With some applications licensed only to run on internal systems or private cloud-based platforms, businesses could find themselves drawing up boundaries within the cloud because of third-party policy.

Novell’s Javier Colado explored this subject at the firm’s Brainshare Europe conference last week, suggesting that there was a thin line for IT managers to tread between complying with regulations and actually using the cloud with as much flexibility as the technology can theoretically offer.

Mr Colado said that businesses would need a management system that could balance the workloads of various applications without breaching licenses, compromising security or limiting scalability. These potentially mutually exclusive criteria are said to be achievable, but to many it may seem like an impossible task.

Mr Colado envisions a future of three tiered IT operations, with physical, virtual and cloud-based stacks, all requiring management, robust data security and online backup in order to avoid conflict, loss and non-compliance with industry regulations and application licenses.

The juggling act of keeping customer information and business secrets safe and secure whilst properly implementing the multiple layers of storage is set to become harder for those who do not equip themselves with the right tools, according to Mr Colado.

Many software firms are working on products that will allow businesses to designate the management of different application workloads across their internal and virtual systems, with the option to shift everything to the cloud depending on the requirements at any given moment, which is a true definition of scalability.

Novell’s Roger Whitehead said that management software and services would gradually become more homogenised as business requirements change, with IT departments requiring less of a distinction between the various systems and services they employ. As cloud adoption grows, a new set of challenges continues to emerge, but there are also vast opportunities which are increasingly recognised by industry leaders.

Licences for the management of applications to set boundaries of the cloud is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

Over the next two years, cloud-based providers are expected to experience a growth rate in the region of 78 per cent, with the peak coming at some point in 2012. These figures have been published in a recent report into cloud computing and IT spending authored by the NOA.

The NOA says that the three per cent penetration level for cloud technology that exists today is a fraction of the potential expansion which will be seen as budgets are slashed and savings are sought.

Businesses are also believed to be turning to the cloud in order to access a more scalable set of technologies which can adjust in line with the storage and backup needs of any given firm, and as data volumes increase exponentially.

The NOA found that the majority of businesses it questioned in creating the report would be looking to integrate cloud-based solutions with current in-house systems, rather than migrating everything to the cloud in a single upgrade. Virtually every respondent said that cloud computing would be intrinsically linked to desktop computing in the near future.

The biggest concern amongst businesses considering adopting cloud solutions is the risk of becoming inextricably tethered to a single provider for a prolonged period without the ability to change. 92 per cent of those questioned cited this as a significant issue.

The security of data on cloud platforms is also an ongoing area of concern, with nearly 75 per cent stating that the adoption of cloud-based solutions would be a worry because data protection concerns had not been fully addressed.

The NOA’s Martyn Hart said that the UK business community was about to experience a significant shift towards cloud computing in the next two years. He also said that universal adoption was beyond the horizon for the time being, with adoption levels just beginning to pick up pace.

Cloud expansion fuelled by falling budgets, experts claim is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

Some of the biggest names in the business, including Microsoft and Facebook, have said that the number of similar passwords used by common customers was putting at risk the millions of items of personal data that people store on their services. This applies not just to social networking and consumer services, but also to the business world and cloud computing solutions.

Firms and employees are allegedly relying on basic, easily predictable passwords to secure their cloud platforms and CRYPTOCard believes that it is only a matter of time before this is exploited by criminals to steal data and industry secrets.

Experts say that the tools that make password hacking simple are freely available online and in a matter of minutes any third party could gain access to the data a business stores on the cloud if it has chosen a weak password. This is said to be one of the biggest weaknesses with cloud computing, perhaps unsurprisingly centred on the human factor.

In a recent study it was discovered that most business managers are unaware as to the types of applications that employees are using at work and cannot explain whether they are based internally or on a cloud platform.

People who have passwords for social networking and webmail services that they access for personal use are often duplicating these basic passwords for work services, according to CRYPTOCard’s CEO Neil Hollister.

Mr Hollister believes that although things are improving, the process of encouraging people into better password habits is a slow one and in the meantime viruses data loss can occur due to poor password choice.

Mr Hollister said that finding out about employee interests from their social networking profiles and then creating a malware-bearing website related to that interest which will be accessed at work is a relatively simple task.

Mr Hollister concluded by pointing out to SC Magazine that there are already security measures out there that can neutralise the risks posed by weak passwords in a cloud-based environment, but the implementation of these has to be kick-started from the top.

Cloud services compromised by poor password practice is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

The report revealed that 63 per cent of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) in France, the UK and Germany are likely to take in excess of a day to overcome issues that arise after downtime.

More than 600 firms were questioned as part of the Vanson Bourne study, with the majority of respondents demonstrating that they were not backing up data in a way that would ensure its safety and ease of access. It was shown that there is a general lack of confidence in most current systems amongst smaller businesses.

Only 60 respondents said that recovery after a disastrous event would be completed within an hour, which meant that a tiny minority felt prepared for viral infections or general on-site systems failure.

Any kind of disaster within small businesses can lead to an unsustainable loss of custom and revenue, with essential ties to the internet being cut and personal data being lost or erased. Recent studies have shown that in many cases small businesses fold as the result of extensive downtime.

25 per cent of respondents to this survey said that they rely on manual backup to protect and store the data accumulated by portable computing devices such as laptops. Nearly 20 per cent revealed that the backup of laptops and portable storage was not something that they had ever performed.

60 per cent of the European businesses questioned said that they had no central server system for backup and that they were relying on individual computers to act as storage facilities, leaving data dispersed in an irregular, inconsistent fashion.

The study found that UK businesses were far less backup-aware than their continental counterparts. Backup expert David Blackman said that the survey painted a surprising picture of the modern IT landscape within European businesses, especially since the damaging nature of downtime and data loss has been so widely evidenced.

Study shows businesses lack adequate data backup is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

Although most businesses understand that proper preparation for disaster to ensure continuity is important, economic pressures are forcing management teams to tighten the purse strings when it comes to data security and storage.

40 per cent of respondents to the survey revealed that despite a perpetually increasing demand for more storage and backup facilities, there was not enough money to invest in improving their current systems, so they were being asked to perform the impossible.

All of the firms questioned had 1000 employees or more and 57 per cent said that their data storage requirements were increasing by a fifth with each passing year.

This growth is occurring in the context of budgets which are not increasing, or in the worst cases reducing from previous levels, for 75 per cent of businesses.

Jon Mills, who supervised the survey which was carried out by Sepaton, said that the constant increase in data storage requirements was afflicting virtually every business, regardless as to size. Mr Mills said that in a relatively short time some firms would have to face storage requirements doubling annually.

41 per cent of respondents said that there was a worrying deficit in funding for data protection, which was leading to a poorer quality of service and a lack of customer confidence.

The survey also revealed that disaster recovery was a problematic issue for many, with 46 per cent indicating that existing targets in this area were being missed. However, many are putting their faith in cloud platforms, or are intending to consider them in the near future, as a way of cutting the cost of data protection and disaster recovery.

The survey has clearly revealed that a shortage of storage space for sensitive data is becoming a real issue for many large businesses in the UK and around the world. With budgets under pressure, the numbers looking to outsource storage will surely increase.

Study finds inadequate budgets hamper data backup is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

Matt Mullenweg wrote;

“We are still gathering details, but it appears an unscheduled change to a core router by one of our data centre providers messed up our network in a way we haven’t experienced before, and broke the site,”

This came as Backup Technology released our online backup plugin for wordpress giving bloggers a system of safely and reliably backing up their content. An event like this will only go to show the importance of regular backups.

So, What Happened?

Well, Founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg Wrote;

“We are still gathering details, but it appears an unscheduled change to a core router by one of our data centre providers messed up our network in a way we haven’t experienced before, and broke the site,”

Mullenweg did go onto reassure bloggers by stating there was no risk to data, it simply couldn’t be served but was perfectly secure.

WordPress Outage Leaves Over 10 Million Blogs Down is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

Blogging is big business and if you’ve invested hundreds or thousands of hours writing blog posts you need to have the proper systems in place to ensure that something as simple as disk failure at your web host doesn’t mean all your work is lost.

To help the blogging community we’re giving a way a free plugin with 50 MiB of free space on our secure servers.

5 Steps to Total Protection

• Step 1: Download the plugin here.
• Step 2: Upload the plugin to your blog using the Plugins > Add New > Upload feature in your WordPress Dashboard.
• Step 3: Register for your 50 MiB of free space on our backup portal.
• Step 4: Configure your plugin to enable encryption and provide the login details of your online account by clicking Change Settings on the Tools > Online Backup page.
• Step 5: Schedule your backup by clicking Change Schedule on the same page!

Your WordPress database is now protected! You can then proceed to login to our backup portal to manage and download your backups.

Your Data is Secure

At Backup Technology we specialize in online backup and disaster recovery. We provide enterprise level backup services to businesses and individuals complete with disaster recovery plans and tests involving the recovery of entire networks.
All of the data backed up by our customers is highly encrypted and compressed and stored in our primary secure datacentre in Manchester, with a complete mirror of every single backup in our secondary secure datacentre in London.

So with our experience and expertise you can be assured your WordPress database will be in good hands.

Features

Our plugin has been built bottom up and based around creating a highly secure and reliable backup plugin with all the features a blog master requires to protect their blog content.

While developing the plugin we worked closely with several major blog owners in order to get the right features implemented in the way they wanted them. Following is an overview of the major features.

• Online Backup
  Our plugin was built with remote online backup in mind.
  This saves you space in your mailbox by storing your backups on our secure servers. Every site will get a 50 MB free quota, and when it is reached the oldest backups will be removed to make space for the newest, so you will always have the latest backups available. Each time a backup is added we’ll also send you a notification email to give you peace of mind that backups are actually happening.
  To setup Online Backup you just need to register an account with us and configure the plugin with your login details, as described in the instructions above, and you can login to our backup portal anytime to manage and download your backups.
• Locked Backups
  To prevent an older backup from being overwriting by newer backups, you can login to our backup portal and “lock” it! This will mark the backup as permanent and prevent it from ever been overwritten. Be sure to leave enough unlocked backups so you can still receive new ones though!
• Email Backup
  As well as been able to send backups to our secure servers for storage, you can have backups sent as email attachments directly to your inbox. The email attachment is also compressed and encrypted in the same as with Online Backup.
  To decrypt an ecrypted backup emailed to you, simply use the “Decrypt a Backup” page in the plugin.
• Compression
  With the majority of blog posts been text documents, compression techniques can work extremely well. Using the built-in ZLIB support available in nearly all PHP installations today, our plugin can backup a 50 MiB wordpress database into a miniscule 5 MiB file (that’s a 90% reduction!)
  And with a 50 MiB storage quota FREE… that would give you 10 days of backups!
• Encryption
  Fully supporting the “php-mcrypt” extension available on most web servers, our plugin will allow you to encrypt your backups with DES, AES128 or AES256 encryption.
  All you need to do is simply enter the settings page, choose an encryption type (we recommend AES128 for the best balance encryption) and enter a password to use as your secret encryption key. Once done, every one of your backups will be encrypted before been emailed to you and/or sent to our secure servers, giving you peace of mind that nobody will ever be able to access your information without your secret encryption key.
  However, we must stress that you do not lose your secret encryption key! If you don’t have the key you will never be able to access the backup. It’s that secure!
• Scheduling
  Don’t want to have to run a backup yourself on a daily basis? Just configure our plugin to run on one of your WordPress schedules!
  You can have it send the backup to our secure servers and also have it email it to you when the schedule runs.
• On-Demand Backup
  Just added a large amount of blog posts in a short space of time? Just go to the Online Backup plugin page and kick-off an on-demand backup. You can have it sent to our secure servers, emailed to you, and even download it directly to your computer as soon as it finishes.

Support & Bug Reporting

If you have any problems using the plugin or require support you can check out common problems and solutions on our FAQ page. If you continue to have problems you can feel free to leave a comment below and we will endeavour to answer as soon as possible (normally within a few working days).

Screenshots

Online Backup For WordPress is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

In 2009 it was found that just 22 per cent of small companies used some form of cloud computing solution, but according to a study carried out on behalf of internet provider Easy Connect, this is set to grow in 2010 to around 50 per cent as acceptance of cloud computing grows.

Easy Connect’s Chris Stenning released a statement in reaction to the report, observing that the statistics showed widespread adoption of cloud computing was just around the corner.

When the recent study was compared to the results of an identical survey completed 12 months earlier, the number of businesses categorically denying that they would ever look to cloud computing fell by nearly half to just 23 per cent.

93 per cent of respondents confirmed that they would be looking into cloud implementation in their businesses and for a majority this switchover would begin in 2010.

Despite the positive response to cloud computing illustrated in this survey, the uptake in real terms between 2008 and 2009 was relatively poor. It was found that 13 per cent of SMEs were actively employing cloud-based solutions, with the financial constraints of the recession seemingly stifling the uptake during recent months.

The report suggests that it is the larger SMEs that will be quickest to adopt cloud computing, with firms of 200 staff or more leading the way.

Many businesses cited that remote working was one of the strongest arguments for cloud adoption, although the financial benefits still remained the most attractive proposition with 51 per cent looking forward to the savings they would make by switching to cloud computing.

There has been debate as to the security issues facing cloud platforms and also questions surrounding the reliability of the systems. However, the results of the study suggest that businesses are becoming less concerned about these issues. With only 13 per cent citing doubts over security and 9 per cent querying the reliability of cloud computing, the level of trust is growing.

Report suggests growing cloud popularity amongst SMEs is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

HP hopes that it will offer improvements in the form of cost-cutting, risk management and improved flexibility within cloud platforms.

The firm has created the new services in the light of a new study it conducted which found that uncertainty within many enterprises over the future of IT technology was fuelling hesitancy. It also identified that most companies would be more likely to invest in cloud computing if they could be assured it was a more flexible and cost-effective alternative to their current in-house systems.

The survey identified that 90 per cent of all those questioned were unsure as to how the future of business computing would unfold. HP then revealed that this resulted in 75 per cent of respondents expressing a desire to invest in anything which would add a greater degree of certainty to the equation, as well as offering a more flexible working environment.

HP’s software solutions VP Thomas E. Hogan commented that despite understanding the benefits of cloud computing, most business IT managers were looking for a solution which would remove any risk associated with switching to the remote platform.

Mr Hogan said that the new range of services from HP would help to ease companies into the adoption of cloud computing by balancing risk against cost and generating faith in the platform within firms.

One of the new HP cloud-based services, called Cloud Assure, is intended to help businesses manage the costs of cloud computing. This includes being able to ensure that the minimum terms of service that a cloud provider has promised to uphold are indeed being met.

The HP Operations Orchestration service allows for automatic scaling of cloud capacity and relies on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud.

All of these new services are a step in the right direction and should hopefully attract more enterprises to cloud solutions by generating confidence and trust in the technology and its providers.

HP promotes cloud computing solution is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.

In a recent study of over 100 schools around the country, in which the network managers were questioned on a variety of topics, it was found that many schools were failing to backup their data to remote servers. This contravenes the requirements of Becta rules.

The report also identified that data storage needs for an average school will jump by 75 percent in the near future, with an additional 1.5 terabytes of space required by 2012. This is expected to put a strain on budgets and resources across the board.

A third of all respondents also revealed that their schools were inadequately prepared for data loss and storage failure as they had still neglected to invest in off-site data replication.

A spokesperson for RM Education, which ran the survey, explained that the focus of the study had been on storage requirements in educational establishments. Jon Gould said that a bigger picture had emerged, illustrating the different attitudes towards data backup throughout the educational system.

Gould indicated that the Becta rules for data backup in schools had not been changed for five years and that there have been calls to reassess and improve the guidelines. He also confirmed that many schools are unaware as to their obligation to copy all of their data to a remote location to avoid destruction as a result of fire or environmental damage to the schools themselves.

Schools are advised to set out disaster recovery planning and backup contingencies, as well as keeping a record as to how frequently the data is backed up and precisely what information is actually stored off-site. Significantly, the requirement for data backup is the only enforced rule, whilst the others are merely suggestions.

Gould believes that in a majority of cases it is a lack of awareness that causes the non-compliance with data backup guidelines, rather than a conscious decision to ignore them.

UK secondary schools ignore data backup rules is a post from our Online Backup blog. Contact us today for business continuity consulting.