Cyber-security is an ongoing process, not just a set of tools or a single implementation and training event, says Christopher Burgher, an associate principal with SunGard Availability Services Consulting. In this slideshow, he offers some basic steps toward a holistic, adaptive approach to threats from the Internet.

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When it comes to security, there’s a natural tendency to think in terms of technology. But in reality, a lack of security has more to do with the absence of processes to ensure that we have security than any particular missing piece of technology. With that in mind, Christopher Burgher, associate principal with SunGard Availability Services’ Security Consulting, has come up with five signs that would strongly indicate that your organization has no real process in place in terms of managing security.

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Image Microsystems, a provider of technology restoration, reverse logistics, e-waste recycling and recycled plastic products manufacturing, has selected SunGard Availability Services to provide colocation services. SunGard will provide colocation services to help Image Microsystems improve information availability and ensure data security without straining internal IT resources.

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For most companies, the best disaster recovery (DR) strategy is a blend of physical and virtual. The trick, of course, is in figuring out what goes where. To that end, it’s a good idea to determine the where and the what before the how.

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Virtualization is a useful tool, but it’s not a silver bullet. It creates new problems and exacerbates some existing ones.  Here are some things to watch out for when considering virtualizaton as part of your disaster recovery strategy.

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Make sure you know what you are buying and how it fits your actual needs. “For example, if you plan for a 24-hour recovery time objective (RTO), but your application and business needs require a four-hour RTO, then your plan – at any cost – will not be successful in meeting your requirements,” says Jim Grogan, senior director at SunGard Availability Services. Click here to read the entire article (Note: ITExpertVoice.com registration required).

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It’s a point echoed by William Hughes, a director of SunGard Availability Services, which works with businesses on disaster planning. Hughes says that Katrina, the 2005 storm that almost wiped New Orleans off the map, has been a particular catalyst in reshaping attitudes about hurricanes. “Before Katrina, people had certain assumptions about the duration” of time an area would remain affected by a storm, he says.

After Katrina? “All those assumptions changed,” he adds.

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David Matusow, a Center of Excellence architect at SunGard Availability Services, says companies must start to review their energy demands now and not wait until a hard limit is reached. "Reviewing now provides a company with the time and insight required to make adjustments prior to hitting a solid stop point," he says. "If a power limit is reached, a company must make difficult choices—are data center plans postponed or priorities? What is needed is an effective way to measure the current state and project impacts and demands." Matusow says capacity planning must include not only processor cycles but also infrastructure requirements.

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Rancho Cordova Mayor Ken Cooley attended SunGard Availability Services’ recent Open House at its new managed services data center in the Sacramento area. The facility offers high-density, raised floor space and a full suite of managed services including virtualization for primary and replicated customer applications, data storage and backups, security, monitoring and cloud computing infrastructure.

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Data center and IT managers should have data classification initiatives to audit their systems and allow the right placement of data,” says Dr. Mickey S. Zandi, managing principal, consulting services, SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com). “Organizations need to ‘right-size’ their storage environment. Data can be moved to less-expensive SATA or tape storage. . . . Improvements can often be made by knowing what has to be backed up to the most expensive disk files and removing or cleaning up what is currently considered lower-tiered data.

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SunGard's Storage Replication Service uses a combination of EMC RecoverPoint/SE and SunGard's AdvancedRecovery services running on EMC Clariion arrays, with the replication handled at a secure SunGard data center.

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Safety National, a provider of excess workers' compensation coverage, has deployed SunGard Availability Services' Secure2Disk Powered by Data Domain for offsite data backup. SunGard initially launched Secure2Disk last year with a SunGard-managed appliance on the customer's premise to gather data locally and replicate it to the SunGard data center. Secure2Disk Powered by Data Domain is based on Data Domain data deduplication appliances. SunGard also said Secure2Disk Powered by Data Domain and SunGard's integration with EMC RecoverPoint replication are the first service provider offerings to be included in the EMC Select co-marketing program.

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SunGard Availability Services has opened a new workforce continuity facility in Federal Way, Washington, to provide customers with business continuity, disaster recovery and testing services.

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Information technology has gained an increasing influence on companies throughout the world. This influence and impact is based on its penetration into wide-ranging business needs. The result has been an explosion of servers, data storage, and network connections to support these demands.

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The SunGard Availability Services’ Rancho Cordova center — nestled in a neighborhood of other data centers — will mostly provide co-location or disaster recovery for companies’ mission-critical businesses. It also will provide services that allow companies to outsource their computer system or storage needs.

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David Matusow, Center of Excellence architect at Sungard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com), says one of the biggest mistakes is looking for the exotic. Often, he adds, it’s the simple solutions that are both the easiest to implement and the fastest to get done and have very significant areas of improvement.

For example, Matusow says simple things such as implementing sleep modes on servers and lighting can result in very sizeable gains without the need to incur capital expenditures requiring top management approval levels.

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Another way to detect potential problems that can impact availability is conducting frequent resiliency audits. Dr. Mickey S. Zandi, managing principal, consulting services, SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com), says that such audits can help data center managers understand their distribution of power, utilization, and consumption.

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“Security is a balance of trade-offs, and it is generally not a good idea to spend more dollars on securing an item than the item itself is worth,” says Glen Seimetz, solution architect in availability/security consulting at SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com). “It is also not prudent to restrict yourself in a security straightjacket so that business flexibility and competitiveness are crippled—that’s a very high price to pay.”

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Main Line Health system in Pennsylvania has selected SunGard Availability Services to provide managed services for its primary data center.

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In a move intended to maximize the effectiveness of its limited IT staff, non-profit health system Main Line Health has awarded a contract for managed services to SunGard Availability Services. Under the agreement, SunGard will manage the Mail Line Health’s IT infrastructure and provide remote support across Philadelphia-area hospitals.

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SunGard's vBlock-based service a good match
Satish Hemachandran, director of product management for SunGard Availability Services, said SunGard had developed an in-house management portal on top of its vBlock installation for users that integrates with VMware management capabilities but was more than simple access to a vSphere console.

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