The US has been hit by two major hurricanes in less than two months: Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas and Atlantic coast on September 14 as a category 1 storm, and Hurricane Michael in the Florida panhandle on Oct. 9 as a category 4 storm. Both have caused massive flooding, killed nearly 60 people and are estimated to cause billions of dollars in damage when all is said and done. As people recover from the storms and assess their personal …

Now that we’ve had some time to recover from last week’s Microsoft Azure outage, we can look back and ask, “What happened?!” Microsoft has released a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) explaining the incident, but what else have we learned from the incident? Below are three key takeaways from the event. Public cloud providers aren’t immune to outages We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, but no one is immune to downtime. It can happen to anyone, anywhere. Even with …

When you think of a security threat, what comes to mind? A ransomware attack? A thief drilling into your vault and stealing your money? An unpatched vulnerability that could expose sensitive data? While all of these threats represent external forces, it’s just as important to remember your internal threats, too. In this post, we’ll discuss a few ways you can stay on top of insider threats to your organization’s data and reputation and take appropriate steps to protect your employees–not …

When we talk about disaster recovery, everyone says they want high resiliency. It’s definitely a trendy buzzword. But what does that mean exactly? What is high resilience? Well, the simplest definition would be “it never goes down.” But there’s a lot more to it than that, and as we’ll explore in this post, you may discover that high resiliency doesn’t necessarily mean “it never goes down.” According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, resilience means: a : capable of withstanding shock without …

According to a report published by Transparency Market Research, the market for Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS) is expected to reach $46 billion by 2024. What is DPaaS, and how does it compare to the well-established backup and DR markets? Are they the same? Let’s start with a broader picture. There are three basic levels of data protection: Offsite backup, disaster recovery, and data protection as a service. Offsite backup traditionally means taking drives and storing them somewhere else, such as your …

One of the biggest concerns around hybrid cloud for organizations is data security. According to Gartner, 38 percent of companies who don’t plan to use public cloud cited security and privacy as the main reasons. It’s very logical (and necessary) to ask how the cloud will protect your most valuable asset – your data. What are the biggest security challenges in hybrid cloud adoption? According to experts, the biggest security concerns in a hybrid environment are compliance, lack of encryption, poor …

Online Tech recently hosted a webinar on virtual private clouds and how they help your business. Our panelists were Aaron Lake, senior solutions architect, and Kurt Schaldenbrand, product design manager. Together, they have more than 40 years of experience designing and building applications for a variety of platforms and were happy to lend their expertise. Schaldenbrand and Lake gave a comprehensive overview of Online Tech’s virtual private cloud offering and how the easy self-serve options within the client portal, OTPortal, …

Disaster recovery used to be one of the first items cut from IT budgets, citing time and expense to implement, monitor, manage and maintain something you probably wouldn’t need. But disaster recovery has come a long way, and those reasons are antiquated. However, if you’re looking at cutting IT costs, here are five reasons to keep disaster recovery off the chopping block: It’s a cost-effective option: No more excuses that it’s too expensive and time consuming to have. Thanks to cloud …

Picture this: The second quarter of 2008. My sales vice president and I were doing a pipeline review with our sales team. Every person reported that most of their IT disaster recovery opportunities were in a holding pattern. Companies were defunding DR in preparation of tough economic times. In other words, our prospects were saying disaster recovery was not necessary to continue collecting revenue. Why was this important in our Q2 2008 pipeline meeting? Because as the bottom fell out …

A key component of a successful disaster recovery plan is testing it. Testing once a year is usually not enough, and you’ll want to make sure you can run a proper failover when you need to. A failover is when you move from one environment to another. In disaster recovery terminology, it’s used to mean the transfer from a production environment to a recovery one. A failover is a huge process, and there are many complications that can arise from it. …