective and efficient datacenter virtualization, results in a host of benefits. From an architectural point of view, the advantages are many. There are significant savings that results from efficient infrastructure use, simplified management, 99.999 per cent availability and better operational efficiency. Service providers offering datacenter virtualization solutions ensure competency in hardware requirements as well. This means, an organization would require lesser hardware or low priced hardware system to carry on the same work. In addition to this, under this system if there is a need to bring down a server without affecting the others in use, it can be done smoothly by taking out or adding in systems that support the underlying architecture.  

There exist other reasons that justify the need of datacenter virtualization. One has to take into consideration the percentage of performance and information at the time of replication procedures. In such a situation, the supreme challenge is not associated with the link capacity or bandwidth. Rather it is the fact, that what amount of data can be transferred simultaneously while doing away with the protocol communication. There have been clients and users with various connectivity’s such as OC-3 connecting data centers, where the process of replication only uses a small fraction of the pipe. With so much data that is there to transfer the replication process takes a long time. Keeping all these in mind there are various modes of datacenter virtualization solutions that put into use a WAN acceleration process to mitigate this issue.  

Benefits of datacenter virtualization are manifold and results advantages such as better architecture availability, performance, security and a reduction in the cost of hardware acquisition.

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Mining IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Potentials with RIMO

To be saved from the complexities of handling staff issues and for cost-saving purposes many businesses adopted the outsourcing approach for dealing with their IT projects. However, many fumbled and encountered failures. Handling the IT outsourcing process is not an easy job, and without an efficient management system the decisions made can affect a business adversely. IT infrastructure outsourcing requires flexibility and proper communication channels.

 
As time progresses, IT projects are becoming more complex. These projects require in-depth knowledge about new technologies and domains, interfacing applications and highly skilled employees. The traditional approach for IT infrastructure management was based on a generic model that did not have the capabilities to satisfy on-demand application requirements according to individual needs and were ostensibly expensive.

 
As businesses continued their search for an ideal model to pursue their IT ventures in a cost-effective manner, a new model — RIMO (remote infrastructure management outsourcing) — was introduced. RIMO, also known as the ‘asset light’ model, is a cloud based service which provides complete support for remote management of IT infrastructure planning including administration, monitoring and problem solving benefits. With the help of this new model, IT engineers are becoming proficient in remote management of networks, storage, desktop support, help desks, control, security and datacenter hosting services.

 
In the RIMO model, a contract between the client and the service provider is drawn up stating that the provider is responsible for continuous monitoring of the client’s IT infrastructure, identifying the probabilities of any emerging issues, providing corrective solutions and resolving existing issues from a remote location. All these services are provided either on a per device basis, as monthly fees or on the basis of time and materials. This gives businesses the leeway to manage their IT infrastructure in a cost-effective manner.

With this new RIMO model, clients can move their assets easily to other centers according to situational demands, such as growth in business, increase in IT volume or changing technological destinations. Due to its flexible nature, the controlling power is vested with the buyers rather than the owners of desktops, servers, data centers, etc. Competition is evoked based on pricing, competency levels and customization. Customers can judge based on what they are being charged, which facilitates controlling their assets, saving on hiring employees and working on the core areas of their business.

RIMO has delivered an overwhelming response as it leverages enterprise efficiency with streamlined processes. It facilitates customers by taking complete responsibility of IT infrastructure outsourcing management, from planning, evaluation and acquisition to deployment and training cycles, thus providing customers the freedom to concentrate on their core requisites.

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