With more people than ever going online and more firms looking to do business over the internet, this is making it a more attractive environment than ever for hackers and online fraudsters. As the amount of malware and spam being created continues to rise, it’s vital that businesses take steps to protect themselves throughout their network, including their data centers. If you ignore this area, you could be putting your entire business at risk, as hacking attacks and malware could knock a business offline.

However, it seems this message isn’t getting through to many businesses. A study by security firm Kaspersky has found a third of companies haven’t even deployed antivirus software across their network, despite this being one of the most fundamental things you can do you guard against malware. Research by the firm also found 19% of small enterprises and 15% of larger companies consider themselves to be ‘reactive’ when it comes to the security of their networks and websites.
This means they only look at improving security after a breach has occurred. Of course, by this time, it’s often too late and as 63% of small businesses have faced malware within their networks in the last year, it’s important for firms to be proactive. Kaspersky said: “These findings demonstrate that SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) are at risk due to poor IT security. It’s essential to change attitudes towards this risk and enhance protection levels in order to keep businesses safe”.

By ensuring robust solutions are in place before there is a problem, you can be confident that your servers are well-protected against external attacks that could otherwise be very costly. Antivirus software needs to play a key role in this, but it’s not the only thing you can do to ensure your network isn’t vulnerable to attacks. 62% of firms polled by Kaspersky use a patch management system to identify and update potentially vulnerable applications, while encryption of sensitive files and infrastructure improvements might also be valuable steps.

With technological developments evolving all the time, you may have noticed recently that the amount of information your business is dealing with is growing at a fast rate. In fact, developments such as big data are a key priority for firms at the current time. But this may be putting extra strain on your data center solutions, so this is something you’ll have to manage carefully.
This has been highlighted by new research published this week by Cable & Wireless Worldwide, which found many companies are struggling to cope with the new networking environment seen today. It revealed 55% of senior IT decision-makers it quizzed believe their data center capacity requirements will increase significantly over the next two years due to the huge influx of extra information that needs to be stored and processed. However, the reality may be even more dramatic, as many respondents stated estimates for future capacity haven’t adequately taken into account emerging trends such as big data. Those firms that are taking steps to manage this suggested to Cable & Wireless that their requirements are set to rise by up to 50%.
Therefore, if your business is likely to be one of those seeing such increases, it could be essential for you to have dedicated servers that can be scaled up to meet these demands. If you choose SnelServer.com as a provider for these items, you’re not locked in to a long-term contracts and you can also upgrade your server at any time, without facing the prospect of data loss, downtime or having to renumber your IP addresses. Because it’s so hard to predict exactly what a business’ future data center requirements will be, this flexibility can be a huge benefit to a company, as it gives you the ability to ensure you’re able to meet whatever challenges you might face in the coming years.
Cable & Wireless observed that as firms look to offer a more personalised service to customers, this will inevitably lead to larger data requirements. However, it noted that if enterprises don’t have a firm grasp of what this means for their network infrastructure, they run a “real risk of losing control of operational costs”.

One of the big trends in the tech industry that you’ll no doubt have to deal with at some point is big data. With the amount of information generated by internet users growing at an exponential rate, you’ll need some way to interpret this wealth of data and convert it into useful figures you can use to improve your business.

Growing trend
The importance of this was recently highlighted by Gartner, which predicted spending on such solutions is set to jump hugely in the coming years. As a result of this, it forecast demand for people with expertise in the area will lead to the creation of 4.4 million new jobs in managing big data by 2015. It has been stated by the company that this development should be one of the top priorities for the coming years, along with tools such as cloud computing and mobility. But this might present a big challenge to firms, as they’ll have to move quickly to put in place the analytics tools necessary to make the most of the available information.

New solutions
One powerful solutions for firms is Hadoop. This is an open-source software framework created by the Apache Foundation and is used by many of the world’s largest companies to extract value from their data. In the past, Linux-based servers have been the primary option for users looking to run Hadoop’s range of tools, but this is set to change as Microsoft has recently announced new previews of Hadoop-compatible solutions for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure.
The firm explained big data should be able to offer answers to enterprises and not increase the complexity of their IT systems. Therefore, the organisation said: “Providing Hadoop compatibility on Windows Server and Azure dramatically lowers the barriers to setup and deployment and enables customers to pull insights from any data, any size, on-premises or in the cloud.”
Therefore, even more companies may now be able to benefits from the insights that can be offered to them by big data, allowing them to figure out where they can make improvements to their business.

If you’ve been paying attention to trends in enterprise IT recently, you’ll no doubt have heard about the cloud. This has been a focus for many firms, as it’s seen as offering reduced costs and improved productivity. The technology allows you to host practically every aspect of your IT systems remotely. Do you want a bespoke application that can be accessed from mobile devices? How about storage systems that can share documents among staff for easier collaboration? The cloud can provide these and much more at cheaper costs than on-premises solutions.
The benefits of the cloud are increasingly being recognised as it becomes a mainstream technology, which has been reflected in the fact it has been named by Gartner as a key strategic trend for next year. According to the firm, both personal cloud for use by individuals and corporate cloud-based networks will be in high demand in 2013. On a consumer level, the cloud will gradually replace the PC as the location where users store content, access services and manage their digital lives.
“Users will see it as a portable, always-available place where they go for all their digital needs,” it was suggested. This convenience might also be a key positive to enterprises looking to streamline their operations. For businesses, there will be huge pressure to do more to improve their services despite limited resources, the company noted. The cost benefits of cloud hosting solutions could therefore be a key factor in the decision-making of bosses.
As a result of this, the cloud is something any firm looking to bring their IT right up to date should be looking into. One of the great things about cloud computing is that there’s no capital investment and you can easily upgrade as new technologies evolve and mature. This flexibility could mean you’re in a good position to grow for years to come.
However, you shouldn’t look to this technology in isolation as a guaranteed way to improve a business. Gartner observed the cloud is just one of several developments that will work together to drive innovation, with other key solutions including mobility, social tools and big data.

With the strategies used by hackers evolving all the time, it’s a constant challenge for website owners to make sure their sites are safe from criminal activity.

While strong anti-malware solutions will no doubt be an essential part of your site’s defences, one area that might be a worry is the danger posed by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

These work by overloading your web servers with huge amounts of traffic, usually from botnets, that make it difficult for legitimate users to get through. As it’s impossible to separate genuine users from malicious requests taking up bandwidth, it’s a problem that’s very hard to defend against and has the effect of essentially making your site inaccessible.

It’s also an issue that’s getting worse, according to one new study. Prolexic Technologies, which offers DDoS protection services, revealed recently the number of attacks aimed at its clients spiked significantly in the third quarter of 2012 compared with the same timeframe last year.

The total number of attacks recorded by the firm rose by 88%, while the size of them also increased. The firm observed: “Last year, a DDoS attack in excess of 20 gigabits per second (Gbps) was notable, but today it seems commonplace.” Few enterprises in the world have the infrastructure to withstand such assaults of this size, so it may be the case that businesses need to put contingency plans in place to minimise any disruption.

Overall, the average attack bandwidth increased by 230% compared with last year, rising to 4.9Gbps. However, the good news was that the duration of attacks has dropped over the last year. From July to September 2011, the average attack lasted for 33 hours, but this is now down to 19 hours.

While this could still cause a major problem if you’re using your website as a sales platform, being able to recover from DDoS attacks as quickly as possible will be essential in ensuring your losses are kept to a minimum.