5 Sure-Fire Ways to Secure Your Cloud-Based Server

With the ease of use offered by cloud computing services, it can be hard to imagine what could go wrong. Just because cloud computing makes things easier, that doesn't mean you should let down your guard. You need to secure your data in the cloud and make sure any threats to security are handled properly. Here are five sure-fire tips for securing your cloud-based server.

Backup Everything

There are those who say that cloud-based servers are prefect and infallible. But security measures still need to be taken for the cloud. Just like you would with a physical data center, it is important to keep thorough backups of all your data stored on your cloud servers. It may feel redundant at the time, but when disaster strikes your cloud server, you will be glad you had a backup copy of all your business data.

Take Security Audits Seriously

It is important that you and your cloud service provider take security seriously. Ask questions about the standards that apply to data for your industry. If you are involved in financial services, make sure your data center provider complies with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. If you handle payments, make sure your service is PCI compliant. If you work in the health industry, make sure everything is HIPAA compliant. If the provider gives you a run-around about compliance, then it's time to find another provider.

Ask Other Clients

Don’t be afraid to ask around about your cloud services provider. Contact their existing clients and ask some questions. Do they have a history of quality customer support? How did they handle a major emergency? How quickly do they bounce back from outages?

Know Where Your Data Is

It important you know exactly where in the physical world your business data resides. Your cloud services provider should be able to point to a single machine or a bank of machines and tell you that is the exact place where the bits and bytes of your business data sit. Using a cloud-based server as a marketing cloud can only be successful if you have instituted proper security measures and know where to go in case of a malfunction.

Test Relentlessly

No matter how much your test your systems, test them some more. Stay current with potential security vulnerabilities. Roll out new testing procedures as new threats emerge. And if they are no new threats, try to hack your systems with your own team.

No system will ever be 100% secure. That's just a fact of life in the digital age. For that reason, you need to remain aware. You need to ask questions. You need to stay on top of potential vulnerabilities. Stay vigilant and your cloud server will do right by you.

Smart Solutions: Technology Trends That Are On The Rise

Technology has been improving at a rapid rate over the last century and it continues to grow at unprecedented levels today. Regardless of what you need to do, there has probably been some kind of technological advancement that has improved the way it's done. Here are a few technology trends that are on the rise.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is one of the major technological breakthroughs of this era. With cloud computing, you don't have to use files and programs that are stored on your local computer drive. You can access them remotely through the cloud. This opens up a world of opportunities for you personally and professionally.

Streaming Content

Another big technological advancement that has become a trend in recent years is streaming content. Netflix is the most popular streaming service in the world, but there are also a number of other services that offer streaming content. In addition to streaming video, there have also been some serious advancements made with streaming video games. A number of gaming services are working to make game streaming as convenient as Netflix has with movies.

Wireless Bluetooth

Bluetooth technology has made it possible to eliminate many of the wires that we used to consider necessary. You can now utilize wireless keyboards, printers, headphones, and many other electronic accessories thanks to Bluetooth technology. There are many more potential uses for Bluetooth in the works and they will continue to revolutionize the way that people interact with electronic devices.

Home Automation Systems

Home automation systems are definitely becoming much more popular in today's market. With these systems, you can control many different areas of your house remotely. You can even set them up to handle themselves while you are away. For example, you could set up a Lexington KY home automation system that controls the air temperature on a timer. It could also control the lights, the security system, the television, and your appliances remotely. This way, you can run things from your smartphone or a tablet.

Considerations

As technological advances continue to occur at a rapid rate, the way that we do things will continue to change. If you keep your options open and look at new advancements as they become available, your life will continue to get easier and more convenient over time. This will inevitably give us more time to enjoy leisure activities and the things that we really like to do. 

 

Cloud Computing, a buzz word? By Paul Hughes

It seems that on a daily basis now we are being asked about “the cloud” and cloud based services, as the technology Manager for UKHost4u this is something which is getting more technically challenging to answer.

If you look for a description of the term online the rough explanation is: Cloud Computing refers to the delivery of computing and storage capacity as a service to a community of end-recipients. The problem with this description for me is that it basically means that anything you store online and allow more than one person to access is within a cloud (So virtually everything already on the internet). For this reason I start to ask myself is the term more of a new buzz word than any actual new technological meaning.

I think we now need to look at this from a different angle, the actual software technology being sold to service providers. Being that we have hundreds of new technology providers contact us on a monthly basis we get a very good idea about what is new and market leading. Within the cloud hosting we have seen deployments from Microsoft, Amazon, Parallels, OnApp and well the list goes on.

We have recently had time to internally deploy and test the technologies provided by Microsoft using Hyper-V and System Center 2012 and a newer and most likely less well known company called: OnApp. The reason I have selected both of these technologies is because one covers the Windows server technologies and the other Linux (Though technically both can work with most operating systems, Windows or Linux).

 The testing solution we built for both platforms had the same hardware setup with three server’s using the latest Dual Xeon processors and over 64GB of memory in each system. For the storage we used an EMC network SAN with 8GB Fiber Channel interconnects to each server. What we found was that both software technologies installed and configured without issue on our development solutions and did allow us to play with what they referred to as cloud hosting.

The main problem was that these solutions didn’t do anything much more than what you could do with an open source Virtual technology. Yes they allowed for load balancing, high availability and centralized storage but this personally is no more than a High Availability Virtual Server which is possible with nearly all the Virtual Server Technologies and for me does not make it a cloud.

So what do I expect to see within a true cloud, simple total resilience? Ok, I’m aware nothing is ever 100% resilient but within a cloud I would at least expect: It to be able to scale virtual environments over more than one physical node at the same time. Its correct that it can move between nodes but what I want to see is a process lets say on one Hyper-V container being able to pick a CPU from any of the nodes within the cloud or use more than one servers physical CPU allocation at the same time and within the same section it should allow memory allocations as large as the physical cloud and not be limited by the size of the server in which the virtual environment is placed.

Another feature which is very important is being able to scale it over 2 or more diverse locations which is certainly possible but due to most solutions taking advantage of SAN storage and IPv4 its currently outside of the scope of most providers as they need to have a very advanced network designed specifically for this.

As an example Facebook have a vast array of servers and networks but the majority of them cater for geographical locations and the server farm sits within the same data center or building so multiple locations for redundancy still do not exist. A natural disaster or failure in the data center will take down the operations of that particular country which happened fairly recently with this provider. Cloud in this situation did not exist though it did technically meet the definition and requirements to be one.

To summarize I have found during my research the cloud is a way more to define how we use the internet on a day to day basis, it allows for sharing more of our personal information online be it via social media or another technology. It’s taking us away from the need to be in front of the same computer and giving us the ability to access content from any location worldwide with internet access. What it does not do though and which a lot of people seem to think it does is provides a more secure, stable and fault-tolerant platform as the software and hardware has some time to go before this will take place and technology can always fail!

 

About Author
Paul Hughes – Technology Expert and Web Hosting Community Member - founder of UKHost4u and chef product developer.

Cloud Apps That Can Make You Better Web Design Professional

Cloud computing has virtually revolutionized the way people transact their businesses. Internet usage is taking a trend that is totally different from the one many people have known it. Web designers and Internet users are finally making their work a lot easier through cloud computing. Cloud Apps and Services have made it possible for business operators to access their files at distant places from their offices. Website developers and designers are also able to come up with quality work within a very short time.

Nevertheless, for a web design professional to come up with quality website they need to be conversant with certain apps. These cloud apps can make you a better web design professional. Among the famous apps being used today are the following:

• iPlotz: This application enables a web design professional to create navigable, clickable mockups and also wireframes for a prototyping application or website. They let you add pages of a wireframe, create projects and even share your creations or discuss them with others. This application can improve your work as a web design professional  by providing you the possibility of sharing with others what you have designed, get feedback and be able to improve as well as gaining popularity on the way. You also get ideas from other professionals on how to improve your projects or build new ones.

• Colors scheme designer: This is an application that enables you to generate different color schemes for your project. Each color scheme has a single base color. This is supplemented with other colors enabling it to give an excellent optical impression. With this app, you can design any color scheme for your project. A web design professional can use this app to come up with attractive websites by using the right color combinations.

• Kodingen: This app is basically the cloud IDE used by many web design professionals. It is used in editing Perl, PHP, Ruby, Python and django. A web design professional is able to accomplish this from their browser. With this application you can accomplish different tasks from any location.

• MockFlow: Using this application web designers are able to design and collaborate on different mockups for user interfaces for websites and software applications. This makes it possible for a professional to be more efficient in his work and even come up with easy to use websites and software.

• Kuler: Kuler is a web-hosted app used in generating different color themes. These are very important in inspiring a project. Regardless of what a web design professional is creating, kuler makes it possible to experiment. You can browse different color themes on kuler.

• Forrst: This app links the designer to a community of professionals who are passionate about their work. These are determined to achieve better designs and also help others.

• OpenID: This app makes it possible for web design professionals to login to different websites in a faster, safe and easy manner. This implies that even when one cannot recall their passwords, they can still login to a website.

• Codeanywhere: This is an app that makes it possible for to code from wherever they are. You just need to login using a smartphone or computer and you will be able to gain access to anything that you want from your files, servers, and all that you need to be efficient.

The list of cloud apps that can make you better web design professional is quite long. All you need is to know how to chose the right ones for your work and use them in the best manner possible to deliver quality and efficient services to your clients. 

Author Bio:
Biljana is a technology writer, researching the world of web design and promotion, to deliver news and best deals on apps, gadgets  and online service offers available like the cloud server providers' latest.
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