Perpetual Motion

If Not Now, When?

/in , , , , , /by

“Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly told industry leaders in a phone briefing Monday that a vulnerability in a widely-used logging library ‘is one of the most serious I’ve seen in my entire career, if not the most serious.’

“‘We expect the vulnerability to be widely exploited by sophisticated actors and we have limited time to take necessary steps in order to reduce the likelihood of damage,’ she said of the Apache Log4j flaw. The issue is an unauthenticated remote execution vulnerability that could allow an intruder to take over an affected device.

“Hundreds of millions of devices are likely to be affected, said Jay Gazlay of CISA’s vulnerability management office in the [same] call” –as reported by Tim Starks, cyberscoop.com, Dec. 13, 2021

Because of how widespread this vulnerability is, affecting everyone from Microsoft to Apple to Amazon to Google (in fact it affects millions of pieces of software, it is time to make sure your business is as protected as possible. You may not hear bullets, but that doesn’t mean we not are in a war … [5 min. read]

Read more

Talking with Office 365 and G-Suite Back-Up Expert, Alex Courson

/in , /by

Bryley backs-up your office suite data in the cloud for Office 365, Google’s G-Suite and SalesForce in partnership with Kaseya Powered Services. To better understand what happens in the cloud I spoke with Alex Courson, an authority on Kaseya’s Office 365, G-Suite and SalesForce back-up products.

Don’t Microsoft and Google Back-Up Everything Already?

Q: Do cloud-based office suites assume liability for your data? Is that something that has changed, or do you foresee changing over the years?

Read more

Low-Down on Office 365

/in , , , , /by

Last week, Microsoft rolled out its promised “Unverified Sender” enhancement to Office 365 to help users “identify suspicious messages” (i.e. spam or phishing emails) that reach the Outlook inbox. 1 This comes after a bulletin in which Microsoft urged Office 365 administrators and users to not turn off its built-in spam filters to “minimize the potential of a data breach or a compromised account.” 2

Many users are mistaken that there are different kinds of protections to their data in the cloud. But the risks of data loss or compromised data are no less of a problem in the cloud than in a modern server, desktop or phone.

Read more

The Day the Cloud Went Down

/in , , /by

7:33 AM, August 31, 2019, a power failure hit Amazon Web Services (AWS) US-East-1 datacenter in North Virginia. As expected, the datacenter’s backup generators kicked in.

Then at about 9 AM the generators started failing

The result was 7.5% of Amazon’s data storage units were unavailable for several hours. Some of the affected websites and services included Reddit, Styleseat, Fortnite, Sendhub … and many smaller sites and services. Power was restored, and around noon most of the drives were functioning. But the outage rendered some data unrecoverable. For those that had not backed up their data, the power failure was a disaster.

Read more

Did You Feel a Drop? BUDR Pt. 2

/in , , /by

Remember the panicked manufacturer with a progression of computer problems that recalled the proverbial “perfect storm”? Today I’m going to sort those problems out, and recommend ways to help keep those things from happening to you. To refresh, here’s what went on with that manufacturer:

The installed version of their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning software) was too old to receive application maintenance and support. They hadn’t wanted to interrupt their workflow, and so hadn’t upgraded the ERP in more than five years.

Read more

Avoiding the Perfect Storm

/in , /by

A nearby manufacturer called Bryley panicked. The problems started with a failed upgrade to their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning software). Because they hadn’t wanted to interrupt their workflow, the company hadn’t upgraded the ERP in more than five years. But the installed version was now beyond maintenance and support, so they bit the bullet. Only, during the upgrade there was a power fluctuation so that the upgrade did not complete. In fact no computer on the network would boot normally. In addition while trying to resolve the failed upgrade, they found a flaw in their in-house back-ups. Now the business was losing days and money to downtime.

Read more

World Backup Day 2019

/in , /by

Celebrated On March 31st

Data is essential to us all.  We rely on it complete even the most basic daily tasks, and yet it is so easy to take for granted.

World Backup Day was established to remind us of the importance of data in our lives, and why we must make a sincere effort to protect it.

Think of all the information you access every day.  Photos, documents, financial records, calendars, reminders, even shopping lists are all stored electronically.  Having all that data right there at your fingertips makes life easier than ever before.  When something goes wrong, however, and that data is gone, even the most basic tasks become nearly impossible.

That is why we encourage you to take a few minutes on March 31st each year to make sure that your data is backed up and secure.  If it is, set aside some time to check and make sure that those backups are working properly and that you have access to them.  If your data is not backed up, mark the 31st in your calendar as the day you will fix that.

For more information on how World Backup Day came about, and how it is celebrated, you should visit their homepage.

Keep Your Electronic Devices Protected – Power Strips vs. Surge Protectors

/in , , /by

With all the electronic devices that are used in homes and offices in today’s high tech world, oftentimes there just aren’t enough electrical outlets to plug them all into. Power strips offer a solution which enables a single outlet to handle multiple devices. But if you don’t choose one that also offers surge protection, you could be putting your devices at risk.

Read more

The Importance of BU/DR in the Manufacturing Industry

/in , , /by

What would happen to your organization if plant production was taken to a halt?  How would you get it back up and running?  Or, could you?

Whether the disaster is caused by mother nature, a human error, a cyber-attack of some sort (and yes, there are many types), it can wreak havoc on your organization – it can even take the company down to its knees.  Each moment of downtime equates to lost dollars and lost customer satisfaction. Manufacturing firms have to effectively ensure that production and distribution is consistent.

Technology is used throughout manufacturing in many ways – to store data, run automated machinery on the plant floor, track inventory and support distribution. Your technology is intertwined with your business processes and if you suddenly weren’t able to use those processes, it could be a catastrophic situation.

A few scenarios of how a disaster can disrupt manufacturing, and what you can proactively avoid it.

Halt in Production.  Complex automated equipment and inventory tracking are just two processes that are severely influenced during a disaster. Do you have a recovery plan in place for a worst-case scenario?  Production logistics may be the most challenging area to recuperate, but having a strong backup and disaster recovery (BU/DR) plan safeguards data and allows for immediate access to mission-critical applications.

Whether your organization experiences a cyber-attack, or even a power outage that shuts down productivity for several hours, all of your applications used to run the automated machinery will not work because the system cannot connect to the network. Depending on the size of your plant(s), you could be facing up to millions of dollars in lost revenue and customer reimbursement.

BU/DR To The Rescue.  If your senior management team turned to a BU/DR expert – like Bryley Systems –  to assess the possible vulnerabilities associated with an outage and developed a proactive plan to recover and access data, your BU/DR provider would be able to access your data and apps to get your operations back up and running with a minimum amount of downtime.

Halt in Distribution.  Downtime is never acceptable when it comes to distribution.  All schedules must be strictly followed to satisfy delivery expectations. Customers don’t care if your warehouse floods.  They want to receive their order on time. Logistics management utilizes computerized tracking and ERP systems to understand how many products are stored and where they are at any given time to enhance product readiness and customer fulfillment.

Imagine this scenario – you work as an IT Director for a large New England pharmaceutical manufacturing company. Your network is more vulnerable to external hacker attempts simply due to the size of your business and the value of your data.   All of a sudden, your systems are corrupted with vicious malware and the entire database is inaccessible. To continue operations at your normal efficiency level and avoid downtime, your backup and recovery disaster plan kicks in to eliminate the malware and restore your plant data to where it was before the attack. Investing in a custom BU/DR plan serves as disaster protection ensuring your ability to move products to their destination.

The key to effective disaster recovery is planning ahead. Partnering with a BU/DR professional to support your critical infrastructure and resources adds additional layers of security and communication. When unexpected disasters strike, your recovery strategy will be there to save the day by restoring your data and reducing your downtime.

 

The Bryley BU/DR process:

  • For on-premise equipment, we deploy a BU/DR appliance onsite to provide local backup-and-restore capability and to speed recovery.
  • We take an encrypted image of your system and copy it to our data center.
  • We stream encrypted, differential changes from your site to our datacenter

Isn’t the survival and security of your manufacturing organization worth the investment of BU/DR?  Our team of experts will help you navigate through this process and implement the most effective BU/DR tailored to your environment and budget.  Contact us at 978-562-6077, or by email at ITExperts@Bryley.com to learn more. We are here to help.

Learn on how Managed IT Services can help your business.
Discover the best IT Company suited for your business.

Pop Quiz: How Prepared is Your Company to Recover If Disaster Strikes?

/in , , /by

You depend on your IT systems every day, but how dependable are they really?  If your company was subjected to a sudden loss of power could you keep working, or would business stop?  What if the power didn’t come back on for several days, or even a week?  Most importantly, have you already asked yourself these questions, and if so, do you have a written action plan to address them?

If you are at all unsure of how a disaster would impact your business, and how you might recover, here is a great little quiz to help you get the wheels turning.

1. How frequently are your company’s critical systems backed up?  Is it more than once a day?

2. If your company lost power, would your systems keep running without any interruption?

3. In the event of a system failure, could your company’s data be restored to working order quickly?

4. If your company experienced a security breach, do you have a clean set of data backups available and could they be restored in a timely fashion?

5. Does your company have a fail-over site it could revert to if your primary systems become inaccessible?

6. Does your company have a written disaster recovery plan to refer to in case of emergency?  If yes, do your employees know where to find it, and are they trained in implementing it?

If you were able to answer “yes” to these questions, congratulations!  Your company is in relatively good shape in terms of its ability to cope with a disaster.  If you answered “no” to any of the questions on this list, however, it would be a good idea to spend some time putting a plan together to address any gaps in your ability to recover from a disaster.

As a Managed IT provider, Bryley Systems specializes is helping companies plan for disaster and mitigate the risk of a loss of data.  If you think you could use a hand putting together an effective disaster recovery plan, why not give us a call at 978.562.6077.  We are here to help.