Tag Archives: Data backups

08.28.15
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Understand How Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Interrelate

Understanding the importance of Disaster Recovery within a Business Continuity plan has become more important as data types and regulatory requirements have become more complex.

To begin, the difference of disaster recovery and business continuity must be understood. Both disciplines describe a company’s preparation for the mitigation of risks to continued operations. Disaster recovery applies to the technology operations of the business. Whereas, business continuity has a larger scope that includes technology, physical assets and manual business processes such as workflow, customer service and more. As stated in the StandBy article BCP vs DRP “A mistake often made by organisations is that ‘we have an IT DR Plan, we are all ok“.  That is not the case.  You need to have a Business Continuity Plan in place for critical personnel, key business processes, recovery of vital records, critical suppliers identification, contacting of key vendors and clients etc.”

Developing business continuity planThe complexity of these plans has increased along with their importance. For the disaster recovery plan, regulation has added a level of sophistication that was not required as it is today. Data backup and recovery strategies must meet company policies regarding regulatory requirements, data breaches, ability to respond to court orders, and more.

There are real life situations that require the ability to “look back in time”. Consider that data is not only required to be backed up for protection of a catastrophic event, but, it also needs to be restored in different ways for different purposes and meet varying requirements. A request can be made from a government regulatory body to retrieve data from a certain date or from a past event. This requires coordinated strategies and testing to ensure these types of requests can be accomplished. Data Backup strategies must be planned and tested to assure all company requirements regarding data retention and recovery are met.

Data types have become more complex as the Internet of Things has expanded the scope of what data is, where it comes from and what it looks like. As we stated earlier in this Blog in the post THE IOT IS RENDERING YOUR OLD DATA BACK AND RECOVERY PLAN OBSOLETE, “Businesses are integrating the IoT with their mission critical applications at an accelerated rate. There is a need for data from specialized devices and applications to be made available to business applications. The data being generated from devices in trucks, shipping docks, and house water meters are being integrated with core business processes for analytics and advanced business processing. So, this data has now become corporate data.”

Data recovery and its interrelationship with business continuity plans must be understood and then reevaluated to meet modern requirements. Consult with professionals that understand theses complex relationships, such as Salvus Data Consultants, of Texas.

02.24.15
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API’s Are Being Developed to Keep Up With the Expansion of the Internet of Things

When referencing the Internet of Things, it is important to understand that it is really about the data being transmitted, not the devices or the applications. If these devices or applications remained in communication with only their own platform, they would not be part of IoT. These devices must be interacting with traditional applications to be playing a part in the IOT.

To facilitate the expansion of the IOT, APIs are being built at an accelerated pace.network security

In the report from GIGAOM Research called Building an API-driven Ecosystem for the Internet of Things, there are Key findings that include:

  • IoT hardware is not the end game: The profits, margins, and innovations will come from the new products and services built on open, flexible APIs.
  • Technical excellence is not enough. Successful IoT developers must properly onboard, support, monetize, secure, and evolve their platforms in order to compete.
  • Modern APIs enable service composition rather than individual functions, creating an IoT supply chain.
  • Ecosystem architects should build on practices established in mobile-app development for their foundation, customizing only when necessary.

The IT staffs of medium-sized companies will be seeing more requests to integrate the IoT with their mission critical applications. There is a need for the data from these devices and applications to be made available to business applications for increased corporate value. Businesses are integrating specialized devices and applications with core business processes for analytics and advanced business processing. This data has now become corporate data.

The result is more complex data types within the corporate business data environment. This provides an additional burden on the IT staff in understanding the implications of developing backup procedures for these diverse data types.

To discuss this trend in further detail, contact Salvus Data, a data backup and recovery MSP with consultants experienced in backing up complex data types.

11.18.14
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Backup Considerations Grow Within the SMB as the Internet of Things Grows

The IT staffs of medium-sized companies will be seeing more requests to integrate the IoT (Internet of Things) with their missions critical applications.

As stated in the article Internet Of Things: Software platforms will become the rage in 2015, “The growing scope and importance of the data from IoT will force CIOs to integrate the Internet of Things into their Business Technology agenda, with full capabilities for data management, analytics, security, and enterprise application integration.”

Internet of ThingsSo, what is the Internet of Things? First, let’s understand that there is a growing trend in the use of sensors in cars, traffic lights, water meters, and much more. When these devices connect to the Internet to transfer their data to monitoring applications, business applications, or to other devices, this environment becomes the Internet of Things. Other data contributing to the environment is the data from Social Media activity and other applications not in the category of typical core business applications.

It is important to understand that it is the data being transferred over the Internet that makes the Internet of Things (IoT). If these devices or applications remained in communication with only their own platform, they would not be part of IoT.

The trend is that there is a need for the data from these devices and applications to be made available to business applications for increased corporate value. Businesses are integrating these specialized devices and applications with core business processes for analytics and advanced business processing. This data has now become corporate data.

The result is more complex data types within the corporate business data environment. Central backup procedures must be reviewed by IT for proper governance and assurance of data resiliency. This data is now mission critical and must be treated as legacy business data, such as Accounting, Payroll, etc. This provides an additional burden on the IT staff in understanding the implications of developing backup procedures for these diverse data types.

For assistance in reviewing your backup procedure, you can contact Salvus Data, a data backup and recovery MSP specializing in Tivoli Storage Manager.