Eight Reasons to Increase Backup Spending When the Economy Slows

Eight Reasons to Increase Backup Spending When the Economy Slows 

  

by Bud Stoddard, President & CEO, AmeriVault Corp. 

  

To say we have seen a significant downturn in the economy in the past twelve months would be hyperbole at its best.  As business and technology executives and professionals, it is incumbent upon each of us to go through the necessary belt-tightening and reassessment of the budget whenever the economic conditions and the stock market make a turn in a southerly direction. 

  

There are the obvious areas we turn to first with the scalpel in hand such as head count, marketing, accounting, human resources, legal, maybe even customer support and information technology (IT).  IT often seems like a logical choice because most of us have spent so much money on technology in the past several years.  Certainly with IT investments having risen by upwards of 15-20% at most companies in the recent past, this is an area that could stand to go on a fiscal version of the Slim-Fast Program, at least until we climb out of this economic malaise.  It is okay to buy less fancy laptops without all the bells and whistles, (I'm writing on my less fancy one now on a Delta flight to Scottsdale, Arizona) defer the web initiative or stretch out the additional hires for a few months but I beg you, for the future health and welfare of your company, accelerate or at the very least, spare your backup expenses. 

  

Allow me to give you my eight best reasons why you should increase your backup budget during these slow economic times.  Hopefully, if I am successful, a few of you will suck it up and advocate within your company, the spending of more rather than less on backing up your company's mission-critical data.  But first, the central premise.  Electronic information or data, is one of the most critical assets in your business and loss of that data is irreplaceable period.  In fact, according to the Disaster Recovery Journal, 43% of all companies will go out of business within one year following a disaster.  Could you or anybody on your management team or staff, following a data loss or disaster tell you from memory:         

  

§         What your outstanding accounts receivables are and who owes your company what? 

§         Who all your customers and suppliers are? 

§         What's in inventory? 

§         What the heck is in that Oracle or SQL database that you spent gazillions for? 

  

You may argue, we have a special data processing rider on our insurance plan that covers data loss and destruction.  That is all well and good but getting a check will not replace the data you need for your business to thrive or at the least, survive. You can replace desks, computers, supplies, inventory and even people but data is irreplaceable and its loss could put you out of business.  The only viable insurance program for data is to have a fail-safe backup and recovery plan in place. 

  

So, back to those eight reasons to accelerate your backup spending during slow economic times: 

  

1.      During rough economic times, it is common to downsize staff and to have to do more with less.  Most often, backup will be what doesn't get done because Joe gets busy with another project and doesn't have time or forgets because he has too much on his plate. 

2.      That long-term employee you had to let go after 12 years gets disgruntled and erases some backup tapes on his last day at the office as a little gesture of you hurt me, I'll hurt you.  Do not be mistaken, this happens all the time! 

3.      You get rid of the expensive courier service that transported your backup tapes off-site to save money and have Phil take the tape home instead.  But, did you know that Phil has been secretly planning on starting a company to compete with you and thanks to you, he know has everything he needs to do just that. 

4.      You defer buying new tape drives and tapes and the equipment fails resulting in incomplete backups so that in the case of an outage or data loss, you have no backup to retrieve it from.  

5.      To save on the $75 per tape charge, your systems administrator buys fewer tapes.  Instead, they just recall the archive tapes sooner before the retention period is up and reuse them so now your backups only go back a day.  How often does data loss only go back a day?  Not often. 

6.      Certainly, it is not uncommon for morale to suffer when you tighten the belt and employees tend to get careless and fail to do things by the book.  The margin of error as it relates to backup is huge so one slight mistake and your data could be gone. 

7.      That recovery testing you used to do twice a year has been thrown out the window because there is not enough time or manpower to do it with a reduced staff. 

8.      Often, when IT resources are limited, IT staff becomes firefighters rather than fire preventers and that can cause you to burn up.  

        

There are very few things, fortunately, that can bring a company to its knees in less than 24 hours.  But data loss or destruction is most certainly one of them.  Data is your most important strategic asset, regardless of the business or industry you are in.  Whether your company is three years old or 103 years old, many talented people, you included, have worked hard to build a first class company.  Don't put the whole company at risk because business is slow and the backup budget was cut, re-evaluate your backup strategy and increase spending as necessary.

Protecting Today's Data Dependant Firm

Protecting Today's Data Dependant Firm 

By Bud Stoddard, President & CEO, AmeriVault Corp. 

  

Most everything that is done in a law firm today, from email to preparing court documents to billing clients and keeping their information current, requires the use of the computer through which electronic data is generated.  Just as malpractice insurance is an important part of protecting a firm, safeguards must be put in place to protect electronic data and to ensure that a firm is back up and running quickly following an outage.  

  

The means by which most law firms today protect their data is through tape backup.  Because tape backup has been around for years and on the surface it may seem inexpensive, most law firm IS/IT personnel see it as the most effective backup solution.  But, for electronic data dependent law firms today, it is frought with inefficiencies and multiple points of failure which could have a negative impact on the future health and wellbeing of a firm. Let's review: 

  

Tape backup requires personnel and human intervention which can mean success or failure - think about the last time Bob forgot to put the backup tape in.

Once the backup is completed, is the tape transported to a secure offsite location?  And no, Tim's sock drawer is not exactly secure. 

Is the data quickly and readily available in the event a restore is necessary?  Does someone have to drive an hour to pick up the tape or, do wait hours for a courier service to deliver it?

Equipment malfunctions are common with tape backup so what safeguards are in place to ensure a complete and accurate backup?

Although seemingly inexpensive tape backup can involve the high cost of human resources, hardware (tapes, drives, etc.), software (licenses, maintenance, etc.), courier service fees and off-site storage and recovery efforts. 

  

A cost-effective and not so new technology that is beginning to gain speed within the legal community is online backup and recovery.  A process that occurs automatically and according to the firms needs, it recognizes and captures changes to files (at the block level), encrypts the data for enhanced security and compresses it to minimize transmission time.  Retrieval can be accomplished online, real-time from the firm or remotely and is ideal for firms who do not have technical personnel or those who have multiple branch or satellite offices.  

  

One thing is for certain, there are a number of new backup and recovery technologies on the market today.  Law firm technology personnel should choose a solution according to their needs and wants.  But, for many, tape backup is not a viable solution and other solutions such as online backup should be examined.  It just makes good business sense.  

Augmented Reality - Bridging the Gap Between the Real and Virtual Consumer Experience

What is AR?

Simply put, Augmented Reality enables superimposition of computer generated data onto our direct experience of reality. It aims to enhance the user's current awareness of reality by supplementing the real world with 3D virtual objects.

The term - Augmented Reality - was originally coined in 1990 by former Boeing researcher Tom Caudell. The technology gradually spread to other platforms such as mobile applications in 2008. New AR mapping and social tools such as Taggar - launched in 2013 - have made AR sociable by creating the ability to share hidden, "mutually" personal images, objects or locations.

How does AR Work?

AR can be achieved by applying two simple methods:

Marker-based systems

This method uses the physical world as a reference point to overlay graphics. For instance, placing a 2-dimensional printed marker in front of a web camera. The computer then comprehends this instruction to produce an overlapping illusion on-screen as if it were directly on top of the marker in the real world.

Markerless systems

This method involves using a combination of devices including electronic devices, accelerometer, compass and location data - such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) - to determine the position of objects in the physical world. At the same time, it detects the location of the physical world along with its axis.

What are the applications of AR?

The AR applications market is expected to register exponential growth - from USD 181.3 million in 2011 to USD 5.2 billion by 2017, at a compounded annual growth rate of over 95 per cent.

Many industries are already adopting this technology but the most obvious application of AR lies in mobile communications. The combined revenues from paid downloads, post-download items and advertising is expected to climb. Moreover, users who have used AR applications in their smartphone generally have positive feedback for developers such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, to name a few.

According to a wearables technology survey conducted in 2015, 52 per cent of businesses reported that AR technology is crucial in the wearable tech field. And it should be noted that 71 per cent of those aged between 16 and 24 prefer 'wearable technology' that allows them to carry out their daily activities with relative ease.

Prominent examples of various AR applications include:

Google Glass

Google glass - a type of wearable voice-controlled android device - resembles a pair of 'glasses'. It was first released in United Kingdom in January 2015. It allows users to take hands free pictures, videos as well as send messages. The user is able to see real world surroundings and use the glasses to perform multiple mundane activities such as driving, walking safely on roads and participating in sports as it provides an enhanced sense of the real world.

Be Careful When Following the Crazy Yellow Brick Link Trail

Links, what are they? When you go to a web site, links are the little bits of information that when clicked on will take you to another website of similar context. The thing is, with these strange and mysterious human minds of ours that we know so little about, these links if navigated subconsciously can take one to places of information you normally would never travel to. You could start out in the light and end up in a black hole. Let me give you an example of a trail I recently traveled without really thinking.

The other day I decided to search for a web site about one of my all time favorite musicians, Arlo Guthrie. Arlo Guthrie is a folk musician, son of another famous musician Woody Guthrie. When I was a little kid, one of the coolest things to do was to listen to his story/song entitled 'The Motorcycle Song'. So, I found his personal website through a Google search and it was pretty cool, and very positive. Guthrie runs a charity organization and a multi-religious church center where money is raised to help people with illnesses as well as giving less fortunate people a place to pray, meditate or just get off the streets.

So, I'm reading all about Arlo in his biography and there's a link to his court statement at the famous Chicago Seven court case. Well, as I'm a young guy I had never heard of this case, my curiosity was piqued and I clicked on the link. Next I was reading Arlo's funny comments about the time he was arrested for disposing of garbage in an illegal area on Thanksgiving because the dump was closed. Of course if you know about Guthrie you'd know that his famous song 'Alice's Restaurant' was based on this story. I get to the finish of the court transcript and there's a link for the 'Famous Trials' web site that the Chicago Seven trial was a page of.

Not thinking, I click on the site and start to absent-mindedly scan through all the famous court cases listed. Remember, I was originally looking up my old buddy Arlo, now I'm in a world of laws and crime. Well, I come across this crazy looking face: Charles Manson, and for some unknown unconscious reason I click on his court case. I didn't know much about the guy, but maybe because both my parents are x-hippies and he was from their era...

Now I'm spending an hour of my time (and nothing is more valuable than time, except love and peace) reading about the gruesome murders of Manson's Family as his group of devoted followers was called. I didn't consider myself interested in this sort of evil stuff, and still don't, as my feeling after the experience was one of distaste, sadness and plain wonder as to how people can do these sorts of negative actions.

In the end, following the absent-minded link trail led me to a place so much darker than where I started. I don't know if I ever would have spent an hour of my life reading about Charles Manson otherwise. It's not my cup of tea you know. I'm into peaceful music, humorous novels, Tai Chi and foreign films. This can be taken as a sign that we must be careful, conscious and alert when we are searching the Internet. It is such a huge mass of information, and like all things in existence has its dark side as well as its light. Be careful Dorothy, the yellow brick link trail can lead to the wicked witch as well as the wonderful world of Oz.

Open Sesame - Password Security

"Open Sesame!" is probably the most famous password in literature. It gave Ali Baba access to vast treasure. In the realm of technology, computer passwords also give access to valuable treasures: precious business and personal data.

Information about your personal life, buying habits, credit quality and life style is valuable to those who can profit from it. For the Corporation, information has even greater worth. It is not the "Bricks and Mortar" but the intangibles such as intellectual property, client lists, market strategies, pricing and compensation that account for over half the value of the modern enterprise.

All of this personal and business data most likely resides on a database somewhere and is available with a password. In fact, passwords are the most common means of entry in any system. They are also acknowledged as the most vulnerable points for security. 

"Weak" or compromised passwords are the easiest way for hackers to gain entry into a system.

Simple or short passwords can be easily discovered through "brute force" or "dictionary" 

attacks which concentrate intense computer power to crack a password. A two letter password, for example, has only 676 combinations. A password with eight letters offers more safety with 208,000,000 combinations.

Ideally, a password should consist of 8 or more characters. They should also contain 

a mixture of upper and lower case letters, symbols and numbers. "A$d3B5i9X" would 

be an example. Microsoft security has encouraged the concept of the "Pass Phrase" as an alternative. A phrase such as,"TheLastGoodBookUBoughtCost$25!" has all of the needed elements and is also easy to remember.

The human factor or social engineering contributes to password compromises. It is estimated that employees share their password eight times a year. Passwords can also be cajoled from untrained or naïve workers. The standard rule is NEVER share a password. 

Remember the cliché of the "Six Degrees of Separation." You cannot know who will eventually end up with your password and own it.

To cope with these issues, many leading edge firms are adopting a defense in depth strategy utilizing three elements to better safeguard their information

The three layers of authentication consist of: 

What you know...

A strong password or pass phrase 

What you have...

A Crypto-key, smart card or token 

Who you are...

A biometric aspect such as fingerprint, hand, or retinal recognition

Usage of these three defensive measures will increase dramatically in the future as people seek to thwart ever increasing threats to their private and personal information. 

Many companies will be mandating them as a significant part of their security best- 

practices to safeguard an extremely valuable asset: their treasured data.

© 2004 Terrence F. Doheny

On Mining and Numerical Solutions

Algorithms for well-known mathematical functions have been developed in numerous ways. One single postulate is implemented under different configurations to accomplish the same results. It is precisely this flexibility that allows excellent choices when selecting appropriate software in mining projects. The application of numerical analysis in mining is essential where the selection of the best, most accurate subroutines will assist to process a solution faster.

Consider for example exploratory drilling in geology. When we have a number of data points obtained by sampling and experimentation, it is possible to construct a function that closely fits those data points in order to estimate the size of a mineral field available for extraction. There are various techniques for the solution of interpolation applications where algorithms based on Cubic Spline and Newton Divided Difference theory are often used.

We are cognizant that science and engineering concerns itself with the manipulation of vector and matrices. Why should we in mining be concerned with linear algebra? Linear algebra algorithms offer powerful operations defined for vectors and matrices, where the concise notation for vector and matrix operations can be directly adapted to mineral object-oriented programming. Very often solutions consist of large matrices that can be used to describe linear equations where matrices can be added, multiplied, transformed and decomposed in many ways. A very far-reaching and extremely useful tool.

Quite often optimization algorithms are used to find values of variables that yield a minimum or maximum function value. In mining, this optimization technique is applied to mineral extraction where the objective function consists of minimizing the total cost of mining based on constraint parameters. Restrictive parameters like grade of ore, transportation costs, manpower and other factors are applied. Several methods are available where the Simplex Method for multi-variable functions is widely used.

Complex numbers, complex functions and complex analysis in general are part of an important branch of mathematics. Complex numbers can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided just like real numbers. In mining the implementation of trigonometric functions (trigonometric, hyperbole, inverse) are often utilized to reflect fluctuations (terrain, faults) under certain conditions. Sine and Cosine Function based algorithms are often used.

When dealing with measurement data inaccuracies obtained from drilling or sampling, we know it will contain significant variations due to measurement errors. The purpose of curve fitting solutions is to find a smooth curve that on average fits the data points. Curve fitting is applied to data that contain gaps and tries to find the best fit to a set of given data where the curve does not necessarily pass through all the given data points. The Straight Line Fit Method and a Polynomial Curve Fitting Method for distinct order-polynomials are widespread utilized algorithms.

Many scientific and engineering phenomena are characterized by nonlinear behavior and solutions of nonlinear applications and is a fundamental issue in engineering analysis. The simplest case to find the single root of a single nonlinear functions is widely used in underground mining operations where situations call for special requirements in underground construction (I.e platform at a slope, or ventilation equipment, or similar patterns). The Newton-Raphson Method is one of many used in industry. Fixed Point and Birge-Vieta methods are also popular.

We may recall that numerical differentiation deals with the calculation of derivatives of a smooth function (by bringing back our high school math). In mining, numerical differentiation occasionally is used to calculate displacements sometimes due to exploratory drilling or similar activities where terrain displacements (or any other discrepancy) may show different stress concentrations considered under uniform stress. To find the stresses and hence the stress concentration factors, it is necessary to find the derivatives of those displacements. Many algorithms exist: The Forward Difference Method, Backward Difference Method, Richardson Extrapolation, Derivatives by Interpolation.

When it comes to solving problems that involve given starting conditions, such as, volume, time, space and other parameters, differential equation techniques.are used. Several numerical methods exist to solve ordinary and high-order differential equations. The use of differential equations in mineral engineering is extensive. The scope of applications is as diverse as evaluating tasks quantifying the grade and tonnage of a mineral occurrence to everyday complexity encountered in open pit mining or underground shaft sinking, block caving, cut and fill, or similar extraction operations methodologies. Many commercial mineral algorithms are available based either on Euler Method or 2nd-Order Runge-Kutta Method or 4th-Order Runge-Kutta Method.

Problems originating in mining engineering often require the solutions of differential equations in which the data to be satisfied are located at two different values of an independent variable. These are called the boundary conditions and these algorithms approximate the differential equation by finite differences at evenly spaced mesh points. On occasion this technique is used in tunneling where the finite difference method is particularly suitable for linear equations. Commercial algorithms based on uch as, Shooting Method, Finite Difference Method, Finite Difference for Nonlinear Method, Finite Difference for Higher-Order Method and others.

Based on the few samples of algorithm utilization we can surmise that numerical solutions are attended to at every stage of a mining operation. The use of numerical analysis makes mining planning a much more organized and efficient form of mineral extraction. Mathematical algorithms in mining provide the industry with extraordinary tools to assist time-consuming tasks be reduced to manageable units to obtain solutions which otherwise would be very difficult to achieve.

Benefits of Portal Content Management

Organizations need to provide timely, relevant information to customers, partners, and employees anywhere in the world, to meet today's business requirements. Some of the hurdles that the organizations face in achieving this are IT bottlenecks, information getting lost, irrelevant and outdated information. If these problems are not looked at properly, then this will lead to escalating costs and erode customer satisfaction which will be a great loss for the organization. One good solution for all these problems is to create and deliver highly relevant content on a portal.

Companies can deploy a unified content and portal infrastructure to meet its business goals. This infrastructure should have tools that can unify content and infrastructure between portals to provide a consistent user experience and tools that can empower non-technical users within the organization to create, manage, and publish their own information to enterprise portals. In addition, the tools enable distribution of trusted, up-to-date, and accurate information to support multiple portal initiatives including partner extranets, and employee intranets and add content intelligence to increase the relevance and targeting of information for end users.

Problems that arise due to IT bottlenecks in the content contribution process and problems due to administrative overhead in the portal publishing process can be solved by empowering non-technical business users to contribute content to the portal. When you need to provide a unique infrastructure for the portals of partners, employers, and customers, you can unify the content and content infrastructure between portals to provide a consistent user experience. When end users need to access multiple applications and repositories for all of their content, content across enterprise applications can be integrated and delivered to accessed portals. Portal content management solutions not only empower non-technical users to within your organization to create and publish their own portal content but also ensures that the information published is relevant and personalized to serve multiple portal audiences

Some of the key benefits of portal content management include the ability to manage more content assets at lower cost, publish portal content faster and improves the reach of relevant content to the appropriate audiences. In addition, portal content management also empowers non-technical users to easily publish content on their own, increase online collaboration with partners or customers, and achieves better, faster integration of content via integrations with enterprise applications.

Portal content management software provide a simple, web-based user interface for creating and publishing content to portals, to empower non-technical, line-of-business users to create, manage, and publish their own content. The Portal content management software also provides a powerful navigation system for editing and updating content within the portal. Portal content management solutions ensure that only relevant content is delivered to each audience based on an enterprise taxonomy that drives content tagging and categorization for creation and powerful attribute search within the portal. This ensures that the content and metadata published are mapped to personalization rules created and deployed in the enterprise portal.

Powerful attribute finders of Portal content management software enable end users to easily locate content within the enterprise taxonomy that is exposed as intuitive, browseable categories in the enterprise portal. The enterprise content management platform of Portal content management software provide robust enterprise content management services such as workflow, versioning, lifecycle management, and security. Enterprise integration services provided by Portal content management solutions enable easy integration of transactional data from enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM, etc.