Spiderhost Newsletter [May 2008]

What's new at Spiderhost?

Introducing “Your Spiderhost Team” – Quick, easy, contact information – right at your finger tips.

We’re here to meet your needs! Contact Customer Care today for more information.

The Daley Blog – “The little geeky voice in your head” – Helping you leverage technology to improve your bottom line. Recent Posts include: Not all bandwidth is the same, Evil Hosts Part II, Office Alternative, Spice up you IT, Pick Two, Safe Surfing, and more…Check it out!

Latest Spiderhost News

Spiderhost Opens Door to Spider University

Upcoming Events

Lake Mary Safety Fair
Saturday, May 31, 2008 – Lake Mary City Hall/Central Park - 9:00am to 1:00pm
Meet Lake Mary Police & Fire Department Officials, visit Spiderhost’s Booth – Get information on “How To” Prepare Your Computer for Hurricane Season, Safe Guard Your Kids on the Internet, And More…

Disaster Recovery II Lunch & Learn
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 11:30 am
Back by popular demand…We had such a great response to the first class, we’ve added a second. Learn proactive steps to take, how to protect critical business systems and resources available to help get you up and running quickly in the wake of a storm.

Coming Soon…

Monitoring on Steroids by Spiderhost

All about disaster recovery

That’s right folks; Hurricane Season is right around the corner. You’re already seeing it pop up in the news and you’ll be hearing even more about it in the weeks to come! As Central Floridians – we say, no biggie – happens every year about this time, right? We’ll we’d like you to take a different approach this year.

You have a Family Emergency Plan and put together a Hurricane Survival Kit – but, What about your business? What’s your “Plan” there? What steps are you taking right NOW to protect your assets, your data - your investment? How much can you afford to lose?

Keep in mind – that disaster can strike at any time – we’re not just talking Hurricanes here. Disasters can be power outages, internet outages, floods, fires, lightening strikes, equipment failure, hacking, terrorism, even lack of physical access to your building. So while it’s important to prepare your business for Hurricane Season – it’s equally, if not more important to be prepared for anything, all the time.

Because we feel so strongly about Disaster Recovery, we’ve dedicated two whole months to it. Over the next several weeks, we’ll provide you with information to help you make the right decisions when it comes to your own Disaster Recovery Plan, ways you can protect your critical business systems and resources right here in Central Florida that can assist you in the event a storms sweeps through the region.

Let’s get started…In the words of a Real American Hero – GI Joe says – because “Knowing Is Half the Battle” – Here are some stats…we think are worth knowing.

Forecasters are predicting considerable activity with a 65 percent probability of an above normal season and a 25 percent probability of a near normal season. This means there is a 90 percent chance of a near or above normal season.

The climate patterns expected during this year’s hurricane season have in past seasons produced a wide range of activity and have been associated with both near-normal and above-normal seasons. For 2008, the outlook indicates a 60 to 70 percent chance of 12 to 16 named storms, including 6 to 9 hurricanes and 2 to 5 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale).

An average season has 11 named storms, including six hurricanes for which two reach major status.

Man made disasters affect 10% of small businesses - where as natural disasters have impacted more than 30% of small businesses in the U.S. Source: NFIP Small Business Poll

The survival rate for companies without a Disaster Recovery Plan is less than 10%! Source: Touche Ross Study

YIKES! What’s your Plan?

According to analyst firm IDC, nearly 70% of all successful attacks on computer networks were carried out by employees and insiders.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor - Of companies that had major loss of computerized data, 43% never reopen; 51% close within two years and 6% will survive long-term.

How much can you afford to lose?

Seven Tiers of Disaster Recovery	Translation...
Tier 0: No off-site data	You’ve got - Zip, zero, zilch – No Plan and probably no chance of recovery at all.
Tier 1: Data backup with no hot site	Depending on how often backups are done and shipped off-site, you’re looking at a loss of several days to weeks worth of data – and you have no systems on which to restore said data.
Tier 2: Data backup with a hot site	You make regular backups and send them off site. You’ve got the infrastructure to restore the data, but you’re still looking at a loss of hours or days worth of data.
Tier 3: Electronic vaulting	You’ve got Tier 2 covered – and your more mission critical data is electronically vaulted. It’s more current than what’s shipped off site = less data recreation and loss.
Tier 4: Point-in-time copies	You require more data currency, faster recovery, and use more disk based backups. You can still lose several hours of data – but can make point-in-time copies with greater frequency.
Tier 5: Transaction integrity	You need consistent data. There’s little to no data loss however you’re dependent on applications.
Tier 6: Zero or near-Zero data loss	This is the highest level of data currency. You’ve got no tolerance for data loss and need to restore data quickly. You use some form of Disk Mirroring.
Tier 7: Highly automated, business integrated solution	You’re at Tier 6 plus the recovery of your applications is automated = faster and more reliable restorations.

What Tier are you?

Don’t have a Disaster Recovery Plan? You’re in luck! Here’s a quick guide to get you started with the IT portion of your Plan…

Identify critical business processes and applications, hardware, software, business & IT support staff, Local/Wide area networks etc.

Define your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – basically, the time within which business functions or applications must be restored and to what point in time to which the data must be restored.

Assess your data’s value and apply security measures to match. If your digital assets are highly valued, then implement “Fort Knox” security measures.

Conduct daily (continuous if possible) backups – on disk or tape – of:
- Your Operating System
- Your Applications & Current Patch Levels
- Your Data

Or better yet – outsource this task to a team of experts – who are off site. Now no one has to remember to take the tapes home every night and you know your data’s safe and sound.

Own or have immediate access to standby hardware and equipment for easier restoration and store Step-by-Step restoration instructions off site.

TEST EVERYTHING OFTEN!!!...and then…TEST it all again.

Respond immediately to heightened risk conditions. Make sure employees know what to do.

Own, or at least identify, alternate connections, data-transmission routes and electrical power sources.

Own and operate your own alternate sustainable power generation.

Once you have a Plan – Test it. Can you operate efficiently after the Plan has been executed?

In the news

Experts implore Floridians to keep guard up after 2 calm hurricane seasons

Multiple short outages can add up to major data center problems
Preparing for major catastrophes is just one piece of IT disaster planning these days

Forrester: IT must prove need for disaster recovery tools
Survey finds that more than one in four companies faced disaster over past five years

Virtualization Evolves into Disaster Recovery Tool
The IDC Virtualization Forum examines new ways to support disaster recovery.

Opinion: The ugly side of disaster recovery
Consider that recovery time objective when planning for DR

Case study

This month’s case study features GlobalOptions Group. Spiderhost helped GlobalOptions connect offices in real-time.

Click here to read the case study.

Horror story

Help other’s learn from your unfortunate mishap. Send us your horror story today. If we put your story online you’ll get a Spiderhost credit, a t-shirt, and a gift card for a restaurant or store. Looks like that IT meltdown’s proving useful after all!

Click here to read this month's IT Horror Story

Suggestion box

Something you want to hear about? Something we could do differently? Let us know! Drop your suggestion/comment in the box - click here.

An Innovative IT and Internet Services Provider, Spiderhost delivers customized, best in class technology solutions to small and mid-size businesses that fit their unique needs and individual budgets. With a robust suite of Internet products and services, Spiderhost combines technical elegance, high performance, security, and economical operation for maximum positive impact. Spiderhost enables companies to affordably overcome challenges, freeing up time, money, and energy to focus on their core business. For more information, please visit: www.spiderhost.com.