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Updating Your Higher Ed Campus for the New Normal

AV in Education

For higher education — as with many organizations — the story of COVID-19 has been about disruption, quick thinking, and adaption. During the last few months, the pandemic and its responses have placed major obstacles to continuing the business of education.  Teachers, students, and administrators have adapted to long stretches of closed campuses, distance learning, and remote work for faculty and staff. As guidelines relax, they’re entering a new phase, one that can include a modified arrangement for classroom learning. 

Enrollment numbers are expected to decline as millions of people who’ve lost their jobs due to the pandemic may not have the resources to attend college. Fewer students are filling out the Federal Application for Federal Student Aid, a sign that they may be unwilling to take on loans in this economy or are forced to give up schooling for the time being to help out at home. Declining enrollments lead to declining revenue, forcing some schools to face the possibility that they may have to close permanently.  

Amidst this disruption, higher education institutions have been planning on ways to safely reopen their campuses. Even if your school already had the infrastructure and culture for remote work, teaching, and learning, you’ve seen firsthand just how much people rely on each other when they can’t be in the same physical spaces. Routines change and are challenged when you’re not just a few feet away from asking a question, giving an answer, or providing an update. 

Schools will figure out a lot over the coming months: how students are guided through the system and what role technology will play in those changes. How higher education will build a model that grows enrollment numbers while providing an experience that builds a positive reputation. 

The past few months have emphasized the value of collaboration tools that bring teachers and students together from remote locations. When campuses reopen, teachers may lead classes from the classroom while students are remote, they may gather together in the same classroom while practicing social distancing, and they may broadcast instruction to other classrooms. That means they’ll need the technology and guidance to safely conduct and participate in classes while providing a high-quality experience. 

The new normal on campus will be influenced by technology solutions and practices that include:

Video collaboration: Remote learning — whether it’s from home or a separate location on campus — requires a high-quality, engaging experience for students and instructors. For university staff to productively and efficiently work from home and on site, they need reliable, simple-to-use collaboration solutions that integrate with their school’s network and applications. Here are some areas to consider as you incorporate video collaboration into the teaching and administrative processes:

  • Look at which courses can be taught online. Some schools are already experimenting with online learning.
  • Use unified communications tools that support active learning and engage students in the material.
  • In situations where classroom teaching returns, focus on connecting on-site and off-site students through collaboration technology. 
  • Increase video conferencing among staff and reduce travel between campuses for in-person meetings. As collaboration takes on a more prominent role and is an opportunity for problem-solving, we can expect a greater reliance on video collaboration and unified communications solutions like Microsoft Teams. 

Well-being: Schools are in the process of addressing their campus safety: pushing back the opening of their fall semester, temperature screenings, quarantine facilities, requiring masks to be worn, and COVID-19 testing. Consider taking action in the following areas to promote the well-being of your students, staff, and faculty:

  • Create social distancing guidelines that extend into the classroom. Limit the number of students in classrooms. Social distancing may change the dynamic of classroom interaction: Instead of leaving her seat to address content on an interactive display, a student can interact with it from a personal device.
  • Equip rooms with collaboration technology to bring together learners from different locations. Expect the quality of that interaction to guide the value that universities can promise to students.

Automation: Across campuses, staff and instructors book common classrooms and use a variety of control and collaboration devices that are also being used by their colleagues. By automating functions like scheduling and room control, you can improve the collaboration experience while also minimizing health risks by reducing the number of touch points. Some ideas for incorporating automation technology in your workplace include:

  • Help your instructors become comfortable teaching classes that are interactive by way of technology. These interactive solutions will allow them to connect with those learning from their homes, as well as with those attending class from different areas on campus.
  • Include classroom solutions like lecture capture and interactive displays that respond via wireless connection to a student’s smart phone or laptop. Automating the functions of these devices will allow for a largely touch-free experience that supports the health of faculty, staff, and students. 
  • Bring together distance learners with in-class students. The technology that connects them and that records these sessions must be reliable and easy to use, and it must deliver a high-quality experience.

Intelligent buildings: Intelligent buildings can anticipate and respond to the ways that teachers and students use a variety of on-campus spaces: classrooms, labs, libraries, common areas. These systems give insight into how spaces are being used so that you can use the analytics to decide if your university or college needs to reconfigure spaces and/or build new ones.

  • See which devices are being used most often, by whom, and in what ways. That intelligence will shape how automation tools provide an efficient, sometimes touch-free experience for teachers and students.
  • Use intelligent building technology to schedule spaces and limit how many people can gather in one room at the same time.
  • Identify campus hot spots — those areas where too many people are congregating to abide by social distancing guidelines.

Security: Providing for the health and well-being of students and staff will affect the design and user experience of collaboration tools and meeting spaces. Even as the effects of COVID-19 are mitigated on campus, remote learning and remote work will continue.

  • Focus on the security of video collaboration and UC applications, which may share sensitive content. Look for UC solutions with built-in encryption, authentication, user permissions.
  • Review the security of the applications themselves, as well as the security of your ecosystem of solutions, including application interfaces, the network, hosting capacity, room and personal devices, and end-user protocols.
  • Collaborate with IT to plan and build secure access to the campus LAN for your staff. Even as campuses reopen, remote work will continue.
  • Provide for secure access to the network and applications.  Classes will bring together off-site learners with classroom-based teachers, and they’ll connect different rooms on campus for socially distanced learning. Schools will also work to limit campus visits with a shift to more online recruiting and admissions. Universities will need the technology, infrastructure, and support to do this on a much wider scale than they have.

AVI-SPL is helping schools like yours create the new normal by sharing the knowledge that will help your faculty, students, and staff collaborate across campuses, rooms, offices and remote locations. Contact AVI-SPL and let’s start the conversation about preparing your higher ed campus for a bold, flexible learning and operational experience.

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Updating Your Digital Workplace for the New Normal

AV Everywhere

During this time of remote work, many companies have continued their business operations by  giving their employees the technology tools that keep them collaborating. 

As we gradually get back to business as usual, what we call “as usual” may have changed as well. The last few months have shut down businesses or hindered their efforts to keep up their operations. Even if your organization was one of those that was already on board with collaboration technology, you’ve seen firsthand just how much people rely on each other when they can’t be in the same office, where they’re just a few feet away from asking a question, giving an answer, or providing an update. 

Our post-COVID-19 era, if we may optimistically call it that, is one that will find thousands of organizations wanting to improve their collaboration environment for those working on-site and off. The following factors will impact and shape the new normal in the workplace: 

Well-being: The offices you return to won’t be like the offices you left before the shutdown. Here are some ways you’ll maintain social connections while also providing for your employees’ well-being through recommended best practices and guidelines they must follow:

  • Support monitored social distancing throughout the workplace, including collaboration spaces. A conference room that was designed to hold 10 people might now only have chairs for five participants at a time. 
  • Share safety protocols like frequent hand washing, social distancing, contact tracing, and the frequent cleaning of common devices and furniture. 
  • Create new spaces and redevelop existing ones to include touchless control and BYOD (bring your own device) capabilities.

Video collaboration: For people to work from home and on site, they need reliable, simple-to-use collaboration technology that integrates with their company’s network and applications. Having that high-quality, user-friendly technology also improves the experience for those connecting with them from various locations. Here are some areas to consider as you address a digital workplace equipped with video collaboration:

  • Look at the ways your staff has used collaboration spaces and how those use cases are expected to change. Prepare for more activity-based workspaces while keeping in mind they might not follow the design you had in mind before COVID-19. Even with enhanced cleaning measures in place, people may not want to use the touch-enabled devices that book rooms, start meetings, or engage video.
  • Provide a consistent user experience for those working from home. Standardize on a UCC solution that is easy to use and has the features that will accommodate your different user types.
  • Consider non-traditional spaces like manufacturing floors as candidates for video collaboration.

Security: The expansion of the work environment to off-site locations, including the home, means that cybersecurity must also expand to include remote workers on a much larger scale than you may have previously anticipated. However, on-site work continues to be a mainstay of company operations. As your business transitions back to the offices, you’ll need to help your talent interact with on-site technology in a way that keeps information secure.

Consider these areas as your IT team focuses on your company’s information security:

  • As you add UCC solutions for in-room and remote collaboration, review the cybersecurity features of those providers. Understand the built-in permissions and privacy protocols of their solutions so you know what steps to take to keep your information secure.
  • Prepare for a resurgence of BYOD. Expect your staff to prefer using their own devices to interact with and control collaboration room technology.
  • As you give access to company services to remote workers, consider how that access affects the security of those on-premise or cloud-based services.
  • Address the home LAN with cybersecurity measures that protect company information, including documents and chat files.

Automation: In the workplace, many employees are booking common rooms and using a variety of control and collaboration devices that are also being used by their colleagues.

By automating in-office functions like scheduling and room control, you can improve the collaboration experience while also minimizing health risks by reducing the number of touch points. Some ideas for incorporating automation technology in your workplace include:

  • Deploy virtual digital assistants like Alexa for Business to create a touch-free experience in collaboration spaces. Through voice activation, people can start their meetings and the devices that allow them to connect with remote colleagues, share documents from their personal devices, and wirelessly connect their devices to room displays.
  • Offer personalized wayfinding employees and visitors through a combination of mobile apps and digital signage. This minimizes foot traffic by efficiently guiding people to their destinations.
  • Automate workspace assignments so that employees know when and where they are scheduled to be on site. These assignments can be based on each person’s need to use on-site resources as well as their work preferences.
  • Use remote concierge services to schedule, launch meetings, and monitor meetings. User management applications like AVI-SPL Symphony can do this, as well as remotely monitor and manage rooms, devices, the network, and the conference infrastructure.

Intelligent buildings: Intelligent building technology anticipates and responds to the way people work, and it streamlines their interactions with spaces and the kind of technology they need to use. These systems give insight into how spaces are being used so that a company can use the analytics to decide if it needs to reconfigure spaces and/or build new ones.

  • Design responsive environments driven by AI and ambient computing. These rooms anticipate what devices and applications will be needed based on who schedules them, who is using the room, and the meeting purpose. Facial recognition tells system how you like the temperature and lighting in a room, and the preferred way of starting a meeting.
  • The Internet of Things (IoT) and occupancy sensors, thermal cameras, and Wi-Fi tracking show the density of people gathered in various areas throughout the workplace. They provide alerts when they anticipate collaboration sessions will go over the approved number of participants. That information can be used to provide intelligent space scheduling that shows available rooms for supporting the required number of in-person participants while also maintaining social distancing.
  • Integrated workplace management systems do the heavy lifting by monitoring spaces, down to the device level. This ensures that only rooms with functioning technology are available to schedule, and it lets the support team know when an issue needs a resolution. These systems help staff resolve these issues before an end user experiences any difficulty during a meeting. 

AVI-SPL is helping organizations like yours determine what your “new normal” work experience will look like as you  collaborate across offices and remote locations. If you have any questions about the issues shared in this post, or would like to discuss your organization’s collaboration strategy, contact us.

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Evaluate Your Disaster Collaboration Plan

AV Everywhere

COVID-19 has highlighted that many of us were ill-prepared for a prolonged global disaster.  Better accustomed to hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters, we had (fortunately) never experienced a crisis like this in our lifetimes. Now that we have had to learn these lessons the hard way, how can we use this knowledge and experience to ensure we are better prepared in the future?

We can all agree that business continuity is the most important aspect in any crisis.  As the world begins to return to “normal”, we should take advantage of this opportunity to evaluate how we have managed the current challenge and think about how we can better prepare ourselves for the next crisis.

When evaluating how well your systems functioned during the crisis, here are a few questions with which to begin:

With many cloud services’ free offers expiring shortly, are you prepared to pay the bill for continued service?  Will this service improve your disaster response in the future, or can alternatives meet this need?

Now is the time to evaluate your options and anticipate how these will assist you in maintaining business continuity in a second wave of lockdowns, or a more traditional disaster.

While most applications have seen a spike in utilization, are there any applications with suspiciously low usage?

This may be pointing out your workforce has developed their own solutions or workarounds for your systems, causing security and intellectual property concerns.

Who are your most crucial users?  Who should belong to Phase 2 or 3?

Rolling out emergency procedures can be time consuming, and you should prioritize when possible to ensure your business continues to be as capable as possible during interruption. While executives are a natural answer, your front-line client support should not be overlooked. New product development, marketing, and even accounting should be considered for lower priority in your disaster collaboration plan.

Are your offices ready to handle users who have increased their adoption of video services?

Social distancing requirements may require a sustained uptick in video meeting adoption as some team members are in the office while others are at home.  Additionally, some employees may be uncomfortable being in an enclosed space with others.  Evaluate your office to include any conference rooms or huddle spaces that could be equipped with video to keep up with increased demand. It is becoming much cheaper to outfit rooms with basic video conferencing and content sharing technology.  Defined corporate standards should provide easy templates to quickly outfit these spaces.

When evaluating your current response and working to refine future plans, there are a few other areas to consider that also impact business continuity:

 

Redundancy and Resilience

Luckily, the world has been moving to many cloud-based platforms in the past few years: between file storage and sharing, cloud video, and shared productivity apps, we are already in a much better place than we would have been even 10 years ago.  However, there are strings attached to that cloud: licensing, security, and the ability for end user devices to access these technologies are all limiting factors. Some areas to ensure you have covered:

  • Securing video meetings against intruders, with a passcode or other method
  • Your device must be secure – but it must also connect to a secure platform. Are the management platforms, manufacturer portals, and individual device logins secure against attack? (For a more in-depth look, listen to our recent webinar with Crestron on AV and cybersecurity.)

 

Enabling Working from Anywhere

In the past, we have joked about working from our backyard hammock, the beach, or a boat.  For these uncommon occurrences, the low-res webcam built into laptops, or those headphones you got with your phone, are perfectly adequate. The recent scramble to acquire webcams, headsets, and other remote work enablement devices has proven the need for quality hardware.  Luckily, these items will not just sit in dusty boxes – they can be utilized in-office as well, improving the user experience and promoting the adoption of video meetings.

Consider purchasing employees basic hardware, such as those provided in AVI-SPL’s work from home bundles, as a hedge against potential second-wave quarantines and future disasters.  AVI-SPL has expanded its offerings to provide solutions specific to COVID-19 office space needs:

  • Temperature checks with the Aurora Temperature Check Tablet
  • Touchless hand sanitizer stations such as the Liberty Cable NOVI-AHS
  • Additional wireless demand will require a more durable network. Consider adding more WAP’s like the Luxul WS-80
  • Improve the videoconferencing experience with webcams, such as the Logitech C925E and audio solutions such as the Yamaha YVC-330
  • Wireless content sharing to enable social distancing while working in a group, using tools like the Barco ClickShare

 

Manage It Remotely

Are there elements of your collaboration technology environment that you cannot manage remotely? How will you handle a situation where a fire, tornado, or other natural disaster compromises your server or office access?  While we have been relatively lucky lately that we can access our offices when required, this will not always be the case.

If you work in a corporate HQ that oversees and supports a company-wide technology environment, how will your satellite offices cope if HQ is gone? 

Is your company planning on equipping multiple smaller offices, rather than one large office, to gain social distancing space?

Once again, a plan for redundancy and resiliency is needed.  Systems such as AVI-SPL Symphony will allow you to monitor and control remote office technologies while enabling remote troubleshooting and meeting monitoring.  This cloud-based application enables you to run a support desk from home and promotes social distancing: minimizing the number of on-site trips required and the number of staff required in-office. 

 

Utilize Your Trusted Advisor

One of the most important life skills – in AV, UCC, or any situation – is to know when we have reached the limits of our knowledge.  Even experts consult with other experts, and it is always a good practice to check in with others to get a second opinion.

AVI-SPL’s teams are at your convenience for that expert opinion. Beyond your account manager or service manager, AVI-SPL’s talented design teams can develop corporate standards that account for increased social distancing, remove touch elements from your conference rooms, and improve the reliability and scalability of your collaboration environment.  Let us know you need help, and we will provide the service and support you require.

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Webinar Recording on AV and Cybersecurity

AV Everywhere

With so many AV devices now connected to the network, the need for cybersecurity in AV projects has never been greater. In this AVI-SPL webinar, hosted by Commercial Integrator and My TechDecisions, you’ll learn why your AV integrator should be implementing and potentially offering cybersecurity measures.

Three Crestron experts offer their insight and guidance. John Pavlik, senior director, systems engineering; Alex Peras, manager, product management, digital media; and Joseph Sarrasin, director, product strategy UC, discuss many aspects of cybersecurity that AV integrators and their clients need to consider in order to make sure that their customers and their firm are secured.

Topics include:

  • Security measures for AV over IP
  • Making sure unified communications systems are secure
  • The pros and cons of cybersecurity insurance
  • How vital it is to utilize products with inherent cybersecurity measures

Get the recording for “Why Your AV Integrator Needs a Cybersecurity Strategy” >

To view our Partner blog, click here

Business Continuity for the New Normal in IT Environments

CMMA Blog

With a remote workforce, endpoints will generate a lot of data and more IP will be leaving your premises.  Intellectual Property (IP), Financial Data, and Personnel Data are important data sets to be secured. What do you do? Clearly, it’s an open-ended question, but I want to lean in on this topic in the context of implementing security and protecting your data for continued operations in the midst of a crisis with nearly 100% remote workforce as we adjust to a rapidly evolving new normal for managing IT environments.

Maybe your IT organization is like Quantum’s in that you had a head start and prepared to weather this storm because you had previously established a business strategy that allowed your employees to work remotely as part of your normal business operations. If you did not have a head start, it’s understandable and you are now in a reactive mode. Nobody was ready for such a crisis nonetheless, preparedness is key. To deploy a remote workforce that is cost-effective, secure, reliable, and resilient, it takes time to develop and rollout as you prioritize hardware or software requirements within your infrastructure. Here are a few key insights from our own Quantum IT.

Enterprise Applications in the Cloud

At Quantum, every employee is issued a portable computer – either a Windows-based laptop or a MacBook, depending on the needs of the user. We also employ SaaS solutions like Microsoft 365. This provides us collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and Exchange Online as well as business productivity tools either online or installed on the laptop. In addition, other of our Enterprise applications are SaaS based, meaning they are accessible from anywhere over the internet. Example:  CRM (SalesForce.com). Leveraging the public cloud in this scenario is a good cost-effective solution that enables a remote workforce effective and efficiently.

Protection – Encryption

You’ve heard the saying: “Safety First.” In the digital era the profile of this statement has never been more important than today. It begins with a secured foundation at the server level (normally at the core). If your foundation is weak the rest of your endpoints will probably resemble the same weak structure. Do not take the shortcut, when possible leverage solutions such as:

Data encryption at rest and in transit. In transit, web data should always be sent via https. Also look at the various encryption models: Client-side, Server-side with service-managed keys, Server-side with Customer-managed keys. Also consider using a Key Vault to securely store keys.

Client-side encryption

Client-side encryption is performed outside of Azure. It includes:

  • Data encrypted by an application that is running in the customer’s datacenter or by a service application.
  • Data that is already encrypted when it is received by Azure.

With client-side encryption, cloud service providers do not have access to the encryption keys and cannot decrypt this data. You maintain complete control of the keys.

Server-Side Encryption

The three server-side encryption models offer different key management characteristics, which you can choose according to your requirements:

  • Service-managed keys: Provides a combination of control and convenience with low overhead.
  • Customer-managed keys: Gives you control over the keys, including Bring Your Own Keys (BYOK) support, or allows you to generate new ones.
  • Service-managed keys in customer-controlled hardware: Enables you to manage keys in your proprietary repository, outside of Microsoft control. This characteristic is called Host Your Own Key (HYOK). However, configuration is complex, and most Azure services do not support this model.

Cybersecurity

 IDC research shows that 93% of organizations have been attacked within the past three years (source: https://dl.acronis.com/u/rc/WP_IDC_Acronis_Cyber_Protection_EN-US_200403.pdf ). It is time to tighten up the integration of data protection, disaster recovery, and data security operations within the cybersecurity strategy and think about backups as part of your cybersecurity approach. Threats from ransomware and other malware are prevalent and there are plenty more threats engineered with AI capabilities to infiltrate your datacenter. Whatever cyber-security software or backup method you choose, (Flash, SSDs, HDD, Tape) or environment (physical, virtual, multi-cloud) or, the goal is to integrate what used to be silos and build a resilient IT operation.

Availability & Resiliency

Because of an enterprise’s global reach, systems and application need to be ready and available 24/7. Backup applications need to be efficient and predictable across multiple platforms. Any threat such as natural, man-made or cyber is disruptive to an IT environment; a resilient system is key to recover quickly and efficiently to withstand unforeseen events and ensure data is secure and available at any moment in time. Employ a backup method that enables the replication to a DR site or cloud provider by employing on-prem, cloud or a hybrid approach to backup. Our current global situation has reset many priorities and all these topics are now top of mind.

VDI

As the threat to businesses continues, a large majority of organizations have turned to VDI to rapidly deploy virtual desktop infrastructures and release a mobile workforce that can be as productive as if they were in the office. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is defined as the hosting of desktop environments on a central server. In other words, it’s like having a structured office available on-demand allowing you the ability to access virtual data and applications and you are really just shifting the compute cost from the endpoint to the data center (if on premises) or the cloud. To us, this is a very cost-effective solution that helps keep the data centralized and off endpoints which are more susceptible to data loss. One of the cool things about VDI, is break/fix becomes a lot easier because you can quickly “spin up” a new desktop for a user if their current desktop becomes corrupt. Also makes things like patch management and OS updates easier as it is all centrally managed i.e. lower administrative overhead.

Flexibility

An important part of the equation is flexibility. Whatever strategy you chose that meets your organization’s business goals or in this case, an effective and secured remote workforce for business continuity (BC), your solution should be flexible to adjust as needed to meet the demands of current and future national or global events that can affect your datacenter. This current global crisis is a good example of how quickly organization learned if the were ahead of behind the curve. Technology by itself cannot meet the need alone, it needs a strategy built upon it to mitigate risks associated with ‘crisis’ type events and or simple business continuity.

Data Protection

It has never been more important to back up data on the regular. With Ransomware getting more sophisticated, we need to adapt and build IT environments to expect (and withstand) an attack – there are some strains out there that as far as we know, there are no decryption tools available so you must have alternative methods to recover your data. Let’s remember that criminals are no longer using mass campaigns, instead they are going for remote access – remote desktop protocol was the most used entry vector.

In our new normal, we hope our insight provides some guidance to building, securing and protecting your data, your remote workforce, your network and helps you build solid business continuity plans… no matter what disaster comes your way. Check out our QonQ business continuity webinar here.

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Keeping Your Data Protected During Chaotic Times

CMMA Blog

The world events of the past weeks have given us a clear view of what not having a plan looks like. We are learning that current infrastructures cannot support a pandemic the likes of what we’re currently living through and we’re managing it in crisis mode. Learning this lesson came at a great cost, but it is challenging us to rethink our preparedness. As I sit here on a stay indoor order from our local leadership and doing my due diligence to protect myself and others, I can’t help but draw parallels (being in the technology space) from these life-altering events to digital cyber-criminal events that are occurring right now as I write this. In my last blog, I wrote about the importance of testing your IT network and pointed out some strategies to use to ensure you are well prepared should ransomware or other cyber-attacks infiltrate your datacenter and cause irreparable damage. In this blog, I want to discuss – no, stress once again the importance of testing your backup strategies and business continuity plans.

Training & Preparedness

With a lot of the workforce working remotely, it is crucial that employees are trained to be alert to activity that targets regular users like you and me – watch out for those coronavirus emails that are being used as bait by phishers! There are sites that are using COVID-19 and Coronavirus as a lure to make victims ‘click the link’. Paul Chichester, Director of Operations at the NCSC, said: “We know that cybercriminals are opportunistic and will look to exploit people’s fears, and this has undoubtedly been the case with the Coronavirus outbreak.

Time and time again we’ve heard that cyber-attacks come in different forms such as data breaches, ransomware, phishing campaigns, and even some advanced hacking attacks. Investing in an excellent cybersecurity software plus employee training will play a major role in averting a disaster. Persistent criminals will take advantage of the opportunity to infiltrate your network via the various forms of cyber-attacks so let’s learn from previous incidents causing millions of dollars in damage (see previous blog – link) and avoid the same fate as best we can. Just last week, a report on the NCSC site stated that a global network of bots was brought down and dismantled. These criminals are believed to have infected more than nine million computers worldwide. https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/report/weekly-threat-report-13th-march-2020

The right mix of technology

Let’s start by asking the right questions. First, asses your cyber risk. Check out the NCSC website for guidance https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/risk-management-collection/essential-topics . Is your organization prepared to weather a cyber-attack? Is your network not only protected but resilient and able to predictably recover stolen, encrypted or lost data? What are the RPO/RTO’s that need to be met, and can they be met with your current data protection technology? If your network backup copies are compromised, do you have a copy offline and air-gapped? These and many more questions need to be asked to ensure that whatever data protection solution you choose, test your Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) to understand efficiency resiliency and predictability so you have the peace of mind that your data is protected.

The experts, highly recommended that you apply the time-tested best practice rule of 3-2-1-1 rule to be safe. Have both disk and tape to ensure a reliable copy is available when you need it. Whether you use cloud or hardware on-prem, be it fast performance technology to quickly process your hot data to cold storage technologies for long-term storage – the most cost-effective way to tier-off your data as it shifts in value is to leverage the different technologies that are available.  Here is an example from Quantum with DXi and object storage for enterprise backup where cost-effectiveness, scalability, and management of unstructured data is of extreme importance.

drblog1

All these technologies combined will help you meet your RPO/RTO’s but in addition, should you need to call on your backup copy for any reason and your copy on spinning disk is compromised, your insurance will be the copy that is offline and air-gapped.

If we knew when disaster will strike, everyone would prepare. The reality is we never know. Test and practice your response to a cyber-attack. Whether you are small or large organizations, testing your resiliency is critical. Create practice scenarios in a safe environment where you can test your network and backup strategies, there are plenty of online help tools available if you’re organization does not have IT, professionals, to handle this type of exercise. Be prepared to handle a crisis scenario. If you’re in the public sector and funds are tight, leverage organizations like NCSC with their exercise in a box tool to practice your response https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/exercise-in-a-box .

These times call on us to provide you, the IT professional with
all the tools and necessary information to help you make the best decision for
your organization. Crisis or no crisis preparedness is key!

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