Cost of Data Breaches High for Small Businesses

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Cost of Data Breaches High for Small Businesses

By Meg Conlan as written on biztechmagazine.com
Cybersecurity concerns aren’t limited to large enterprises.
According to a newly released Kaspersky Lab survey, small businesses shell out an average of $38,000 to recover from a single data breach. The amount climbs once indirect expenses and damage to reputation are taken into account.
Kaspersky Lab calculated $8,000 in indirect expenses, which included staffing, training and infrastructure upgrades designed to prevent future breaches. Losses due to brand damage were more difficult to determine. Kaspersky Lab landed on an estimate of $8,653 after factoring in consultancy expenses, lost business opportunities and the cost of PR and marketing campaigns aimed at restoring corporate image.
The release of those findings coincides with the 12th annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month. President Barack Obama designated October as a time to educate public and private organizations about the importance of data protection during a national security incident, and the Kaspersky Lab results work to underscore that importance.
“These numbers should serve as a wakeup call for both large and small businesses,” Chris Doggett, managing director of Kaspersky Lab North America, said in a statement. “IT security needs to become a more common priority for organizations and it is our hope that these numbers will motivate businesses to take the necessary steps to implement effective cybersecurity technology and strategies to prevent having to pay an enormous cybersecurity bill.”
Thus far, it doesn’t appear that businesses have found that motivation. The survey results show that half of IT professionals don’t list security-breach prevention among their top three IT priorities. Forty-four percent of businesses have not yet implemented anti-malware solutions.
Moving forward, a casual stance on security could be an issue for many organizations, especially considering that security breaches have become pervasive: Kaspersky Lab found that 90 percent of the 5,500 small, medium and large companies surveyed have experienced at least one security incident.
The causes of those breaches vary. Data from the Ponemon Institute’s “2015 Cost of Data Breach Study: United States” shows that 49 percent of data breaches stemmed from malicious or criminal attacks, 19 percent involved employee negligence and 32 percent were caused by system glitches.
Thankfully, policies, procedures and technologies can help mitigate risks. And according to the Ponemon Institute, incident response plans, the extensive use of encryption, CISO leadership, employee training and insurance protection can help reduce the costs of a data breach.
Of course, such factors will only benefit organizations that are willing to pump substantial time and resources into IT, but Kaspersky Lab says IT personnel need only think about the alternative to justify the investments.
“One thing is certain — the cost of a security breach is always higher than the cost of protection,” the report states. “The ability to reduce the risk and avoid the shaky path of recovery always pays off.”

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With vast quantities of vital data moving through your business, even with limited resources and budget, it is critical for an organization to have a true business continuity and disaster recovery plan in place. This is the only solution to deliver an advanced insurance policy against loss of data and downtime.
Managed Solution has a cost-effective, proactive business continuity solution designed to "failover" through virtualization in the event of an outage. This allows mission-critical systems to remain operational with limited disruption. Public and private businesses are required to follow compliance requirements and retention regulations. Since these laws are continually evolving, how can you ensure your solution continues to meet these ever-changing requirements? Our methodology will assess your existing environment to ensure you've met the compliance regulations specific to your line of business.

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The need for urgent collective action to keep people safe online: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

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cyber attacks - managed solution

The need for urgent collective action to keep people safe online: Lessons from last week’s cyberattack

By Brad Smith as written on blogs.microsoft.com
Early Friday morning the world experienced the year’s latest cyberattack.
Starting first in the United Kingdom and Spain, the malicious “WannaCrypt” software quickly spread globally, blocking customers from their data unless they paid a ransom using Bitcoin. The WannaCrypt exploits used in the attack were drawn from the exploits stolen from the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the United States. That theft was publicly reported earlier this year. A month prior, on March 14, Microsoft had released a security update to patch this vulnerability and protect our customers. While this protected newer Windows systems and computers that had enabled Windows Update to apply this latest update, many computers remained unpatched globally. As a result, hospitals, businesses, governments, and computers at homes were affected.
All of this provides the broadest example yet of so-called “ransomware,” which is only one type of cyberattack. Unfortunately, consumers and business leaders have become familiar with terms like “zero day” and “phishing” that are part of the broad array of tools used to attack individuals and infrastructure. We take every single cyberattack on a Windows system seriously, and we’ve been working around the clock since Friday to help all our customers who have been affected by this incident. This included a decision to take additional steps to assist users with older systems that are no longer supported. Clearly, responding to this attack and helping those affected needs to be our most immediate priority.
At the same time, it’s already apparent that there will be broader and important lessons from the “WannaCrypt” attack we’ll need to consider to avoid these types of attacks in the future. I see three areas where this event provides an opportunity for Microsoft and the industry to improve.
As a technology company, we at Microsoft have the first responsibility to address these issues. We increasingly are among the first responders to attacks on the internet. We have more than 3,500 security engineers at the company, and we’re working comprehensively to address cybersecurity threats. This includes new security functionality across our entire software platform, including constant updates to our Advanced Threat Protection service to detect and disrupt new cyberattacks. In this instance, this included the development and release of the patch in March, a prompt update on Friday to Windows Defender to detect the WannaCrypt attack, and work by our customer support personnel to help customers afflicted by the attack.
But as this attack demonstrates, there is no cause for celebration. We’ll assess this attack, ask what lessons we can learn, and apply these to strengthen our capabilities. Working through our Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and Digital Crimes Unit, we’ll also share what we learn with law enforcement agencies, governments, and other customers around the world.
Second, this attack demonstrates the degree to which cybersecurity has become a shared responsibility between tech companies and customers. The fact that so many computers remained vulnerable two months after the release of a patch illustrates this aspect. As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, there is simply no way for customers to protect themselves against threats unless they update their systems. Otherwise they’re literally fighting the problems of the present with tools from the past. This attack is a powerful reminder that information technology basics like keeping computers current and patched are a high responsibility for everyone, and it’s something every top executive should support.
At the same time, we have a clear understanding of the complexity and diversity of today’s IT infrastructure, and how updates can be a formidable practical challenge for many customers. Today, we use robust testing and analytics to enable rapid updates into IT infrastructure, and we are dedicated to developing further steps to help ensure security updates are applied immediately to all IT environments.
Finally, this attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. This is an emerging pattern in 2017. We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen. And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today – nation-state action and organized criminal action.
The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call. They need to take a different approach and adhere in cyberspace to the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world. We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits. This is one reason we called in February for a new “Digital Geneva Convention” to govern these issues, including a new requirement for governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them. And it’s why we’ve pledged our support for defending every customer everywhere in the face of cyberattacks, regardless of their nationality. This weekend, whether it’s in London, New York, Moscow, Delhi, Sao Paulo, or Beijing, we’re putting this principle into action and working with customers around the world.
We should take from this recent attack a renewed determination for more urgent collective action. We need the tech sector, customers, and governments to work together to protect against cybersecurity attacks. More action is needed, and it’s needed now. In this sense, the WannaCrypt attack is a wake-up call for all of us. We recognize our responsibility to help answer this call, and Microsoft is committed to doing its part.

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8 ingredients of an effective disaster recovery plan

Earlier this month, a monkey caused a nationwide power outage in Kenya. Millions of homes and businesses were without electricity. Which just goes to show that “not all disasters come in the form of major storms with names and categories,” says Bob Davis, CMO, Atlantis Computing.

“Electrical fires, broken water pipes, failed air conditioning units [and rogue monkeys] can cause just as much damage,” he says. And while “business executives might think they’re safe based on their geographic location,” it’s important to remember that “day-to-day threats can destroy data [and] ruin a business,” too, he says. That’s why it is critical for all businesses to have a disaster recovery (DR) plan.

However, not all DR plans are created equal. To ensure that your systems, data and personnel are protected and your business can continue to operate in the event of an actual emergency or disaster, use the following guidelines to create a disaster plan that will help you quickly recover.

1. Inventory hardware and software. Your DR plan should include “a complete inventory of [hardware and] applications in priority order,” says Oussama El-Hilali, vice president of Products for Arcserve. “Each application [and piece of hardware] should have the vendor technical support contract information and contact numbers,” so you can get back up and running quickly.

2. Define your tolerance for downtime and data loss. “This is the starting point of your planning,” says Tim Singleton, president, Strive Technology Consulting. “If you are a plumber, you can probably be in business without servers or technology [for] a while. [But] if you are eBay, you can’t be down for more than seconds. Figuring out where you are on this spectrum will determine what type of solution you will need to recover from a disaster.”

“Evaluate what an acceptable recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) is for each set of applications,” advises says David Grimes, CTO, NaviSite. “In an ideal situation, every application would have an RPO and RTO of just a few milliseconds, but that’s often neither technically nor financially feasible. By properly identifying these two metrics businesses can prioritize what is needed to successfully survive a disaster, ensure a cost-effective level of disaster recovery and lower the potential risk of miscalculating what they’re able to recover during a disaster.”

“When putting your disaster recovery plan in writing, divide your applications into three tiers,”

says Robert DiLossi, senior director, Testing & Crisis Management, Sungard Availability Services. “Tier 1 should include the applications you need immediately. These are the mission-critical apps you can’t do business without. Tier 2 covers applications you need within eight to 10 hours, even up to 24 hours. They’re essential, but you don’t need them right away. Tier 3 applications can be comfortably recovered within a few days,” he explains.

“Defining which applications are most important will aid the speed and success of the recovery. But most important is testing the plan at least twice per year,” he says. “The tiers might change based on the results, which could reveal unknown gaps to fill before a true disaster.”

3. Lay out who is responsible for what – and identify backup personnel. “All disaster recovery plans should clearly define the key roles, responsibilities and parties involved during a DR event,” says Will Chin, director of cloud services, Computer Design & Integration. “Among these responsibilities must be the decision to declare a disaster. Having clearly identified roles will garner a universal understanding of what tasks need to be completed and who is [responsible for what]. This is especially critical when working with third-party vendors or providers.  All parties involved need to be aware of each other's responsibilities in order to ensure the DR process operates as efficiently as possible.”

“Have plans for your entire staff, from C-level executives all the way down, and make sure they understand the process,” and what’s expected of them, says Neely Loring, president, Matrix, which provides cloud-based solutions, including Disaster-Recover-as-a-Service. “This gets everyone back on their feet quicker.”

“Protocols for a disaster recovery (DR) plan must include who and how to contact the appropriate individuals on the DR team, and in what order, to get systems up and running as soon as possible,” adds Kevin Westenkirchner, vice president, operations, Thru. “It is critical to have a list of the DR personnel with the details of their position, responsibilities [and emergency contact information].”

“One final consideration is to have a succession plan in place with trained back-up employees in case a key staff member is on vacation or in a place where they cannot do their part [or leaves the company],” says Brian Ferguson, product marketing manager, Digium.

4. Create a communication plan. “Perhaps one of the more overlooked components of a disaster recovery plan is having a good communication plan,” says Mike Genardi, solutions architect, Computer Design & Integration. “In the event a disaster strikes, how are you going to communicate with your employees? Do your employees know how to access the systems they need to perform their job duties during a DR event?

“Many times the main communication platforms (phone and email) may be affected and alternative methods of contacting your employees will be needed,” he explains. “A good communication plan will account for initial communications at the onset of a disaster as well as ongoing updates to keep staff informed throughout the event.”

“Communication is critical when responding to and recovering from any emergency, crisis event or disaster,” says Scott D. Smith, chief commercial officer at ModusLink. So having “a clear communications strategy is essential. Effective and reliable methods for communicating with employees, vendors, suppliers and customers in a timely manner are necessary beyond initial notification of an emergency. Having a written process in place to reference ensures efficient action post-disaster and alignment between organizations, employees and partners.”

“A disaster recovery plan should [also] include a statement that can be published on your company’s website and social media platforms in the event of an emergency,” adds Robert Gibbons, CTO, Datto, a data protection platform. And be prepared to “give your customers timely status updates on what they can expect from your business and when. If your customers understand that you are aware of the situation, you are adequately prepared and working to take care of it in a timely manner, they will feel much better.”

5. Let employees know where to go in case of emergency – and have a backup worksite. “Many firms think that the DR plan is just for their technology systems, but they fail to realize that people (i.e., their employees) also need to have a plan in place,” says Ahsun Saleem, president, Simplegrid Technology. “Have an alternate site in mind if your primary office is not available. Ensure that your staff knows where to go, where to sit and how to access the systems from that site. Provide a map to the alternate site and make sure you have seating assignments there.”

“In the event of a disaster, your team will need an operational place to work, with the right equipment, space and communications,” says DiLossi. “That might mean telework and other alternative strategies need to be devised in case a regional disaster causes power outages across large geographies. Be sure to note any compliance requirements and contract dedicated workspace where staff and data can remain private. [And] don’t contract 50 seats if you’ll really need 200 to truly meet your recovery requirements.”

6. Make sure your service-level agreements (SLAs) include disasters/emergencies. “If you have outsourced your technology to an outsourced IT firm, or store your systems in a data center/co-location facility, make sure you have a binding agreement with them that defines their level of service in the event of a disaster,” says Saleem. “This [will help] ensure that they start working on resolving your problem within [a specified time]. Some agreements can even discuss the timeframe in getting systems back up.”

7. Include how to handle sensitive information. “Defining operational and technical procedures to ensure the protection of…sensitive information is a critical component of a DR plan,” says Eric Dieterich, partner, Sunera. “These procedures should address how sensitive information will be maintained [and accessed] when a DR plan has been activated.”

8. Test your plan regularly. “If you’re not testing your DR process, you don’t have one,” says Singleton. “Your backup hardware may have failed, your supply chain may rely on someone incapable of dealing with disaster, your internet connection may be too slow to restore your data in the expected amount of time, the DR key employee may have changed [his] cell phone number. There are a lot of things that may break a perfect plan. The only way to find them is to test it when you can afford to fail.”

“Your plan must include details on how your DR environment will be tested, including the method and frequency of tests,” says Dave LeClair, vice president, product marketing, Unitrends, a cloud-based IT disaster recovery and continuity solution provider. “Our recent continuity survey of 900 IT admins discovered less than 40 percent of companies test their DR more frequently than once per year and 36 percent don’t test at all.

“Infrequent testing will likely result in DR environments that do not perform as required during a disaster,” he explains. “Your plan should define recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) goals per workload and validate that they can be met. Fortunately, recovery assurance technology now exists that is able to automate DR testing without disrupting production systems and can certify RTO and RPO targets are being met for 100 percent confidence in disaster recovery even for complex n-tier applications.”

Also keep in mind that “when it comes to disaster recovery, you’re only as good as your last test,” says Loring. “A testing schedule is the single most important part of any DR plan. Compare your defined RTO and RPO metrics against tested results to determine the efficacy of your plan. The more comprehensive the testing, the more successful a company will be in getting back on their feet,” he states. “We test our generators weekly to ensure their function. Always remember that failing a test is not a bad thing. It is better to find these problems early than to find them during a crisis. Decide what needs to be modified and test until you’re successful.”

And don’t forget about testing your employees. “The employees that are involved need to be well versed in the plan and be able to perform every task they are assigned to without issue,” says Ferguson. “Running simulated disasters and drills help ensure that your staff can execute the plan when an actual event occurs.”

Cloud migration and disaster recovery of load balanced multi-tier applications

azure site recovery 2 - managed solutionCloud migration and disaster recovery of load balanced multi-tier applications

Support for Microsoft Azure virtual machines availability sets has been a highly anticipated capability by many Azure Site Recovery customers who are using the product for either cloud migration or disaster recovery of applications. Today, I am excited to announce that Azure Site Recovery now supports creating failed over virtual machines in an availability set. This in turn allows that you can configure an internal or external load balancer to distribute traffic between multiple virtual machines of the same tier of an application. With the Azure Site Recovery promise of cloud migration and  disaster recovery of applications, this first-class integration with availability sets and load balancers makes it simpler for you to run your failed over applications on Microsoft Azure with the same guarantees that you had while running them on the primary site.
In an earlier blog of this series, you learned about the importance and complexity involved in recovering applications – Cloud migration and disaster recovery for applications, not just virtual machines. The next blog was a deep-dive on recovery plans describing how you can do a One-click cloud migration and disaster recovery of applications. In this blog, we look at how to failover or migrate a load balanced multi-tier application using Azure Site Recovery.
To demonstrate real-world usage of availability sets and load balancers in a recovery plan, a three-tier SharePoint farm with a SQL Always On backend is being used.  A single recovery plan is used to orchestrate failover of this entire SharePoint farm.
Disaster Recovery of three tier SharePoint Farm
Here are the steps to set up availability sets and load balancers for this SharePoint farm when it needs to run on Microsoft Azure:
  1. Under the Recovery Services vault, go to Compute and Network settings of each of the application tier virtual machines, and configure an availability set for them.
  2. Configure another availability set for each of web tier virtual machines.
  3. Add the two application tier virtual machines and the two web tier virtual machines in Group 1 and Group 2 of a recovery plan respectively.
  4. If you have not already done so, click the following button to import the most popular Azure Site Recovery automation runbooks into your Azure Automation account.

    DeployToAzure

  5. Add script ASR-SQL-FailoverAG as a pre-step to Group 1.
  6. Add script ASR-AddMultipleLoadBalancers as a post-step to both Group 1 and Group 2.
  7. Create an Azure Automation variable using the instructions outlined in the scripts. For this example, these are the exact commands used.
$InputObject = @{"TestSQLVMRG" = "SQLRG" ; "TestSQLVMName" = "SharePointSQLServer-test" ; "ProdSQLVMRG" = "SQLRG" ; "ProdSQLVMName" = "SharePointSQLServer"; "Paths" = @{ "1"="SQLSERVER:SQLSharePointSQLDEFAULTAvailabilityGroupsConfig_AG"; "2"="SQLSERVER:SQLSharePointSQLDEFAULTAvailabilityGroupsContent_AG"}; "406d039a-eeae-11e6-b0b8-0050568f7993"=@{ "LBName"="ApptierInternalLB"; "ResourceGroupName"="ContosoRG"}; "c21c5050-fcd5-11e6-a53d-0050568f7993"=@{ "LBName"="ApptierInternalLB"; "ResourceGroupName"="ContosoRG"}; "45a4c1fb-fcd3-11e6-a53d-0050568f7993"=@{ "LBName"="WebTierExternalLB"; "ResourceGroupName"="ContosoRG"}; "7cfa6ff6-eeab-11e6-b0b8-0050568f7993"=@{ "LBName"="WebTierExternalLB"; "ResourceGroupName"="ContosoRG"}} $RPDetails = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $InputObject | ConvertTo-Json New-AzureRmAutomationVariable -Name "SharePointRecoveryPlan" -ResourceGroupName "AutomationRG" -AutomationAccountName "ASRAutomation" -Value $RPDetails -Encrypted $false
You have now completed customizing your recovery plan and it is ready to be failed over.
Azure Site Recovery SharePoint Recovery Plan
Once the failover (or test failover) is complete and the SharePoint farm runs in Microsoft Azure, it looks like this:
SharePoint Farm on Azure failed over using Azure Site Recovery
Watch this demo video to see all this in action - how using in-built constructs that Azure Site Recovery provides we can failover a three-tier application using a single-click recovery plan. The recovery plan automates the following tasks:
  1. Failing over SQL Always On Availability Group to the virtual machine running in Microsoft Azure
  2. Failing over the web and app tier virtual machines that were part of the SharePoint farm
  3. Attaching an internal load balancer on the application tier virtual machines of the SharePoint farm that are in an availability set
  4. Attaching an external load balancer on the web tier virtual machines of the SharePoint farm that are in an availability set
 
With relentless focus on ensuring that you succeed with full application recovery, Azure Site Recovery is the one-stop shop for all your disaster recovery and migration needs. Our mission is to democratize disaster recovery with the power of Microsoft Azure, to enable not just the elite tier-1 applications to have a business continuity plan, but offer a compelling solution that empowers you to set up a working end to end disaster recovery plan for 100% of your organization's IT applications.
You can check out additional product information and start protecting and migrating your workloads to Microsoft Azure using Azure Site Recovery today. You can use the powerful replication capabilities of Azure Site Recovery for 31 days at no charge for every new physical server or virtual machine that you replicate, whether it is running on VMware or Hyper-V. To learn more about Azure Site Recovery, check out our How-To Videos. Visit the Azure Site Recovery forum on MSDN for additional information and to engage with other customers, or use the Azure Site Recovery User Voice to let us know what features you want us to enable next.

Azure Data Factory March new features update

Azure Data Factory March new features update

Hello, everyone! In March, we added a lot of great new capabilities to Azure Data Factory, including high demanding features like loading data from SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse (BW) and SFTP, performance enhancement of directly loading from Data Lake Store into SQL Data Warehouse, data movement support for the first region in the UK (UK South), and a new Spark activity for rich data transformation. We can’t wait to share more details with you, following is a complete list of Azure Data Factory March new features:

Support data loading from SAP HANA and SAP Business Warehouse

SAP is one of the most widely-used enterprise softwares in the world. We hear you that it’s crucial for Microsoft to empower customers to integrate their existing SAP system with Azure to unlock business insights. We are happy to announce that we have enabled loading data from SAP HANA and SAP Business Warehouse (BW) into various Azure data stores for advanced analytics and reporting, including Azure Blob, Azure Data Lake, and Azure SQL DW, etc.

SAP HAHA and SAP BW connectors in Copy Wizard

For more information about connecting to SAP HANA and SAP BW, refer to Azure Data Factory offers SAP HANA and Business Warehouse data integration.

Support data loading from SFTP

You can now use Azure Data Factory to copy data from SFTP servers into various data stores in Azure or On-Premise environments, including Azure Blob/Azure Data Lake/Azure SQL DW/etc. A full support matrix can be found in Supported data stores and formats. You can author copy activity using the intuitive Copy wizard (screenshot below) or JSON scripting. Refer to SFTP connector documentation for more details.

SFTP connector in Copy Wizard

Performance enhancement of direct data loading from Data Lake Store to Azure SQL Data Warehouse via PolyBase

Data Factory Copy Activity now supports loading data from Data Lake Store to Azure SQL Data Warehouse directly via PolyBase. When using the Copy Wizard, PolyBase is by default turned on and your source file compatibility will be automatically checked. You can monitor whether PolyBase is used in the activity run details.
If you are currently not using PolyBase or staged copy plus PolyBase for copying data from Data Lake Store to Azure SQL Data Warehouse, we suggest checking your source data format and updating the pipeline to enable PolyBase and remove staging settings for performance improvement. For more detailed information, refer to Use PolyBase to load data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Azure Data Factory makes it even easier and convenient to uncover insights from data when using Data Lake Store with SQL Data Warehouse.

Spark activity for rich data transformation

Apache Spark for Azure HDInsight is built on an in-memory compute engine, which enables high performance querying on big data. Azure Data Factory now supports Spark Activity against Bring-Your-Own HDInsight clusters. Users can now operationalize Spark job executions through Spark Activity in Azure Data Factory.
Since Spark job may have multiple dependencies such as jar packages (placed in the java CLASSPATH) and python files (placed on the PYTHONPATH), you will need to follow a predefined folder structure for your Spark script files. For more detailed information about JSON scripting of the Spark Activity, refer to Invoke Spark programs from Azure Data Factory pipelines.

Max allowed cloud Data Movement Units increase

Cloud Data Movement Units (DMU) reflects the powerfulness of copy executor used to empower your cloud-to-cloud copy. To copy multiple files with large volume from Blob storage/Data Lake Store/Amazon S3/cloud FTP/cloud SFTP into Blob storage/Data Lake Store/Azure SQL Database, higher DMUs usually provide you better throughput. Now you can specify up to 32 DMUs for large copy runs. Learn more from cloud data movement units and parallel copy.

UK data center now available for data movement

Azure Data Factory data movement service is now available in the UK, in addition to the existing 16 data centers.With that, you can leverage Data Factory to copy data from Cloud and On-Premise data sources into various supported Azure data stores located in the UK. Learn more about the globally available data movement and how it works from Globally available data movement, and the Azure Data Factory’s Data Movement is now available in the UK blog post.

Keep Company Data Safe During Summer Concert Season With Mobile Device Management

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coachella - managed solution

How can you keep data safe during festival season?

Mobile Device Management

Protect at the “front door”

Our solution starts with identity protection capabilities to secure access at the “front door” of your company’s apps and data. Azure Active Directory Identity Protection leverages billions of signals to provide risk-based conditional access to your applications and critical company data, including the option of multi-factor authentication. We also help you manage and protect privileged accounts with Azure Active Directory Privileged Identity Management so you can discover, restrict and monitor privileged identities and their access to resources.

Protect your data from user mistakes

We provide deep visibility into user and data activity, so you can protect your company when users make poor choices as they work with critical company data. Microsoft Cloud App Security provides visibility and controls for cloud apps, including popular SaaS apps like Box, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and of course Office 365. With the new Azure Information Protection, we have brought together classification and labeling with persistent data protection to enable secure file sharing, internally and externally. Finally, Microsoft Intune Mobile App Management (MAM) helps you prevent data loss on mobile devices, with the unique ability to manage the Office mobile apps without requiring device enrollment.

While your employees are out taking pictures by a giant ferris wheel, take control of your IT. A backup and disaster recovery plan is a must-do for any company these days. Downtime can cost companies way too much money. Make sure your company doesn't fall victim by establishing your BDR plan.

Detect attacks before they cause damage

As more organizations move to an assume breach posture, we help you identify attackers in your organization using innovative behavioral analytics and anomaly detection technologies―on-premises with Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics and in the cloud with Azure Active Directory and Cloud App Security. Our threat intelligence is enhanced with the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph driven by vast datasets and machine learning in the cloud.
With the addition and expansion of these innovative and holistic security solutions, we are renaming the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) to Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) to more accurately communicate its value. We are also announcing a new expanded EMS E5 plan. This is described in the graphic below and will be available in Q4 calendar year 2016 in line with the new Secure Productive Enterprise plans announced today.

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As one of the biggest, brightest and friendliest IT companies in Southern California we want you to take advantage of our free security assessment or just request a quote for managed services. We can even work on your behalf to get appropriate projects funded by Microsoft. Call Managed Solution at 800-790-1524.

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Do you think that small businesses don’t need a disaster recovery and backup plan? Here are 5 reasons you might want to rethink that decision.

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Employee devices bring added security concerns

By Cindy Bates

The explosion in recent years of mobility solutions and ‘bring your own device’ policies has had a big impact on small businesses.

In fact, 52 percent of information workers across 17 countries report using three or more devices for work, according to research from Forrester and 61 percent of workers mix personal and work on their devices.
On one hand, there are huge benefits for organizations and employees — employees can be far more productive and work on the go with untethered access to the information they need. Business owners can also realize cost savings while reducing the time spent managing IT.  Yet, there are risks: namely, how do businesses protect confidential information from leaking outside of the organization when employees can access and store data in a multitude of ways across devices.
When employees use personal devices for work, they can be mishandled inadvertently, like an accidental forward of a confidential mail, or in more nefarious ways, such as a hacker gaining access to confidential information through stolen credentials.  According to a Verizon data breach investigation report, 75 percent of network intrusions used weak or stolen credentials to gain access.
It’s important to have a strong device policy in place but even when the rules are clear, there is room left for costly errors. CEB found that as many as 93 percent of employees admit to violating information security policies. That means, depending on your business, there is a wide variety of data that could be at risk.  It may be customers’ personally identifiable information, such as in healthcare, retail or financial institutions, or company confidential information, such as trade secrets, company financials, or employee records.  With so much data available, traditional company firewalls and perimeter solutions no longer suffice to protect confidential information wherever it lives.  Today, many small businesses are cobbling together a number of solutions to attempt to solve this problem.  But none tie it all together until now.
Microsoft has developed Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), which is the only comprehensive solution that protects information assets across four layers: user identity, content, applications & cloud services, and devices.  When combined with Office 365, it offers native protection for applications and services. Best of all, it’s about half the cost of competitive solutions. Not only is EMS flexible and easy to integrate, it offers enterprise-grade security for small businesses. Key security features include:

To Learn More about Professional Services, contact us at 800-208-3617

Network Assessment & Technology Roadmap


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