Hexistor BLOG

Business continuity planning (BCP) means that a business has a plan to follow when an event occurs that may stop it from operating. This could be anything from a minor interruption to a full blown disaster. The object of the plan is to keep the business safe and secure with a minimized loss of down time.

Most departments inside a business have a BC plan to follow when an event happens. These plans are called checklists, and they must be followed in order. This blog is for the IT department's BCP, to help create a checklist of what to do before and after the storm.

Once your location has become a hurricane watch or warning the threat to a suspension (shutdown) of your business is real. It's time to get out the checklist. Make sure everyone has a current copy and knows their assignments.

Caveat: This checklist is very basic. We know that every business is different. Use this information as a starting point to help create your own IT checklist for shutting down and restarting your business' computers. Once you have a checklist implemented you should run a full trial, making sure nothing has been forgotten and everyone knows what to do. Whenever you update or add any IT device, you should look at your checklist and update as necessary.

Before the Storm: Getting ready to secure your business' IT

Below is the national Institute of standards and technology's defination of Cloud Computing, http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/

Authors: Peter Mell and Tim Grance

Version 15, 10-7-09

National Institute of Standards and Technology, Information Technology Laboratory

Note 1: Cloud computing is still an evolving paradigm. Its definitions, use cases, underlying technologies, issues, risks, and benefits will be refined in a spirited debate by the public and private sectors. These definitions, attributes, and characteristics will evolve and change over time.

Note 2: The cloud computing industry represents a large ecosystem of many models, vendors, and market niches. This definition attempts to encompass all of the various cloud approaches.

Hexistor has upgraded our resilient infrastructure with the addition of SAS 70 Type II/Tier III disaster recovery centers in four North American locations. The data centers are designed and constructed to deliver world-class physical security, power availability, and infrastructure flexibility and growth capacity.

The 100,000 square foot Tier III+ 2N+1, NEBS Level-3 building standards data center in Chicago's western suburbs is engineered with the highest level of redundant systems to deliver a 99.999% uptime service level agreement.

The SAS 70 audit independently verifies the validity and functionality of a data Center's control activities and processes. These control activities and processes are important to customers within the financial, healthcare, and insurance sectors, as well as to publicly traded companies who must validate the security of their financial and sensitive information controls. A yearly audit is performed to not only verify that procedures are in place and effective, but that they are maintained.

In addition to state-of-the-art data centers, customer data is stored on EMC/Avamar VMware Virtual Edition Data Stores. Avamar Data Store utilizes grid architecture, enabling linear performance and capacity increases by simply adding servers. To ensure a high availability, Avamar Data Store employs patented redundant array independent nodes (RAIN) technology to provide fault tolerance across the an Avamar grid -eliminating single points of failure.