Disaster Recovery

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Disaster Recovery / IT Strategy — Comments Off on Continuity Central – Less than half of North American companies tested their IT DR plans in the last year
23
Feb 18

Continuity Central – Less than half of North American companies tested their IT DR plans in the last year

The majority of businesses in North America are not fully prepared to handle a major disaster striking their IT, network and communications infrastructure according to a biennial technology survey conducted by Evolve IP. The survey of approximately 1,000 IT professionals and executives uncovered risky behaviors exhibited by the majority of organizations including incomplete and untested disaster recovery plans and outdated technologies and methodologies. The survey also identified three main characteristics of organizations that felt ‘very prepared’ to recover from a disaster.

More of the Continuity Central post

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Digital Transformation / Disaster Recovery / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy / Shadow IT / Technical Debt — Comments Off on CIO.com – The 12 biggest issues IT faces today
02
Feb 18

CIO.com – The 12 biggest issues IT faces today

When CIOs aren’t being overwhelmed by data, they’re wondering who’s securing it. They’re dealing with the pressure of cutting costs while trying to stay nimble as they face difficulties with contractors and the challenges of moving data and services to the cloud. All the while, new threats emerge that require an evolving response.

From finding qualified IT pros to keeping them from jumping ship, a range of sticky technology and personnel issues are giving IT pros cold sweats.

With a host of new concerns in 2018 — and old standbys — where should CIOs be most focused? We’ve gathered insights from experts, the C-suite, recruiters, and those in the trenches to identify today’s top-of-mind concerns and how to deal with them.

More of the CIO.com article from Paul Heltzel

Business continuity / Cloud infrastructure / Disaster Recovery / IT Strategy — Comments Off on Continuity Central – A significant number of organizations do not know how much of their IT budget is being spent on IT resilience
27
Dec 17

Continuity Central – A significant number of organizations do not know how much of their IT budget is being spent on IT resilience

Research from Databarracks, has revealed that 30 percent of organizations do not know how much of their IT budget is being spent on disaster recovery and backup services. This follows wider industry research finding that firms in Europe and North America spend seven percent of their IT budget on backup and disaster recovery.

Data from Databarracks’ annual Data Health Check survey revealed a number of insights into organizational attitudes and approaches towards IT resiliency, including:

25 percent do not know what percentage of their IT budget should be allocated for disaster recovery and business continuity;
Only 43 percent of organizations have tested their disaster recovery processes over the past 12 months;
29 percent of respondents answered “less than £1,000” when asked ‘how much annually does your organization spend on backup/DR solutions’.
Peter Groucutt, managing director of Databarracks comments: “It’s often difficult for IT to secure investment for resiliency because it’s not seen as a particularly dynamic or sexy investment that will add value like a new customer-facing system. But we all know we need to invest in resilience to ensure our continued operation.”

More of the Continuity Central article

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Disaster Recovery / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Strategy / Uncategorized — Comments Off on Continuity Central – Common trends and weaknesses in crisis preparedness and business resilience
29
Nov 17

Continuity Central – Common trends and weaknesses in crisis preparedness and business resilience

Victoria Cross, managing partner, Instinctif Partners’ Business Resilience team, discusses the top trends which have emerged from the company’s CrisisOptic and RecallOptic online diagnostic and benchmarking tools over the past year.

In the year since the CrisisOptic and RecallOptic tools have been available, we have helped over 50 businesses and organizations to quantify their business resilience. Three areas have emerged as common weaknesses in crisis preparedness and business resilience strategies and the following article looks at these in turn:

Post-incident review is a weak area

A score of 100 percent is the highest that can be achieved in each category measured, with the Review category (conducting and learning from a post-incident review) being identified as the most common area of weakness. Many of the companies obtained a low score in this area, with some even scoring zero. The average score was 50.7 per cent.

Interestingly, although overall it might be expected that larger companies would generally score more highly, size has not proved a clear indicator of preparedness. In fact, we have seen both global brands and small manufacturers scoring zero in this category.

More of the Continuity Central post

Bi-Modal IT / Business Development / CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / DevOps / Digital Transformation / Disaster Recovery / IaaS / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy — Comments Off on ZDNet – Cloud computing: How to build a business case
28
Nov 17

ZDNet – Cloud computing: How to build a business case

Like any other major tech project, moving workloads into the cloud needs a solid business case — one that takes into account all the likely costs and benefits — before a company can decide whether it’s the correct move.

Cloud migration may be a tougher proposition than a standard IT project because companies have to consider a wider variety of issues — like what to do with all those servers, or even entire data centers, that may be made redundant by the move.

The business case should calculate the costs of migrating to the cloud — which include the cost of moving systems over, as well as the cost of running services in the cloud after migration — and then compare them to the costs of keeping systems in-house.

More of the ZDNet post from Steve Ranger

Azure Stack / CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Disaster Recovery / IT Security / IT Strategy / Virtualization — Comments Off on The Register – VMware refuses to support its wares running in Azure
24
Nov 17

The Register – VMware refuses to support its wares running in Azure

VMware has responded to Microsoft’s plan to run its stack in Azure, by saying customers who choose that option will have to forego support.

“This offering has been developed independent of VMware, and is neither certified nor supported by VMware,” wrote Virtzilla’s senior veep for product development and cloud services Ajay Patel.” Patel added that no VMware partners have collaborated with the company to build Microsoft’s offering.

VMware’s reason for denying support was explained on the basis that standing up a VMware-based cloud service needs a lot of careful work one does not simply walk into Mordor.

“Our experience has shown public cloud environments require significant joint engineering to run enterprise workloads,” Patel wrote, later charactering VMware-on-AWS as a “a jointly architected, and fully tested and validated cloud service”

More of The Register article from Simon Sharwood

Business continuity / Disaster Recovery — Comments Off on Continuity Central – Cascading effects and escalations in wide-area power failures
09
Nov 17

Continuity Central – Cascading effects and escalations in wide-area power failures

A new academic paper has been published that looks at the cascading impacts of wide-area power outages. Supported by London Resilience, the paper has been written by the Cascading Disasters Research Group of UCL’s Institute For Risk And Disaster Reduction.

‘Cascading effects and escalations in wide-area power failures’ aims to “provide a synthetic overview of the cascading effects caused by wide-area power failures, and to define the recurrent impacts and sources of escalation.”

The format uses bullet points and examples to facilitate reading in conditions of limited availability of time.

More of the Continuity Central post

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Cloud infrastructure / Disaster Recovery / IT Governance / IT Security / IT Strategy — Comments Off on Continuity Central – PwC survey highlights massive corporate planning failures when it comes to cyber security
01
Nov 17

Continuity Central – PwC survey highlights massive corporate planning failures when it comes to cyber security

44 percent of the 9,500 executives in 122 countries surveyed say they do not have an overall information security strategy; 48 percent do not have an employee security awareness training programme, and 54 percent don’t have an incident response process.

PwC has published its 2018 Global State of Information Security Survey (GSISS).

Executives worldwide acknowledge the increasingly high stakes of cyber insecurity. 40 percent of survey respondents cite the disruption of operations as the biggest consequence of a cyber attack; 39 percent cite the compromise of sensitive data; 32 percent cite harm to product quality, and 22 percent cite threat to human life.

Yet despite this awareness, many companies at risk of cyber attacks remain unprepared to deal with them. 44 percent say they do not have an overall information security strategy. 48 percent say they do not have an employee security awareness training programme, and 54 percent say they do not have an incident response process.

More of the Continuity Central post

Business continuity / Disaster Recovery — Comments Off on ZDNet – DIY-IT guide to disaster preparedness: Because it’s always something
31
Oct 17

ZDNet – DIY-IT guide to disaster preparedness: Because it’s always something

2017 has been an extremely difficult year for much of North America. We were hit with hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Mary in the southeast, and wildfires through much of the west. Other regions suffered their own disasters and challenges, as well.

Hurricane risk blankets the southern and eastern coasts. Landslides occur anywhere the ground is too soft with too many rainstorms. Even in areas not normally subject to coastal hurricanes, heavy rains can cause catastrophic flooding. High winds and atmospheric conditions cause tornadoes, particularly through the middle states. Tectonic fault lines slice through the core of of our nation, causing small and devastating earthquakes.

More of the ZDNet article from David Gerwitz

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Data Center / Disaster Recovery / IT Security / IT Strategy — Comments Off on Continuity Central – Key trends in business continuity invocations
26
Oct 17

Continuity Central – Key trends in business continuity invocations

ach year Sungard AS publishes a summary of its business continuity service invocations, providing useful insights into incident trends. Here Daren Howell presents four key trends from the most recent data.

It’s easy to take for granted or forget the extent to which our lives now rely upon technology that is always on. Every now and again, however, something happens to remind us of this reliance and it’s often an uncomfortable situation for everyone involved. As IT environments become increasingly complex, unfortunately these types of incidents are only going to increase.

Over the past few years, there has been a steady uptick in the number of instances that businesses have required recovery services, reversing what was a long-established downward trend. Businesses are facing an evolving threat landscape, with the increase in malicious cyber attacks, alongside changing working habits that have seen more flexible approaches to the workplace environment and the infiltration of different and more complex technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. It’s perhaps, therefore, unsurprising that the need for recovery support is on the rise, however it is not always for the reasons you would expect.

More of the Continuity Central post

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →