Reaping the rewards of disaster recovery and business continuity

Strengthening and securing your networks

Having up-to-date, corporate-wide disaster recovery plans makes it possible to get up and running fast should anything happen - often without any noticeable interruption to your business.
Some regulations and legislation contain specific laws governing business practices in sectors considered to be of national importance. In areas such as financial services, health, the military, communications or telecommunications, disaster recovery procedures are vital as any interruptions or data loss could have serious ramifications.

The odds against such catastrophes happening are increased by mirroring data centres, running redundant networks to provide alternative transmission paths and ensuring all software is regularly updated and the most recent patches installed. Mixing fixed and wireless networks adds to your protection and ability to recover fast.

Whether you do it yourself or outsource to a specialist, data must be routinely, automatically and remotely backed-up and, according to best practice, held in secure off-site data centres. Depending on the volume of traffic and the speed at which you need to complete the back-up, you can opt either for Ethernet or broadband links between offices and data centres. Using Ethernet to connect sites not only increases speed and capacity but also security.

Network security

So how do you secure your networks, ensure traffic flows are uninterrupted and only authorised people have access? How do you protect wireless networks and data from attack and ensure devices fall within your corporate security system? Are your disaster recovery plans regularly reviewed and do you back systems up routinely? Is all IP traffic encrypted; are PINs and passwords regularly changed along with checks to confirm who has access to what? Is equipment left on factory default settings?

The questions are legion but these are only a few of the many important security issues all companies must consider.

Ultimately the responsibility for corporate security rests with you and it is essential that employees are made aware of, and asked to comply with, company policies.

Help is at hand in the form of advice and sophisticated security features. Protective technologies are routinely embedded in today’s broadband intelligent networks and additional facilities can be added to bundled packages and service agreements or included in managed services contracts. Most equipment is shipped with security features but it is up to you to enable them.

All traffic transmitted over fixed and wireless networks either within or running between buildings is protected by encryption and access controlled. Installing dedicated point-to-point IPVPNs between sites or companies offers high levels of security.

For many the biggest headache is protecting and controlling the proliferation of mobile devices but even these can be brought under the safety of your company security umbrella.

Solutions for disaster recovery

Site to site connectivity solutions: Connect sites, customer databases and employees on a local, metropolitan or national Ethernet network, using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to improve network manageability, security and disaster recovery resiliency.

Security & VPN Gateways: Our LAN solutions portfolio features powerful security and VPN Gateway offerings.

Managed Internet & Security Services: Robust, high speed internet services managed on your behalf.

We can also help with your other needs; to find out more, please contact us.