Cloud Source

How a Focus on Visibility Increases Cloud Benefits

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Enterprises love cloud solutions for their agility, scalability and flexibility, as well as reduced costs in the form of limiting capital investments and a lighter load for enterprise IT. Increasingly, critical business processes are moving to the cloud, underscoring the need for heightened visibility to protect cloud benefits and reduce the possibility of downtime.

Moving to the cloud isn’t done in one big migration; it tends to happen in multiple sessions, and sometimes over a lengthy period of time. During this ongoing migration, data and systems must be protected while a combination of legacy and virtualized applications are being utilized. All of these moving parts require improved visibility during a migration.

Managing the Risks

Throughout migration, scalability is considered one of the greatest cloud benefits, but also a potential pitfall. Expanding the network is a task that generally is handled by networking teams that are new to application-centric infrastructure (ACI), rather than the network-centric mode they’ve operated with in the past. The expansion of the network also broadens the risk of security breaches, further complicated by compliance concerns. Enterprises will also have to manage the security concerns related to private and public cloud differently because the levels of authentication and encryption may be different.

The sprawling design of an enterprise network that’s in transition and features both physical and virtual elements makes pinpointing an outage difficult. While IT is searching for the cause, each minute means revenue lost for the enterprise.

It’s critical that enterprises gain visibility through the migration process and reduce their mean time to resolution (MTTR), which is commonly increased due to visibility borders. Enterprises need insight into their entire hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure, including applications, servers, protocols and networks.

Wire Data

In order to maximize visibility and capture cloud benefits, IT needs to be able to continuously monitor every IP packet in real time in order to gain insight into application performance and identify service delivery problems. Access to wire data is the answer to increased visibility during and following migration. Wire data is high fidelity and, unlike machine data, it arrives in a common language for analysis.

The ability to monitor wire data and respond to events as they happen allows IT to be more efficient in addressing situations and protecting uninterrupted service.

In the constant state of change that characterizes digital transformation and gradual migration to the cloud, enterprises need to use wire data that results in smart data so that it can be optimized for analytics.

Any enterprise’s success now hinges on its ability to successfully migrate to the cloud, and that success is highly dependent on the level of visibility that is prioritized. Contact us at Cloud Source to learn more about accessing cloud benefits.

How SD-WAN Is Benefitting Businesses

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As companies increasingly adopt cloud solutions and utilize private mobile devices for business purposes, IT departments are evaluating the ability of enterprise network infrastructure to keep pace. The increased traffic, security concerns and volume of data have led many to adopt software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) as a way to address these challenges.

SD-WAN applies a virtual overlay that gives IT access to more visibility and control over the network. While its initial attraction may be the promise of cost savings, businesses quickly find that SD-WAN’s value lies in its ability to equip the enterprise with better agility and productivity.

SD-WAN allows for zero-touch provisioning, allowing network administrators to set up new branch locations in a matter of minutes. Troubleshooting and configuration can all be handled through the virtual overlay, saving time and resources that used to be spent traveling to the branch.

What will SD-WAN look like in your particular business? You can get a glimpse by examining its impact in three key industries:

Retail: For retail companies, the customer experience is critical, and a long wait at the cash register is a memorable event in a customer’s mind. Retail organizations with dozens or hundreds of locations need a secure network to transmit card payments, and without an IT team member on-site, they need the network to be highly reliable. SD-WAN allows any congestion or other performance-related issues to be detected by IT before it impacts the branch location, and automatic policies can be set up so that a data transmission encountering a problem is rerouted without the end user ever knowing.

Finance: Financial services also benefit from SD-WAN in areas like security, reliability and performance. Banks and other financial institutions need to be able to serve customers quickly with a reliable network, all while guaranteeing that customer data is secure. Financial services also need to access cloud solutions through a fast and reliable connection.

Education: The ability to prioritize critical data transmissions is a key benefit to educational organizations. Universities and colleges need to be able to choose mission-critical pathways for transmissions like video conferencing or a professor’s lecture being streamed by students in an online course. These can be prioritized over students in the dorm watching Netflix or accessing Facebook. Schools are experiencing an increasing demand for bandwidth, but they can allocate these demands across different types of pathways, reducing costs and relieving congestion on the network.

If you’d like to know more about how SD-WAN might benefit your particular business, including cost savings and optimized network performance, contact usat Cloud Source. We can help you identify the right SD-WAN solution to help you solve network challenges and deliver a better experience to your customers and other end users.

How Strong Is Your Business Continuity Strategy?

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Disruption is a word that’s been thrown around in a lot of different ways as of late. To some, it describes something new that reimagines the traditional approach to workflow. However, when you’re talking about business continuity strategies, disruption is a situation we try hard not to experience.

A small disruption to business can be quite costly. A big disruption can be ruinous. For this reason, business continuity planning is taking the front seat for organizations in just about every industry. Our data is our lifeblood, which means researching ways to keep it safe and available is of upmost importance.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Disaster recovery is primarily about protecting data and getting access to it as quickly as possible when something goes awry. Business continuity tackles policies, tools and the various steps that should take place to ensure disruption doesn’t become a defining term for the organization.

It is key that the two be considered together in order to effectively mitigate disruptions. Strategies for business continuity must be compatible with disaster recovery plans.

Addressing Challenges

Step one in building your business continuity strategy is to identify risks. Does your region have issues with power going out frequently? Are hurricanes, tropical storms, flooding or wildfires frequent in your area? These are things to take into account as you prioritize risks and consider how to mitigate them. Of even greater concern is the seemingly random attack from outside sources, especially cyber criminals.

Cyber crime is a challenge that only continues to escalate. Without solid disaster recovery and business continuity strategies in place, a cyber attack can be detrimental to an organization.

Technology to the Rescue

Cloud-based applications can be of great benefit in keeping disruption to a minimum. In fact, taking advantage of data storage and management solutions has been a great asset to many organizations in freeing up physical space and handing off management and updating duties to a cloud solution provider.

It’s important that any new application or management service be analyzed in terms of your disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Integration is important, particularly with current infrastructure, but it must also address the needs that may arise tomorrow.

At Cloud Source, we have positioned ourselves as an agent that can assist clients with business continuity solutions. Rather than sift through the fog in the marketplace to find the right innovative solutions, allow us to step in and fill that role. You can focus on what you do best and let us handle everything else. Contact us today to discuss your unique needs and how we can help you achieve your goals.

Five Steps for Securing Data in the Cloud

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Companies like yours are increasingly investing in cloud solutions, attracted not only by reduced costs, but also by the flexibility, agility, scalability and outsourced support they offer. While the potential benefits of migrating to the cloud can seem endless, there’s a big consideration that many teams neglect to address before the move. Securing data in the cloud requires a unique approach.

The cloud significantly broadens the security plane of any organization, particularly as it is often incorporated as a way to allow remote workers to log in from anywhere. You not only have data traveling outside of your network to the cloud solution, but it’s also being accessed from a fleet of mobile devices, introducing new vulnerabilities.

From a hacker’s perspective, the cloud is a tempting opportunity to snatch the data of companies that haven’t planned adequately for securing data in the cloud. Here are the steps you should include to prepare for a cloud migration:

Look at your existing security policies. Examine your comprehensive strategy for your in-house data servers, networks and other systems. What protections do you have in place for securing data? Create a plan to replicate that protection in the cloud.

Talk with your cloud provider. While you and the provider will likely share security responsibility, remember that it’s your data, and you don’t want to rely too heavily on someone else to protect it. Make sure your contract states security policies, including who is responsible for damages in the event of a breach. You should include your auditors in this conversation to determine what will meet their requirements in terms of security policy stringency.

Encrypt your data. Most companies are diligent about encrypting data that’s in their storage, and it’s likely encrypted in the cloud server as well. What often gets missed is the encryption of data in transit. Make sure you encrypt items as they move between your network, your cloud provider, and any third parties.

Secure endpoint devices: Whether it’s a smartphone, tablet or an Internet of Things (IoT) device, be sure that your devices are secure. Add complex passwords and multi-step authentication. You should also invest in appropriate training for employees, building awareness around cyber security and the importance of reporting a lost or stolen device.

Utilize best practices: The Cloud Security Alliance offers helpful guidelines for securing data in the cloud. Working systematically through a checklist can provide a way to prioritize measures, beginning with the broadest and most critical protections.

Implementing these five key steps can help your company make important strides toward securing your data in the cloud. For more information about successful cloud migration, contact us at Cloud Source. We can help you leverage the best solutions while also integrating a robust security strategy to protect your customer data and proprietary information assets.

Reduce Risk and Address Your Top Cloud Security Concerns

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As cloud-based vendors provide more and more services that improve the way organizations manage their day-to-day tasks, cloud security continues to be an issue. In fact, cloud computing is one of the top concerns for executives today who manage finance, compliance, audit and risk.

Gartner recently published its “Emerging Risks Report,” in which more than 100 senior executives said cloud computing is on their list of top concerns. Security risks, general data protection regulation (GDPR) compliance and cyber security were among the most troubling.  In fact, it’s estimated that 95% of all cloud security issues will come at the hands of the organization, not the cloud provider.

And while organizations will continue to expand their digitization to cloud-based processes, more needs to be done to make sure they’re operating in a secure environment. So, what are the major challenges today?

·         Data loss and leakage

·         Privacy threats

·         Confidentiality breaches


Care has to be taken in configuring cloud platforms, because that’s one of the major issues that leads to security compromises. Employees need to be better educated, because many of the issues organizations face in being compromised comes at the hands of access threats, generally from employees who compromise the security of the system.

Cloud infrastructure also has its challenges, as cyber security professionals often struggle to maintain the right amount of visibility, keeping consistent security practices and staying up-to-date with compliance issues.

The report also found that security professionals are struggling to find the right tools to manage their security in the cloud. Only 16% of those surveyed said they’re confident they have the right tools, which is a 6% decrease from a previous survey. Surprisingly, 84% said their traditional security solutions don’t work in the cloud environment, or don’t have adequate functionality for their organization.

Certification and training are among the top ways in which organizations are proactively taking steps to secure their cloud environments. They’re also relying on security tools from their cloud providers while taking a third-party approach to implementing security software in an effort to protect themselves. Encrypting information is a go-to method of protecting data while event management and security information platforms are also utilized for additional layers of protection.

At Cloud Source, we’re connecting clients with everything from disaster recovery to data centers and colocation services. Contact us today and let’s talk about how we can help you meet your cloud security goals.

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328 S. Jefferson St. Suite 603
Chicago, IL 60661
Ph: 312.753.7880
E: info@CloudSourceServices.com

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