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Case Study – Healthcare – Skyway Behavioral Health
Start Up Requiring Robust Infrastructure – From Planning to Implementation
The 7 Irresistible Qualities of Cloud ERP
Learn why ERP tools are an critical component for many businesses.
Why a Business Continuity Plan is Essential
Learn why your company needs a business continuity plan.
Ransomware 101
If you’re looking for ways to stop ransomware dead in its tracks, the experts at CCS Technology are here to help.
How managed services make the difference
Learn more about the benefits of partnering with a managed services provider.
Cloud Services and the SMB Revolution
Learn more about how Cloud Services from CCS make your life easier.
Office 365 Migration Made Easy
Migrating over to Office 365 has never been easier with CCS Technology.
The Advantages of Working with I.T. Pros
Learn how working with a seasoned technology pro makes your work easier.
Closing Common Cybersecurity Holes
Learn several critical cybersecurity tips and tricks any SMB can use.
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6 Ways to Keep Your Cloud Secure
/in Blog, Cloud, Security /by Chris HigginsThe simplest way to migrate to the cloud is to lift and shift your applications, migrating them exactly as they are. That doesn’t work for security, though. To make sure your cloud resources are properly protected, you need to review the security features offered by your cloud provider and make sure you implement them properly. You should check out the following:
1. Cloud provider compliance certifications
Meeting your own security standards is easier when the cloud provider offers a strong base. If the cloud provider offers infrastructure certified to meet the compliance standards relevant to your industry, be sure you deploy to that environment.
2. Encrypt your data
Store data in an encrypted format to keep it protected. You can usually easily turn on database encryption in the cloud. It’s simpler to allow the cloud provider to manage the encryption keys, though you’ll gain additional security if you manage them for yourself. Depending on how encryption is implemented, encrypting stored data may not require any application changes, making it compatible with a lift and shift migration.
3. Use identity and access management controls
Identity and access management (IAM) lets you limit access to your cloud resources. You may be able to use the same IAM tools in the cloud as in your data center, allowing you to lift and sift this security control as well. In either case, make sure privileges are set properly.
4. Don’t adopt default cloud configurations
The default configurations established by many cloud providers are not security conscious. Don’t assume they’re set the way you need them. Make sure these settings are appropriate for your applications and modify them when they are not. Where possible, use templates or base cloud images that have the settings you need built in to create all your cloud instances.
5. Separate production, test, and development environments
Because cloud lets you create and shut down instances as needed, you may see recommendations to speed production deployments by turning the “test” instance into production and creating a new test instance the next time you need it. The problem with this is that test environment configurations are often not as secure as those needed in a production environment. You’ll lose a little deployment speed but gain a lot of additional security by keeping the distinction between environments.
6. Don’t forget about the devices that access cloud
Securing your cloud resources requires more than just securing the cloud; it requires securing the devices that access the cloud. Don’t forget about tools such as firewalls to protect your network, and consider mobile device management software to protect your cloud from mobile device risks.
CCS Technology Group’s cloud services ensure your cloud provides a cost-effective, efficient, and secure environment that meets your IT needs. Contact us to learn more about building and using cloud safely.
Additional Cloud Security Resources
Closing Common Cybersecurity Holes
7 Common Mistakes That Place Your Data in Danger
Protecting Your Business Against Phishing Emails
Overcome the Challenges of Hybrid IT With Managed Services
/in Blog, Managed Services /by Chris HigginsThere’s no doubt your data center is a mix of technologies. Hybrid IT is the way the world works today. It’s not about hybrid cloud, though that might be a part of it—it’s about choosing the right environment for each application, whether that means public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, or purely in your data center. It means having multiple cloud providers as you match each workload to the most appropriate service. It means complexity that allows you to deliver tremendous business benefits but can leave your IT team struggling to keep the environments under control.
Challenges of Hybrid IT
Some of the challenges of hybrid IT come simply because the complexity means there are more choices and more decisions to be made. When you use a single technology, when the business comes to you with a request, you know the tools you’ll be using. When you support a hybrid environment, you need to spend additional time understanding the business requirements in depth so you can deploy it most effectively. This means spending more time talking with the business before you start implementing their technology.
Hybrid IT means you’ve got to develop a multitude of data migration strategies, one for each environment. Although the environments may be isolated, it’s likely they’ll need to share data, so migration, or at least synchronization, isn’t a one-time effort either.
Keeping the data secure and in compliance is also challenging, because each of your different environments has its own controls. Bringing them all into alignment with your own policies can be time-consuming. Assuring consistency across the environments requires ongoing monitoring and the assistance of automation to promote policies.
With multiple types of technology in use, it’s harder to keep an eye on costs. Usage statistics and spending details come from multiple providers and offer differing levels of granularity. Hybrid IT can result in silos that hide the overall spending picture. Consider using tools that bring multiple bills into a single dashboard and make it easier to monitor spending. Analytics can identify opportunities to reduce spending through consolidating and shutting down instances.
Monitoring multiple systems is difficult, too, again because it’s hard to get an overall picture of how your infrastructure is functioning. You also have to manage multiple vendors, track multiple contracts, and interface with multiple contacts to resolve issues. It’s difficult for your team to have the expertise needed across all platforms to keep your entire infrastructure operating at a high level of performance.
Managed Services Address Hybrid IT’s Challenges
Hybrid IT is unavoidable; there are too many benefits from having the ability to tailor each workload’s infrastructure to match its requirements exactly. Managed services can help you get control back over this complex infrastructure, bringing in a team that’s experienced with all the technologies you use and overseeing daily operations. Contact CCS Technology Group to learn how our managed services can help you take better advantage of your hybrid IT infrastructure.
Interested in learning more about the benefits of partnering with a managed services provider? Check out our guide How Managed Services Make the Difference.
Additional Managed Services Resources
5 Tips for Getting the Best Results from a Managed Services Provider
Choose the Right Managed Services Provider for Your Business
6 Big Benefits from Using Managed Services
Craft An Effective Disaster Recovery Plan
/in Blog, Business Continuity, Security /by Chris HigginsIf you don’t want to be scrambling in the middle of a crisis, you need a plan. Here’s what to think about as you develop your disaster recovery plan to make sure you get out of the situation and back into normal operations fast:
Communications plan
There’s bound to be lots of confusion during an incident, but you don’t want there to be any confusion about who’s in charge. Make sure your plan identifies who decides to invoke the disaster recovery plan and how this will be communicated to everyone who needs to be involved in the recovery.
Scope of potential threats
Crises come in all sizes, from a single accidentally deleted critical file to a fire that destroys your primary data center. Spend time assessing a variety of possible situations and determine how you’ll match your response to the size of the outage.
Lists of systems and people
You’ll need a complete list of all hardware and software that your business uses, as well as network diagrams. Also create a list of all the staff you’ll need to help bring the systems back online, including their contact info. Include contact info for third parties, such as vendors and partners, that may need to make changes on their side to connect to your recovery site.
Priorities and targets
It isn’t possible to bring up all systems at the same time, and it usually isn’t necessary. Take your list of systems and evaluate the priority of each system so you know where you need to focus your effort. For each system, set a specific recovery time objective and recovery point objective, specifying how rapidly you need to restore that system to operation and how much data you can afford to lose. Once you know these numbers, you can craft a recovery strategy for each application to meet those targets.
Recovery procedures
Document the details of the recovery procedures for each application, including the complete details of the commands that need to be executed. Identify the other processes the application depends on in order to start up. Include validations that allow you to confirm the application is running properly in its recovery mode.
Fallback procedures
Once the disaster is over, you’ll want to resume operations in your normal production environment. Executing fallback processes can be as complex as the disaster recovery procedure itself, so document the process to the same level of detail.
Once your disaster recovery plan is complete, schedule a test to validate that it works. Then update the plan with any corrections, clarifications, or critical information that was missed the first time around. Because your infrastructure changes continually, your plan should be a living document. When you place new resources into production, you should also update your plan to include them. The entire plan should be periodically reviewed and tested, at least annually, to make sure there are no omissions and that it works with your current infrastructure.
CCS Technology Group provides comprehensive disaster recovery services. Contact us to find out how you can make your plan more effective.
Did you know three out of four small businesses have no disaster recovery plan at all? Learn more in Why a Business Continuity Plan is Essential.
Additional Disaster Recovery Resources
7 Common Mistakes That Place Your Data in Danger
Backups Are Not A Disaster Recovery Solution
The Differences Between Backups, Disaster Recovery, and Archiving Matter