Backup is all about how quickly you can be back up from a disaster or data loss situation. On this World Backup Day, this blog post is dedicated to explaining Azure Backup's cloud-first approach and how it helps you be back up quickly and securely.
Backup is a deeply entrenched market and companies generally tend to stick with their backup solution unless there are major shifts in the IT infrastructure. When such a shift occurs, companies are open to evaluating alternate backup solutions that offer significant value tied to that infrastructure shift. Virtualization was a hardware infrastructure inflection that happened in the 2000s that allowed companies to significantly reduce their IT costs with the consolidation and portability benefits offered by virtualization. It also allowed new backup players to emerge and the ones that delivered significant value tied to virtualization became successful. The infrastructure inflection currently underway is the shift to the public cloud and Azure Backup has taken a cloud-first approach to deliver maximum value for backup scenarios in a cloud-transformed IT environment.
Cloud-first value propositions
These are the benefits customers would likely expect in backup scenarios as they augment the public cloud to their IT infrastructure:
Consistent management experience for Hybrid IT: Companies will be in a hybrid model where in addition to the on-premise IT, they will have a cloud foot print that has IaaS (“lift-and-shift applications”) that possibly extends to PaaS (“born-in-the-cloud applications”) and SaaS (O365). It is important to have a consistent experience to manage backups across the IT assets in this hybrid model.
Agility: Business owners are seeking more agility offered by the public cloud where they can deploy solutions from the marketplace to meet their business needs. From a backup perspective, an application admin should be able to sign up for backup and do self-service restores without having to go through a central IT process to provision compute/storage in the cloud to enable backup.
Reduce TCO (Total Cost of Ownership): A subscription based model (PAYG) is an obvious benefit of the public cloud, but it is also important to consider overall IT cost for backup. For example, if you need to deploy additional infrastructure in the cloud (compute and storage) for backups your overall costs would be higher.
Freedom from infrastructure: This is one of the fundamental benefits companies seek when they move their IT to the cloud and since backup has a significant infrastructure footprint in on-premises IT (storage, compute, licenses, etc), an infrastructure-less backup solution would be a natural expectation for customers.
There are 3 possible approaches backup solutions can take to leverage the cloud inflection and it is important to consider how well they deliver on the above promises in each approach:
Cloud as storage: In this model, the backup solution leverages the public cloud as a storage target for backup either for the second backup copy or to replace tape backups. The customer still needs to manage storage in the cloud, pay for any egress costs for restores, and manage bulk of backup infrastructure that is still on premises.
Cloud as infrastructure: This is the next level where the customer can run the backup application in an IaaS VM, which can protect applications deployed in IaaS. While it does offer a similar experience, it can only protect IaaS VMs and not the other cloud assets (PaaS, SaaS) and has TCO implications. For example, a single IaaS VM only supports 32 TB of total addressable storage, which is far too small for a backup application so to back up at scale, customers need to deploy additional IaaS VMs, configure scale sets for availability and provision/manage backup storage, all of which adds to the overall TCO for backup. Also, as the name implies, it does not free the customer from infrastructure management which is a fundamental promise of moving to the cloud.
Cloud as platform: Backup can be built in a PaaS model to deliver backup as a service and architected to provide a consistent management experience to both on premises infrastructure as well as backup for born-in-the-cloud applications (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS). Since all the service infrastructure is owned and managed by the service, there would be no additional costs for the backup and there is complete freedom from managing infrastructure associated with backup.
Azure Backup is architected from the ground-up as a first-class PaaS service in Azure as described in approach 3 and delivers on the cloud promises customers expect as they cloud transform their IT infrastructure. In addition, since it is a first-party service in Azure, it can also leverage other services in Azure to deliver value beyond backup scenarios. For example, rich monitoring and reporting using PowerBI or the capability to do advanced analytics on backup data in Azure.
Compelling backup scenarios enabled by the cloud first architecture
The cloud-first approach of Azure Backup provides unique benefits to customers which are either difficult or not possible in traditional approaches.
Native Backup for IaaS/PaaS: Azure Backup seamlessly integrates with IaaS VM by providing an enable-backup experience in the VM blade itself. A VM extension is deployed when the customer chooses to enable backup and with a few clicks, the IaaS VM is configured for backup. Backup can also be enabled via ARM templates and it supports all the features of IaaS VMs such as disk encryption, premium disks etc. This capability will be extended for SQL Azure, Azure Files, and other Azure PaaS assets like WebApps and Service Fabric for a first-class backup experience in Azure.
Restore as a service: One of the key concerns customers have when they store their backups in the cloud is the restore experience. There are egress costs, the time it takes to restore data back on premises and handling encryption requirements. Restore operation typically requires all the data has to be restored on premises or a restore appliance needs to be hydrated in the cloud to browse items from the cloud restore points. Azure Backup, restore-as-a-service feature uses a unique approach to mount a cloud recovery point as a volume and browse it to enable item-level-restore. The customer does not need to provision any infrastructure and the egress from Azure is free which are both unique value propositions of Azure Backup. This feature is currently available for IaaS VMS (Windows and Linux) and on premise Windows servers. The same capability for System Center Data Protection Manager and Microsoft Azure Backup Server will be available over the next few months.
Secure Cloud Backups: Azure Backup leverages Azure authentication services to provide multiple layers of security to secure cloud backups against malware attacks such as ransomware. While the predominant ransomware attacks are limited to infecting on-premises data, some of the more evolved ransomware attacks also target backup copies of the data. Typical infections include reducing backup retention, re-encrypting data, and deleting backup schedule/copies that are initiated from compromised machines. Azure backup has several layers of protection to prevent and alert against such attacks.
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our environment can be protected by automating the replication of the virtual machines based on policies that you set and control. Site Recovery can protect Hyper-V, VMware and physical servers and you can use Azure or your secondary datacenter as your recovery site. Site Recovery coordinates and manages the ongoing replication of data by integrating with existing technologies including System Center and SQL Server AlwaysOn.
It seems like a fair trade: Get your favorite mobile apps for free, be shown annoying ads in return.
But that’s not all you’re doing in return. In reality, this trade has you giving up a great deal of personal information. Mobile apps collect a massive amount of personal data — your location, your online history, your contacts, your schedule, your identity and more. And all that data is instantly shared with mobile advertising networks, which use it to determine the best ad for any given user at any given time and place.
So, the trade-off isn’t really ads for apps — it’s intrusive mobile surveillance for apps. By agreeing to free, ad-sponsored mobile apps, we’ve consented to an economic model that entails continuous and comprehensive personal surveillance. It’s what Al Gore accurately characterized as the stalker economy.
Why is our personal, locational and behavioral data so coveted by marketers? Because a smartphone is something that we as consumers carry everywhere we go, and it’s constantly broadcasting personal data of all kinds. If advertisers know who we are, where we are and what we’re doing, they can deliver more effective ads. It’s called proximity marketing. It’s the Rite Aid ad that pings your phone as you walk through the aisles: “Save 10% now on mouthwash.”
Sounds innocuous, if annoying. But it goes much further than this. We’ve now enabled a system where a major retailer can know, for example, that a teenager is pregnant before her parents do simply by correlating her activity, search and purchase data. That retailer can then reach out via mail or email, or target her via phone when she is near a point of sale. This intrusion on our collective privacy isn’t going away anytime soon (if ever), as the economic incentives for app developers and advertisers are too strong.
A compromised smartphone represents a threat not just to the targeted employee but to the entire company.
OK, agreed, this kind of consumer surveillance is intrusive and creepy. But how does it threaten enterprise security? Simple. As more personal mobile devices invade the business world, leaks from those devices are opening the door to corporate hacks, stolen business data and crippling cyberattacks.
For instance, if a company lets its employees sync their corporate calendars and email accounts to their personal mobile devices, this opens up all sorts of risks. Suddenly, employees’ phones contain or can access the contact information of everyone in the organization. Further, any other mobile app that requests access to the employees’ contacts and calendar also gets access to the names and titles of company employees, as well as the dial-in codes for all private conference calls. This information can easily be put to effective use in a spear-phishing attack by a malicious app or hacker.
Worse, many apps monetize their user bases by sharing data with ad networks that share and combine data with other networks, so it’s impossible to know where exactly data is going and whether it’s being handled in a secure fashion by any of the many parties that have access to it. All of this sharing means a malicious hacker doesn’t even have to directly access an employee’s phone to attack a company. He can hack an ad network that has information from millions of users and go from there.
Stolen information can also be used to attack an enterprise through a watering-hole attack. Say a small group of executives have lunch regularly at a local restaurant. An attacker with access to their geolocation data could easily know this. The attacker correctly assumes that some of the execs are accessing the restaurant’s website to make reservations and browse the menu before lunch. By placing malware on the lightly defended site, the attacker is able to compromise the office computer or mobile device of one or more company executives. From there, a successful breach is launched.
A compromised smartphone represents a threat not just to the targeted employee but to the entire company. Information about employees’ activities, both on the job and elsewhere, combined with any company-related emails, documents or sensitive information, can be devastating to an organization if it gets into the wrong hands.
So what should enterprises do to combat the threat?
The first step is to get visibility into your mobile environment. Your organization needs to know which apps employees are using, what those apps are doing and whether or not they comply with corporate security policies. For example, is there a particularly risky file-sharing app you don’t want employees to use? Is it already being used? If you don’t know the apps employees are using for work, you are flying blind and taking a huge risk.
It is imperative that your enterprise include mobile threat protection as part of its overall security strategy.
Second, you’ll need a policy for managing the use of mobile devices. Most organizations already have policies for other platforms, including managing firewalls and sharing data with partners. It’s equally important to create these policies for mobile. For instance, if employees are using free versions of apps that are approved by the company but ad-supported, create a policy that requires employees to upgrade to the paid version to minimize, if not eliminate, unsanctioned data in the form of ads being sent to employees — though it doesn’t eliminate the relentless collection of personal and private data.
Next, your organization should educate employees about the risks of the apps they download. It’s in your best interest to empower users by arming them with tools and training to make better decisions about which apps they download. For instance, coach your employees to question apps that ask for permission. There are lots of apps that want to access location, contacts or camera. Employees don’t have to say yes automatically. Most apps will work fine if the request is denied, and prompt users if a permission is actually needed. If an app does not say why it needs access, that’s a big red flag.
Finally, all of these areas can be addressed with a good mobile security solution. Any enterprise without a mobile threat protection solution is by definition unaware of what information is leaking and from where, and unable to address the risks that exist in its environment. It is therefore imperative that your enterprise include mobile threat protection as part of its overall security strategy in order to protect employee privacy and company data from the ever-growing threat of mobile surveillance and data gathering.
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5 simple steps to boost your digital hygiene in 2017
January is a good time to stop making excuses and get your digital life in order. Here are five inexpensive, money-saving, aggravation-reducing ways to maintain tech, and protect yourself and the environment in the New Year.
I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. Let's face it, no one keeps them.
Instead of resolutions, here are five simple ways to help you save money, avoid digital disasters, and get your personal technology into top-flight condition. None of the tips are complicated, and I've used them all during the past few years so I know they work.
Audit digital subscriptions
These days, many digital services have auto-renew subscriptions. It's wise to regularly check your credit card statements to see what you're billed for. You may find a charge for a streaming-video service, magazine or newspaper you forgot about but still pay for. You don't have to get all compulsive about it, but you might even put reminders on your calendar to cancel services before trial periods expire or keep a list of all of your paid subscriptions. If nothing else, the list will come in handy at tax time if you itemize deductions.
Buy (and use) a can of compressed air
This one sounds goofy, I know, but the vents on your laptop and the spaces between keys on your keyboard collect what technical experts call "schmutz." Clogged vents can cause overheating, and that can kill your laptop. Junk inside a keyboard can cause keys to jam. A 3.5 ounce can of compressed air costs $4.99 at Best Buy, and Amazon charges $7.34 for a 12-ounce option. Both are a lot cheaper than the new laptop you'd need if you fry your system's motherboard.
Find a password manager to love
Hacking is an epidemic today, but most folks simply aren't going to make and keep track of different passwords for every site. No one can track dozens of passwords without writing them down somewhere, and that, of course, defeats the purpose. But a good password manager can be a lifesaver.
I use LastPass, and its free version now let's you share your passwords across multiple devices. LastPass finally supports Microsoft's Edge browser, as well as Chrome and Firefox. The service generates complex passwords for each site you visit and stores them in what it calls your "vault." You only need to remember one master password. A couple more password mangers that get good reviews are LogMeOnce and 1Password.
Backup, backup and backup again
You've heard it over and over again, but many users are left without their data, music and photos when a drive fails or malware corrupts their systems. Backing up can be a pain, but so can locking your door and keeping your money in a bank. If your digital stuff is important to you, you need to back it up to the cloud or buy a roomy external drive — or both.
Microsoft OneDrive gives you 5GB for free and 50GB for $1.99 a month. Upload speeds are generally slow, so the first time you backup to the cloud will likely take a while. Another option is to buy an external drive. A 2TB drive (or 2,000GB) now costs well under $100, and most of them come with software to automate the backup process.
Recycle old electronic junk
By now, most Americans recycle newspapers, bottles and cans, but many old electronic devices still wind up in a landfill. That's a real problem, because they contain heavy metals and other pollutants than can get into the water table. Instead, take them to an electronics recycler. Most cities have them. To find yours, simply Google "electronics recycling" in your community and you'll quite likely find more than one. If you ditch an old smartphone or over-the-hill PC, make sure you wipe the hard drives and get rid of any personal data.
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How to Survive Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday brings a lot of great things, like crazy discounts, free shipping codes, and the best deals for online shopping. The holiday also brings a lot of bad things, like data breaches and server crashes. As your employees (and customers) may be online shopping all day, don't let your company data go unprotected. A Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution can keep your business safe while the sales commence.
Securing productivity, collaboration and enterprise data is critically important as organizations digitally transform.
3 Obvious Reasons You Need A Backup & Disaster Recovery Plan
You need to protect your company data from security threats and hackers. Did you see all the recent news of political breaches by hackers who exposed “secure” data?
Natural disasters do occur and 90% of companies that experience one week of data downtime go out of business within 12 months.
Systems do crash, data gets erased or corrupted, viruses attack.
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 provides a Business Continuity/Backup & Disaster Recovery Service to protect data from loss and prevent costly downtime in the event of a catastrophic server failure.
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We are excited to announce the general availability of theAzure Import/Export Servicein Microsoft Azure Government. The Import/Export service allows migration of large amounts of data in and out of Azure blob storage by shipping hard disk drives directly to the datacenter. This service is suitable in situations where you want to transfer several TBs of data in or out of Azure Storage, but uploading or downloading over the network is not feasible due to limited bandwidth or high network costs. Some scenarios where this service can be used are data seeding, content distribution, recurring data update, offsite backup, disaster recovery.
Benefits of using Azure Import Export
Fast: We recommend using Azure Import/Export if loading data over the network would take 7 days or more. Shipping disks directly to the data center can save weeks or more off of network transfer time.
Secure: Data is secured by Bitlocker encryption. The keys are securely uploaded using SSL REST-API and do not travel along with the disk.
Reliable: The client tool has internal checksum logic to maintain data integrity. Various verbosity of logging is available directly in customer storage accounts making this process highly reliable.
While all import/export functionality is available, we currently only support the REST API interface for creation and management of import/export jobs in Azure Government.The Portal experience for Import/Export jobswill come in the new portal later this year. See below for details and samples for getting started with import jobs via the REST API.
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Why Every Small Business Needs a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan
As a digitally active business in 2016, you can’t afford to lose your data. Whether at the hands of a natural disaster, human error, or cyber attack, data loss is costly and extremely risky. That’s why you need a backup and disaster recovery solution.
As a small business owner, you’ve probably asked yourself this simple question at least once: “What is BDR?” Well, the most basic definition is a combination of data backup and disaster recovery solutions that are designed to work together to ensure uptime, diminish data loss, and maximize productivity in the midst of an attack, natural disaster, or other compromising situation. In other words, BDR solutions keep businesses safe when trouble strikes.
According to research by Security Week, the total volume of data loss at the enterprise level has increased more than 400 percent over the past couple of years and the trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. With the rise of big data, cloud computing, and BYOD policies in the workplace, it’s becoming increasingly challenging for businesses to protect their private data.
IT Web suggests that the total cost of data breaches will be more than $2.1 trillion by 2019. This is in part due to the fact that small businesses don’t always take security seriously. They wrongly assume that it’s the big corporations that face the highest risks. Unfortunately, this is a false assumption.
A Verizon report says that small data breaches -- those with fewer than 100 files lost -- cost between $18,120 and $35,730. Unless these are expenses that you can easily sustain, it’s time to implement a BDR plan.
Five reasons why SBOs need a BDR plan.
When small businesses don’t have a BDR solution/plan in place, it’s typically because they’re unclear about the true value of BDR.
Let’s review some of the top benefits to give you an idea of why these solutions are so important to the health of your small business.
1. Protects against effects of natural disasters. Whether it’s a flood, earthquake, hurricane, blizzard, or other extreme natural disaster, there are plenty of uncontrollable circumstances that can cause your business to experience downtime. And, according to the National Archives and Records Administration, more than 90 percent of companies that experience at least seven days of data center downtime go out of business within a year. Let that sink in. While a BDR plan won’t prevent a natural disaster from occurring, it will protect your data and ensure that downtime doesn’t compromise your company.
2. Lessens impact of cyber attacks. As more and more data is moved online, cyber criminals are increasing their efforts and focusing on businesses that they believe are unprotected. In most cases, this means small businesses that appear vulnerable. Once again, a BDR plan can limit the impact of an attack and can prevent your business from losing valuable data.
3. Keeps client data safe. Do you store a lot of confidential client or customer data? If so, you can’t afford to lose this data or let it slip into the wrong hands. A BDR plan ensures that all of this information is properly stored and controlled. As a result, you don’t have to worry about damaging your brand reputation, should an unforeseeable incident arise.
4. People make mistakes. While natural disasters and cyber attacks are discussed more than anything else, the reality is that your own employees are sometimes responsible for the biggest data losses. Mistakes happen and a single poor choice can end up compromising data. That’s why it’s so important for businesses not only to train employees properly, but also invest in backup solutions.
5. Systems fail. Finally, we all know that hardware, machines, and other systems fail. Regardless of how much you spend on your technology, no solution is perfect. Even systems that come with 99.9 percent uptime guarantees will falter every once in a while. As such, businesses must invest in robust BDR plans that account for all of these risks.
What to look for in a BDR solution.
Once you determine that your business needs a BDR plan in place, how do you find the right solution? While every business is different, start by analyzing the following:
•Hardware compatibility. Depending on the hardware that your business uses, you may need a BDR solution that’s specifically tailored to your current setup. Keep this in mind as you compare options.
•Scalable pricing. As your business grows over time, you’re going to collect and store more data. A flexible pricing model will allow you cost-effectively to scale according to your demands.
Around-the-clock support. You never know when disaster will strike. Make sure that your BDR vendor has 24/7/365 technical support available.
•Strong reputation. Finally, it’s important to consider the BDR solution’s reputation. How long has it been on the market? What do customers say? The answers to these questions will tell you a lot.
If you can find a BDR solution that meets these four criteria, then you’ve probably found the right solution for your business.
Protect your business.
Nobody wants to assume that something bad is going to happen to their business – and hopefully you’ll never be exposed to any of the risks highlighted in this article – but the harsh reality is that you’ll likely face one of these issues at some point in the future.
There’s no way to prevent a cyber attack, natural disaster, technical malfunction or uncontrollable human error, but you can protect your business from costly data loss by investing in a solution that aids in data backup and disaster recovery. Frankly, it’s unwise to wait any longer.
Managed Solution is a full-service technology firm that empowers business by delivering, maintaining and forecasting the technologies they’ll need to stay competitive in their market place. Founded in 2002, the company quickly grew into a market leader and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT Companies in Southern California.
We specialize in providing full managed services to businesses of every size, industry, and need.
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5 simple steps to boost your digital hygiene in 2017
