March 31st is World Backup Day, a “day for people to learn about the increasing role of data in our lives and the importance of regular backups.” Visitors to the site are asked to pledge, “I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.” While it is important to backup your personal family photos, home videos and documents, it is absolutely critical to back up your company’s servers that host your website and databases.

According to EMC’s Global Data Protection Index, data loss costs companies more than $1.7 trillion per year worldwide. Additionally, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 94% of companies that suffer a catastrophic data loss will go out of business within two years. Server backup can save your company from lost revenue, lost sales, lost development and lost, well, everything.

With World Backup Day approaching, now is a great time to evaluate your organization’s backup strategy. The checklist below will get you started:

• Determine what data is critical to your business
• Evaluate backup solutions that meet your data’s security requirements
• Select a backup solution and provider
  We are offering 20% off shared backup for a limited time.
• Implement the backup solution
• Regularly test your backups to ensure everything is working as expected

With data increasingly becoming an organization’s most valuable commodity, don’t wait for DDoS attacks, bots, scripts, disk crashes and any number of unforeseeable data-loss events to prompt you to backup your servers. Get started today using the checklist above.

Recommended Reading

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Server backup: Is your data at risk?
Backup strategy: What should I back up?

As demands for Voice Over IP services and video chat continue to spike due to their increased functionality and lowered cost, many providers are under pressure to deliver the same level of excellence, consistency and ease that traditional phone networks can provide. The VOIP and video chat trend is not looking to subside anytime soon either as Ovum Research predicts consumer use of VOIP will reach 1.7 trillion minutes by 2018.

So what does this mean for the companies in a fast-growing, global VOIP ecosystem?

Leading telecommunications provider 373K has partnered with Internap to stand out amongst the VOIP world and stay ahead of the industry. 373K is a wholesale provider of telecommunication services, catering to a wide variety of service providers – from mobile over-the-top (OTT) application suppliers and mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) to independent telephone and cable companies who need integrated voice applications.

Due to high demand from voice customers, 373K needed a way to power its voice infrastructure and global carrier operations to deliver uninterrupted, high-quality telephony and other media services to its global users. Leveraging Internap’s AgileSERVER bare-metal Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and route-optimized Performance IP^™ connectivity, 373K has built a global platform that is relied upon by millions of end users daily.

373K’s BR-549 platform, which maintains robust connectivity with the world’s top carriers, empowers it to handle millions of global calls every day. Internap’s AgileSERVER bare-metal IaaS combines dedicated processing power and high throughput levels with the on-demand agility and scale of virtualized public cloud and monthly, hourly and per-second billing options.

Another exclusive feature of 373K’s BR-549 switching platform is the ability to monitor and match changing capacity needs via calls to Internap’s OpenStack API, which invokes the open cloud standard’s Heat orchestration and Glance image management capabilities.

With Internap’s Performance IP^™ connectivity that uses patented Managed Internet Route Optimizer (MIRO) technology to identify and route around network outages, packet loss, jitter and latency, 373K voice traffic ensures to deliver the fastest, most reliable and consistent route to its destination every time.

Upon receiving your welcome email from the HorizonIQ Technical team, there are a few basic setup and security provisions you should take in order to maximize the usability of your server and, ultimately, to protect your data. These steps will walk you through establishing the ideal foundation for your server’s security.

Step 1 – Secure Root User

The root user is the administrative user with heightened privileges to all rights and permissions on the server. Because of the security risks when working from the root account, it’s best to create normal user accounts that have limited access to the system to prevent the server from being compromised or mistakenly damaged.

Start Terminal Session (Linux/MAC Terminal)

ssh root@<server IP address>
Password:<see welcome email>

Start Putty SSH (Windows PC)

Host Name: <server IP address>
Click “Open”
Username: root
Password: <see welcome email>

Create New User Account

adduser  <new username>
adduser <new username> sudo

Disable root account login

Edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config and change the value of PermitRootLogin to no

Step 2 – Ban Outside IPs

To protect your server from intruders, download software that will ban IPs that present inherent danger, such as too many login attempts. A service called fail2ban can mitigate these issues by creating rules that can reject IP addresses for a specific amount of time. Fail2ban reduces the rate of incorrect login attempts; however, it cannot eliminate the risk that weak authentication presents.

Fail2ban can be used with a variety of services running on your server.  Based on the function of your individual server you should configure fail2ban to protect each service.  For more information on setting up fail2ban, visit their HowTo Wiki.

Step 3 – Configure Firewall

Finally, install security and firewall software, such as CSF – ConfigServer Security & Firewall. CSF is a free, advanced firewall, which includes login/intrusion/flood detections in addition to the basic firewall features. CSF is able to recognize attacks and temporarily block potential intruders. CSF can also limit access to the server based on specific services and locations, which dramatically reduces the potential for a server breach.

Consequences of not securing your new server

Properly setting up your server is crucial. Without a secure foundation, personal data, customer data and personal information are all at risk of being stolen or hacked. The hard costs of a hacked website can be detrimental to any business and can include:

1. The cost for a developer to repair the damage
2. Administrative costs of time spent communicating with the internal team, vendors and clients
3. Investment in preventative measures like moving to a new hosting environment and security/preventative services
4. IT time and materials to investigate and identify the problem

Unfortunately, the costs of a hacked website don’t end there. Data loss, loss of confidence, business disruption, unnecessary stress and loss of revenue due to site downtime can bury a company.

Understanding the risks and taking the appropriate preventative steps will maintain business continuity and protect your company’s largest assets.

Updated: January 2019

Internap is honored to be named to CRN’s 2016 Managed Service Provider (MSP) 500 list in the Hosting 100 category. This annual list recognizes North American solution providers with cutting-edge approaches to delivering managed services.

For businesses experiencing exponential growth, the daily burden of infrastructure management can become a distraction, resulting in resources being stretched to a breaking point and diminishing focus on core strategic objectives.

Internap’s managed hosting solution, allows organizations to transfer the time-consuming responsibilities of managing IT Infrastructure to a best-in-class managed services provider. As a result, organizations are able to focus on the activities that offer the greatest value to their business, while reducing capital investments in new hardware. Additionally, Internap’s managed hosting environments are designed, built, and maintained to ensure data is properly protected.

With a diverse portfolio of public, bare-metal, and private cloud services, technology-centric businesses are able to realize optimal application performance and meet diverse workload requirements. An early leader and innovator in bare-metal cloud, Internap’s automated, bare-metal server platform combines high throughput and CPU power with on-demand scalability to meet the specific needs of big data and cloud-native applications.

All of Internap’s infrastructure services are powered by its Performance IP™ connectivity service, which uses patented Managed Internet Route Optimizer™ (MIRO) technology to analyze available network paths in real-time and deliver traffic over the fastest route, reducing latency and increasing application availability and performance.

The MSP 500 list can be found online at www.CRN.com/msp500.