Arraya Insights

June 16, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Last year, I can remember attending the pre-opening of the Microsoft Store in King of Prussia. They had the new Surface Books there and in stock. After trying the Surface Pen and seeing the improvements over my Surface Pro 3, I was sold.

The device has been rock solid. I detach the top and carry it around while I do presentations. I even watch Microsoft Mechanics videos on it while I’m on the treadmill. Yet, something has been plaguing my Surface Book lately and it finally came to a head this week.

A number of articles cropped up this week about the issue that I was seeing on my Surface Book, the dreaded “Sleep of Death.” The symptoms are this – you walk away from your Surface Book for even a few minutes, it goes to sleep and…never…wakes…up (cue scary music)! This resulted in a lot of lost productivity, even with the Office document recovery features.

I did a little bit of poking around and after 2 days, I can confidently say that this fix has worked for me. If you are tech savvy and plagued by the same issue, I encourage you to try this. As with any technical advice though, you should always make sure you have recent backups and are at a point where you can spend time troubleshooting your device if things go south.

This is a 2 step process. First, we’re going to locate the Surface System Telemetry driver and completely remove it.

Type Device Manager into Cortana and select it to open. Once it opens, expand out System devices and look for Surface System Telemetry. Right click and select Uninstall.

On the prompt, be sure to delete the driver!

Just to be safe, I did NOT reboot after this step.

Next, go out to the internet and grab the latest version of the Surface Book drivers. At the time of this writing, the most recent ones published were from 5/25/2016.

Kick off the install of the drivers from the download and click Next on the first screen.

Agree to the license terms and click Next.

Install to the default location and click Next.

Click Install and after the install, click Finish.

Once the drivers are installed, you will be prompted to reboot. Go ahead and reboot.

The fix should be as simple as that! Like I said, after a week, my Surface Book has been rock solid again. I can safely walk away, stick it in my bag or just leave it for the night and the next time I check it, it wakes up as it should.

I’ve heard that this also fixed the Surface Pro 4 Sleep of Death issues. If you would like to try the same steps, the proper drivers are located here.

Have a question for the members of our Microsoft team? Reach out to them via email at mssales@arrayasolutions.com or by visiting us online at: http://www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/

June 14, 2016 by Arraya Insights

For the second straight year, IT professionals from across the Mid-Atlantic region converged in King of Prussia, PA for the Arraya Solutions Tech Summit. This daylong event was modeled on the
format of last year’s debut Tech Summit, but like any good sequel, it upped the ante in terms of scale. This year’s event packed in 25 courses covering today’s most pressing IT concerns, such as cloud, security, and mobility. Registration for the event also grew, going up roughly 30% from the previous year.

Just as with last year’s event, the 2016 Tech Summit was held at the Sheraton Valley Forge in King of Prussia, PA. Arraya CTO David Bakker kicked off the festivities with a keynote on the present and future of the cloud, for Arraya and our customers. In the keynote, he discussed how the cloud has helped organizations focus on their core business by pivoting them away from monolithic IT deployments and over to more versatile hyper converged and hybrid cloud deployments.

Bakker also spent time on how cloud technology can go hand-in-hand with traditional infrastructure. “What we’re seeing is businesses buying infrastructure to support their cloud initiatives,” he said. “They’re looking to more modular, flexible solutions.”

Following his keynote, Bakker introduced members of Arraya’s technical leadership team for a roundtable on the current state of IT. This panel consisted of Matt Sekol, (Microsoft Practice Manager), Doug Guth (Cisco Practice Manager), Ron Longley (Data Management Practice Manager), Tadd Williams (Microsoft Collaboration Solutions Architect), and Dan Clarke (Senior Solutions Architect). Topics covered during the panel included the right way for businesses to begin their cloud journeys, today’s biggest security threats, balancing end user mobility with security, and exploring the modern data center.
Once the panel discussion wrapped, it was time for the day’s main attraction – or attractions – to begin. This year’s 25 breakout sessions were divvied up among five conference rooms. Almost every one of these courses was designed and presented by a member (or members) of Arraya’s industry-leading team of IT experts.

A number of the most popular sessions, as ranked by Tech Summit attendees prior to the event, repeated during the day. This allowed people more opportunities to catch the classes they were most interested in attending. Among the most popular were sessions on virtual and cloud networking, flash storage, Azure backup and site recovery, Cisco’s Rapid Threat Containment, and Office 365.

“We designed the Tech Summit sessions using our team’s tech knowledge coupled with the hundreds of meetings they take to support our customers,” Bakker said. “The Tech Summit itself was born out of a desire to give our people, who we believe make up the region’s strongest technology team, a chance to share their know-how and enthusiasm with IT professionals from across our region.”

There was one session not presented by Arraya. Steve Craft, a Cloud Solutions Architect for Microsoft, presented a session entitled “How to Unlock Your Business’ Potential and Thrive in the Cloud.” Arraya specially invited Craft to lead the session on the growth, evolution, and use cases of Microsoft Azure because of his extensive knowledge of and experience with cloud technology.

The 2016 Tech Summit capped off with a cocktail reception during which attendees had the chance to enjoy food and drinks, reflect on the day’s sessions, and follow-up with presenters. The
cocktail reception also included a raffle for an Xbox One. All day long, attendees were encouraged to visit the Arraya Managed Services table and fill out a brief survey on network security. Doing so landed them in the Xbox raffle. The big winner was Mike Elkins from Cerner Health Systems.

“I’m blown away by the response to the Tech Summit and how much this event has grown in only two years,” Bakker said. “With the continued efforts of our outstanding team, and the support of leaders such as Microsoft, Cisco, EMC, VMware, VCE, and CEI, I truly believe the sky is the limit for the Tech Summit. For techs, by techs! See you in 2017!”

June 7, 2016 by Arraya Insights

While Arraya’s Office 365 Test Drive could be coming to a town near you this summer, several members of our team experienced it in its native habitat recently. The goals was for attendees to gain knowledge and experience that could help them better serve customers looking to deploy Office 365. The day also served as a preview of what our customers can expect from the upcoming Office 365 Test Drive Roadshow.

Representatives from Arraya’s Project Management department were among those who traveled to the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Malvern, PA for a hands-on session focused on Office 365. Before that could get underway, our team embarked on a tour of the MTC.

The MTC is home to many of Microsoft’s latest innovations, which sit in the open for visitors to try out. Among the highlights was Microsoft’s massive, 84-inch Surface Hub, built to reinvent meetings and business collaboration. In addition, there was also a 3-D printer hard at work on a Game of Thrones-themed doorstop and a full collection of portable Microsoft devices.

The centerpiece of the day’s festivities, however, was the Test Drive. Attendees gathered in a room stocked with laptops and tablets. They then received a fictional scenario to work through using Office 365 tools. In the case of the Arraya team, they stepped into the shoes of a company in crises due to a troubled product launch. Other scenarios, set in worlds such as healthcare or education, exist to allow attendees to experience something closer to their actual vertical.

Attendees collaborated on possible solutions as if they were a team spread across different locations. They simultaneously edited a faux Marketing PowerPoint deck, leveraged the video/chat capabilities of Skype for Business, and searched for important documents using Delve. The Arraya team also compiled a to do list of critical tasks using Office 365’s Planner feature and learned how to keep all of the necessary parties in the loop using Groups.

“I see products such as Delve and Planner as having huge potential for allowing the PM team to manage our tasks and resource scheduling,” said Aldo Bettelli, a Project Manager for Arraya Solutions.

Even though some problems remained for the fictional company by the session’s end, the important thing to remember about Office 365 Test Drives is they aren’t about finding answers. Their purpose is to show participants how the components of Office 365 change the way teams work together to solve problems. In any case, the Arraya team still felt confident they’d helped put the company on the right path.

“I think the whole team will take away an increased sense of agency because of the ability learn from a tangible product, rather than a product description,” said Juliane Klos, another of Arraya’s Project Managers.

“The trip was like taking a peek into the future and seeing how Microsoft views everything working together,” said Christine Heath, another member of Arraya’s Project Management team. “It would be great to go back and have more time to role play on a semi-annual basis.”

Step into the driver’s seat of Office 365

Want to have your own Office 365 Test Drive experience? Grab one or two members of your team and join us at one of the stops on our Office 365 Test Drive Roadshow. During the month of June, one of our Microsoft collaboration experts will travel Pennsylvania and into New Jersey to guide others through these hands-on, engaging sessions.

Here’s where and when you can find our Office 365 Test Drive Roadshow:

Date	Time	Location	Address
June 14	9:30 am – 1:00 pm	Holiday Inn Cherry Hill	Cherry Hill, NJ
June 16	9:30 am – 1:00 pm	The Hotel Hershey	Hershey, PA
June 22	9:30 am – 1:00 pm	Holiday Inn & Conference Center	Breinigsville, PA
June 28	9:30 am – 1:00 pm	Courtyard Marriott Pittsburgh Downtown	Pittsburgh, PA

Spaces are filling up fast. CLICK HERE to reserve yours today!

Have a question for our Microsoft team? Reach them directly at mssales@arrayasolutions.com. They’re also available via our social media pages: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

June 2, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Even as examples of backup and disaster recovery mistakes pile up, organizations still don’t seem to be doing all they can to protect themselves. Consider the case of Kansas Heart Hospital in Wichita, KS. The hospital recently fell victim to a ransomware attack and, in order to regain access to their files, the hospital agreed to pay the ransom. However, the attackers didn’t hold up their end of the bargain. Instead, they only decrypted some of the files and then demanded the hospital pay an additional ransom. Seeing as though patient care hadn’t been affected, the hospital refused, leaving the status of those still-encrypted files in flux.

Kansas Heart Hospital’s experience falls in line with a worst-case scenario presented by James Trainor, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Cyber Division. Trainor warned: “Paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee an organization that it will get its data back – we’ve seen cases where organizations never got a decryption key after having paid the ransom.” Here, Kansas Heart Hospital only regained partial access before the attackers got greedy and demanded more money.

Staying out of these situations takes discipline and Web smarts on the part of end users. It also takes a strong and reliable backup and disaster recovery strategy. The critical nature of these strategies inspired Arraya’s leadership team to select Security in the Cloud: Answering Your Data and Workload Protection Questions as a spotlight session at this year’s Arraya Tech Summit. This annual, free event is a full day of deep dives into cutting-edge IT tools and topics. Members of our team of engineers lead each of the day’s sessions to ensure an event that is “by techs, for techs.”

A sneak peek at Azure’s backup and DR capabilities

What can you expect to learn from Security in the Cloud: Answering Your Data and Workload Protection Questions? This course will examine three Microsoft solutions – Azure Backup, Azure Backup Server, and Azure Site Recovery – showing attendees how they work and how they work together to protect a business’ data.

Here’s a closer look of what this course has in store for attendees:

An overview of three cloud-based backup or disaster recovery solutions:
- Azure Backup – Quick take: Allows you to create space in Azure to store file-level backups and execute restores.
- Azure Backup Server – Quick take: A more enterprise-focused version of Azure Backup able to store and recover workloads such as SQL database and SharePoint in addition to individual files, folders, and system state backups.
- Azure Site Recovery – Quick take: Enables you to replicate entire virtual machines to Azure and restore them in a fraction of the time it could take using traditional disaster recovery techniques for a fraction of the cost of running a full disaster recovery site.
How these solutions represent two separate yet complementary paths:
- Azure Backup and Backup Server are both about quick backups and restores, e.g., “I accidentally deleted a file and need it back!”
- Azure Site Recovery is more about disaster recovery and business continuity, e.g., “Our whole site just went down! We need to spin up VM copies of what we lost.”
Instructional demos to help attendees gain insight into what makes these solutions tick. Topics covered in the demos will include:
- How to properly configure Azure Backup, as well as how to use it to launch backups and restore data
- Deploying the Azure Backup Server client, backing up SQL, and executing restores
- Creating recovery plans, reviewing planned failovers, and creating VMs in Azure Site Recovery

Explore the topics that matter most in IT today

Are you looking to simplify and/or upgrade your business’ backup and storage solutions in response to modern threats? Then you won’t want to miss Security in the Cloud: Answering Your Data and Workload Protection Questions. This is just one of more than twenty sessions taking place at the Arraya Tech Summit, covering topics such as security, mobility, cloud, and more. This event is set for June 9 at the Sheraton Valley Forge in King of Prussia, PA. Even though the Tech Summit is free, registration is required. Please visit http://arraya.info/techsummit to claim your spot!

Have a backup or recovery question for our team that you would like answered before the Tech Summit? We can be reached at www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/. Or, we can be found on social media: LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Follow us to keep up with our latest company news and industry insights.

May 31, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Office 365 E5 is more than just the latest SKU released by Microsoft. Since its debut back in December of last year, the new top-tier Office 365 plan has brought with it significant changes, both for Microsoft and for the businesses who’ve embraced it. In addition to marking Microsoft’s first foray into enterprise voice, E5 contains multiple other features capable of delivering tremendous benefits back towards the business.

At Arraya, we’re excited about the game-changing capabilities of Office 365 E5. In order to spread that enthusiasm, we’ve selected Driving Business Value with Office 365 E5 as one of the Spotlight Sessions at this year’s Arraya Tech Summit (June 9th). Our Tech Summit is a yearly day of deep dives into the hot button technical topics of today. The subjects covered in our Spotlight Sessions were handpicked by our leadership team because of the foundational role they can play in helping IT – and the business as a whole – succeed now and for years to come.

Wherever you stand with Office 365, whether you’re fully deployed or are looking to learn more about it before diving in, Driving Business Value with Office 365 E5 is a session you’ll definitely want to attend come June 9th.

Here’s a sneak preview of what to expect:

What is Office 365 E5? By the time the Tech Summit rolls around, the E5 license will be a little over half a year old. However, life in IT doesn’t always allot time to explore tools you’re not using every day. If you’re unacquainted with E5, consider this your crash course. Following a quick overview, the session will dive in to demos highlighting E5’s enterprise voice capabilities, the power of Advanced Threat Protection, the insight provided by Delve Organizational Analytics, and more.
How to pitch Office 365 E5 successfully. Even if you’re familiar with the features and talking points surrounding Office 365 E5, decision-makers, or those on the business side, may not be. If you pitch them on upgrading to or rolling out Office 365 E5, that disconnect may lead them to balk at the idea. This session will help attendees devise an effective strategy for properly showcasing the explicit and implicit business value achievable through Microsoft’s E5 suite.
Making the move to enterprise voice. For many long-time Microsoft admins, enterprise voice is a new frontier. This session will dig into Microsoft’s vision for this service, giving Microsoft admins as well as long-time PBX telephony admins a better idea of what to expect. (Programing Note: Tech Summit attendees who would like an even more extensive look at this topic will also want to attend our session entitled Microsoft Enterprise Voice.)
Breaking new ground with Office 365 E5. Say you already have Office 365 and have seen its positive impact. The clear subsequent question is “Where can I go next?” Office 365 offers plenty of ways for businesses to extract even greater ROI from the solution by spinning up new features or offerings. This session, through its demos and discussion, can point attendees in the direction of the features or options they may not be leveraging yet.

Join us for a unique learning experience

The Arraya Tech Summit is for techs, by techs. This free event gives IT personnel the opportunity to learn directly from our team of engineers about the latest advances in technology. Our team is passionate about the tools and solutions they support, and the Tech Summit lets them share that passion with others.

Office 365 is just one of many topics on the docket for the Tech Summit. All told, there will be more than 20 sessions, focusing on a broad range of topics, including: data protection, flash storage, security, mobility, hyper-converged infrastructure, and more.

Even though there’s no cost to attend, registration is required. Please visit arraya.info/TechSummit for session descriptions and to secure your spot today!

Have a question? Reach out to us HERE, or on social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

May 26, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Arraya will hit the road this Summer, bringing an immersive Office 365 experience to businesses across Pennsylvania and South Jersey. This trip, which we’ve dubbed our Office 365 Test Drive Roadshow, kicks off on June 14th in Cherry Hill, NJ and will run throughout the month of June. At each stop on the tour, we’ll give attendees a chance to explore the value of Office 365 for themselves through hands-on demos and role-playing.

Some people may hear “Office 365 Test Drive” and think, “Oh that sounds like something for IT.” However, that’s not the case. While IT staffers are welcome to attend, these sessions are more about the Office 365 end user experience. They’re morning-long sessions designed to allow people who aren’t familiar with Microsoft’s collaboration story to submerse themselves in the platform. Everyone from frontline end users through management levels, spanning departments such as finance, HR, sales, and more, can come out and gain a better grasp of what’s possible with Office 365.

Besides folks who aren’t familiar with Office 365, who else can benefit from attending? End users whose companies have Office 365 licenses, but who haven’t begun utilizing them – either fully or at all. By learning new ways to utilize Office 365 to help them do their jobs, these attendees can return to their organization and jumpstart the conversation around more efficient Office 365 consumption.

What an Office 365 Test Drive looks like

Attendees who come to one of the stops of our Office 365 Test Drive Roadshow shouldn’t expect a half-day of lectures. These sessions are extremely hands-on, allowing attendees to explore an Office 365 demo environment at their own pace, using a touchscreen device. Attendees will problem-solve their way through multiple real life scenarios presented by a knowledgeable and experienced facilitator from the Arraya Microsoft team.

Featured lessons will include:

Boosting productivity at work and on the go
Building a more collaborative workplace with OneDrive, SharePoint, Yammer, and Skype for Business
Gaining access to the Office 365 data and analytics needed to maximize ROI

The sessions – which run from 9:30 am to 1:00 pm – are limited to just ten people. The small-group setting ensures attendees have access to the amount of facetime with our facilitator they need to have a productive and worthwhile session.

Join us for our Office 365 Test Drive Roadshow

Ready to experience a Test Drive for yourself? Here’s a look at where the Office 365 Test Drive Roadshow will be stopping this summer:

Date	Location	Address
June 14	Holiday Inn Cherry Hill	Cherry Hill, NJ
June 16	The Hotel Hershey	Hershey, PA
June 22	Holiday Inn & Conference Center	Breinigsville, PA
June 28	Courtyard Marriott Pittsburgh Downtown	Pittsburgh, PA

Spaces are filling up fast. CLICK HERE to reserve yours – and, while seats remain, one or two for your team – today!

Have a question for our Microsoft team? Reach them directly at mssales@arrayasolutions.com. They’re also available via our social media pages: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

May 25, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Today’s businesses back up a dizzying amount of data. Sifting through that amassed information to find and restore a specific file accidentally deleted by an end user is no small undertaking. However, limitations such as an inability to search cross-server or cross-platform only further complicate the process for those tasked with managing backups.

What would it take to condense the arduous process of finding that file? It’s doable with EMC’s Data Protection (DP) Search, which is part of EMC’s Data Protection Suite. Think of it as a Google search for the backup environment. DP Search examines the content and metadata of backed-up files to locate the end user’s mistakenly deleted document. Not only can it execute this search in a matter of seconds, it can do so while also looking across platforms and servers.

How? Let’s take a closer look at the inner workings of DP Search.

‘Google search for your data center’

DP Search consists of a single virtual appliance or a cluster of replicating appliances (depending on the businesses’ needs) deployed in the data center. Once the initial deployment is complete, IT must decide which backup devices it wants DP Search to engage with, a la Avamar, Networker, CloudBoost, etc. IT must then provide DP Search with the credentials needed to access the information contained on those devices.

Linking DP Search and backup devices is only part of the process. The next step is creating an index populated with the source servers that will make up the searchable content. This index allows IT to direct which data sources DP Search will catalog – and later search.

With these directives in hand, DP Search, either scheduled or on demand, will read the metadata for all index sources and organize it into searchable content. When a keyword search is executed, DP Search will parse through this information to find files and content that matches the given search criteria.

Right from the search results page, IT will be able to:

see the location of the file
view a file’s metadata
see all of the backups the document has been included in
tell which backup schedule a file is on
preview the document
restore the file

Harnessing the power of DP Search

With great power comes great responsibility. It’s true for superheroes and it’s true for those managing a company’s backups. DP Search puts a tremendous amount of power in the hands of backup admins and IT. Without the proper settings and restrictions in place, this power could go beyond providing value and instead invite controversy.

For example: What would pop up if someone used the word “salary” as a keyword? Or consider the unintentional complications that could arise if employees’ laptops were all being backed up to a server that DP Search could access?

That’s why it’s not enough to just deploy powerful data protection offerings like DP Search. Instead, it’s essential to harness that power so it provides the highest possible value back to the business. Attendees will learn how to do both of those things during Two Essential Pieces of the Data Protection Puzzle, one of the courses at the 2016 Arraya Tech Summit. However, that’s only the beginning of what they’ll experience during this course. It will also walk them through how backup and recovery tools, like DP Search, work together to keep a business’ data safe.

Data protection is one of the focus areas of the Tech Summit. The free event, which will be held on June 9^th at the Sheraton Valley Forge in King of Prussia, PA, features a full day of technical deep dives into the subjects today’s IT pros care about most. This includes security, cloud, enterprise mobility, and many more.

Have a question about DP Search (or data protection in general) that won’t wait until the Tech Summit? Click HERE to reach out to our team today. Also, follow us on social media – Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook – to stay updated on all of our Tech Summit and company news and insights.

May 23, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Businesses building towards the software-defined data center (SDDC) take note: VMware has rolled out a new tiered-licensing model for NSX, its network virtualization platform. The idea behind this change is increased flexibility. By offering three tiers, each building off the last, VMware has allowed customers to invest in the NSX version that makes the most sense for them, while presenting a clear path for growing their deployments should the need present itself.

NSX separates networking and security functions from the hardware that traditionally manages them, embeds them in the hypervisor, and disperses them throughout the environment. This changes the networking and security operational model to closely resemble that of a virtual machine (VM), resulting in a more agile and secure data center.

The tier structure – Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise – gives businesses of all shapes and sizes an in-road to NSX. Should they need to expand later, the path is already marked. Let’s dive into the use cases and features of each NSX tier to give businesses a better idea of where to start.

NSX Standard

Use Case: NSX Standard is designed for businesses seeking network agility and automation capabilities they’ve been unable to achieve with legacy solutions.

The features available at the Standard level include:

Architecture empowering distributed network switching and routing
Network edge security via the NSX Edge firewall
Networking address translation (NAT), allowing for VMs to access apps over most network connections
A link to the physical environment via a SW L2 bridge
Adaptive routing capabilities delivered through VMware’s Equal Cost Multi-Path (ECMP)
Custom automation abilities guided by API
Additional automation provided by way of integration with cloud management tools such as vRealize Automation and OpenStack

NSX Advanced

Use Case: NSX Advanced incorporates the agility and automation offered in the Standard level, while adding in heightened security capabilities due to micro-segmentation.

The features available at the Advanced level include:

All of the features contained in NSX Standard
The ability to automate security policies as part of enhanced vRealize integration
Increased network throughput and app reliability from NSX Edge load balancing
Support for distributed, hypervisor-based firewalls, which allow up to 20 Gbps of capacity for each hypervisor
Integration with Active Directory to bring roles into the security conversation
Activity monitoring for servers, allowing IT to keep a closer eye on the health and efficiency of the data center
Enhanced security and networking abilities thanks to large ecosystem of supported third party partners

NSX Enterprise

Use Case: NSX Enterprise addresses the agility, automation, and security needs covered by Standard and Advanced, while also expanding them to cover multiple domains.

The features available at the Enterprise level include:

All of the features contained in NSX Advanced and NSX Standard
The chance to remove hardware from the equation and spread NSX networking and security across vCenter and the data center
The ability to optimize NSX across multiple physical sites
SSL and IPSEC-backed VPN connectivity, as well as remote gateways, providing secure remote and site-to-site access
Full integration with VXLAN Tunnel End Point (VTEPs) switches to manage hardware gateways

Getting to your ideal data center end state

That’s a long list of features and options. The Arraya Solutions Virtualization team can help your business sort through it, while also analyzing your needs, to help match you with the right deployment level. This doesn’t have to be a one-time thing. As your needs change, our team can work with you to make the necessary adjustments to ensure NSX continues to provide value back to the business.

Have questions about VMware’s new NSX announcement? What about NSX or VMware solutions in general? Our team is ready to help. Reach out to us anytime here: http://www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/

Also, follow us on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook) to keep up to date on our latest company news, events, and industry coverage.

May 19, 2016 by Arraya Insights

Throw a few speed bumps in their paths and many cyber criminals will give up and look for easier targets. That was one of the takeaways from a blog post we did back in March on cyber-attacks from the attackers perspective. More recently, this sentiment was echoed in Verizon’s 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). According to the DBIR, 80% of cyber-attacks are motivated by money. Verizon’s experts also theorized that, should a task seem too daunting, attackers will most likely look for more easily-achievable financial windfalls.

Which is exactly what Bangladesh’s central bank must have looked like to hackers. Earlier this year, the organization fell victim to a cyber-attack which cost it $81 million. As bad as that sounds, things could have actually been worse. The attackers were trying to get their hands on almost $1 billion through the use of fraudulent transfers. However, a typo raised a red flag and most of the payments were blocked, save for that $81 million which slipped through.

Post mortems on the attack have turned up some serious alleged deficiencies in the bank’s security and infrastructure. Not only did the bank lack a firewall, but it used secondhand switches in its data center. Secondhand switches that cost it a meager $10. Granted, the most expensive tools on the market aren’t always the best ones, but that’s a little less than most businesses would think to invest in their data centers and on security.

Spend is only part of the IT security puzzle

Obviously, that is an extreme example of a business potentially making itself a target. The latest budgeting survey of CIOs by Nomura Holdings found that security was the top driver of IT spend. Of the IT executives surveyed, 82% named security among their top drivers. That’s up from the 80% recorded by researchers back in October. In both cases, that figure was more than enough to land security in the top spot.

A willingness to invest in the latest security solutions is a great place to start when it comes to keeping off of cyber crooks’ radar. If those tools aren’t regularly maintained, fine-tuned, and readjusted to match the threat landscape, all of that spend might be for nothing. While they won’t suddenly turn into an absent firewall or a $10 switch, these high-priced, high-powered tools won’t be operating at peak efficiency, leaving an opening for attackers to possibly exploit.

To ensure the performance of security solutions, and make cyber criminals more likely to look elsewhere, IT must make it a point to regularly:

Update intrusion detection policies to be sure they’re properly inspecting, blocking, and altering any and all malicious traffic which targets the corporate network
Add or edit access control policies to minimize exposure by ensuring the right people have access to the right parts of the network
Set reputation-based blacklisting to limit traffic from high-risk sources, allowing IT to get out in front of known threats
Sort through the data these tools are compiling and distill that into information which can be shared with the business–side to help guide future security operations and raise awareness
Audit the technologies comprising the security environment to determine whether they’re still meeting the business’ needs or if it’s time for a refresh

A partner in the fight to maintain IT security

How can IT do all of that, while still finding time for the rest of its workload? The answer: Arraya’s Managed Services for Network Security.

As part of this service, the day-to-day hassles associated with maintaining the business’ security tools shift to our team. Our experts handle the nitty-gritty work of maintaining the security environment. They’ll manage zones, access, policies and generate in-depth reports to keep the business engaged with security. They’ll do all of that while also providing 24×7 monitoring and alert response to threats.

Arraya’s Managed Services for Network Security supports the tools businesses rely on to frustrate and repel hackers, sending them off in search of an easier target. To start a conversation about this offering, please visit: http://www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/. Also, our team can be reached through any of our social media accounts: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

May 18, 2016 by Arraya Insights

One word that’s come up a great deal lately in conversations with customers is digitization. In an effort to provide end users with on-demand access to data or services, businesses have turned to digitization. While speed and availability are certainly important criteria in today’s business world, there’s another element that carries a steep price if overlooked: security. The good news is digitization can provide an assist here, too.

Digitizing security doesn’t mean supplementing already-existing processes with new technology. In order to truly digitize, businesses must start from scratch. They must study their security processes and then rebuild them, weeding out excess steps and outdated practices. As this happens, it may be necessary to revise roles and/or teams.

At Arraya, we’ve long realized the importance of rethinking data security and we’ve developed several services to help businesses do just that.

Managed Services for Network Security

Cyber criminals utilize innovative tools and tactics and security teams must respond in kind. Supporting those tools and following through on those tactics often leaves IT with little bandwidth for other, also-valuable projects. Previously, IT would need to address this shortage by expanding the team. We wanted to open up a different course of action.

Our Managed Services for Network Security lets businesses leverage best-of-breed security tools without increasing the workload on already over-taxed internal IT teams. It does this by off-loading the management of these tools onto our team of security experts. Our team has compiled decades of experience in the security space. We work with a company to find the solutions that make the most sense for them and then step in to handle the details of managing and maintaining those solutions.

Managed Services for Network Security allows businesses to digitize by giving them access to the automation and advanced analytics offered by the latest security solutions. Our services add the support of a team that is available 24×7 to ensure those solutions always operate at the highest level.

Protect: Cloud-Based Backups

Backup and recovery solutions have been in the spotlight lately as security threats like ransomware have grabbed industry and mainstream headlines. As critical as it is to have a fallback plan in case something catastrophic should happen, housing backups onsite increases the footprint of the data center IT must manage. For some organizations, digitizing this process and sending those backups to the cloud makes the most sense.

Protect, Arraya’s cloud-based backup service, doesn’t just provide a secure, off-site location to house data. The true value of our service is, again, the knowledge and experience of our support team. These are people who know backups and who’ve executed restores. The members of our team have steered our customers through rough patches. That knowledge and experience can prove invaluable.

This is an advanced, agile solution replacing a legacy method. Incorporating the cloud may call for an overhaul of how companies think about backups and disaster recovery. However, it’s a necessary adjustment, one that speaks to the changes happening throughout the IT industry.

Alert: Enterprise Monitoring and Support

Just about the last thing a business can afford is unexpected downtime. Considering all of the moving parts that make up today’s IT environments, there are plenty of things that could suddenly, unexpectedly, go wrong.

Arraya’s Alert platform keeps IT ahead of problems. Alert is a small footprint appliance deployed in data centers to track the uptime and utilization of critical apps, systems, etc., sending up a red flag the moment something looks off. Just as we’ve already talked about, our team is there around the clock to vet the alerts that are generated and remedy them, if need be. Also as part of the Alert service, customers can access an online dashboard from which they can monitor the state of their monitored environment.

Alert fits into a business’ digitization model because it is essentially automation. The task of collecting and sorting through alerts to find actual issues moves off-site, to our team. Once this work becomes hands-free for onsite IT, they can focus on innovating in other areas of the business. Then, when they want to check in, they have a dashboard containing the latest information, for further peace of mind.

Making the push towards modernization

Businesses want to be more nimble, more capable, and more secure. Realizing those goals with traditional processes and legacy technologies is a next-to-impossible mission. By embracing digitization and eliminating bandwidth-sapping tasks, especially in the area of security, IT will be free to push the business as a whole towards those objectives.