How Your Network Provider Can Help Keep You Secure

By: John Shepler

It seems like every week there’s a major “hack attack” against companies large and small. Once upon a time, this was more of an annoying curiosity than a serious problem, as the intruders were mostly curiosity seekers looking to enhance their tech cred within their computer enthusiast community. Now it’s serious trouble. Today’s attacks are at least disruptive to the conduct of business and at most create unrecoverable destruction.

Have You Covered ALL The Bases?
You’ve tried to adhere to recommended practice, but there’s always that nagging feeling that you’re still vulnerable. Is there anything else within reason that can be done to keep the bad guys out? Let’s take a quick look at some Cybersecurity Basics, courtesy of Level 3 Communications, a major network service provider:


You are probably already implementing software patch updates, strong passwords, anti-virus software, and Internet firewalls as technical solutions. Employee training to avoid things like clicking on email links is also excellent practice.

Where The Network Provider Fits In
Even so, as shown in the video, there are protections that your network service provider can implement to stop these attacks before they even get to you. Certainly, the service provider can monitor their own core servers and mitigate attacks, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) that try to traverse their network connections. But, a managed service provider can also extend that level of monitoring and protection into your network as well.

The Team Approach
Why go it alone, when you can have high reliability wide area networking services along with full-time security monitoring and attack protection working on your behalf behind the scenes. Seems like there is no such thing as too much security these days, so this could be a great time to consider adding managed network security to the protections you have already established… just to be sure.

Your Options
Are you interested in higher performance connectivity with the advantages of monitoring and added network security? Find out about the wide range of networking options available to you now.

Why Colocate To An Omaha Data Center

When big companies think of colocation data centers, they’re probably thinking of 60 Hudson St in New York City or One Wilshire in Los Angeles, California. Where else should they be thinking? Why, Omaha, Nebraska, of course.

Omaha? What’s in Omaha? Well, billionaire Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha”, and his legendary Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate holding company. That’s just one of five Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Omaha. In fact, Forbes magazine has called Omaha the nation’s number one “Best-Bang-For-The-Buck City.” More to the data center point, Omaha is home to the Scott Data Center complex.

Scott Data Center offers over 110,000 square feet of data storage facilities. It has been continually operating since 2006 and is currently just one of two multi-tenant data centers in the United States to achieve Tier III Certification for both design and construction. This certification was awarded by the Uptime Institute, an industry organization focused on improving data center performance and efficiency. They award tier certifications in 26 different countries. Tier III facilities support critical business applications.

One of the newest tenants is Level 3 Communications, the worldwide telecommunications carrier for voice, data, and video. Level 3 is deploying a new enterprise-grade data center within the Scott Data Center complex. It will join more than 350 Level 3 data center facilities in North America, Europe and Latin America. You can select the level of service you require, including the Premier Elite facilities, such as the new Level 3 Omaha data center. All of these data centers are connected via Level 3’s 165,000 intercity, metro and subsea fiber route miles that provide low latency access to corporate assets around the world.

But, still, why Omaha? The fact that Omaha is located in the center of the United States is an asset when it comes to disaster prevention and recovery. If you are insistent on avoiding a situation that wipes out your headquarters building and takes all of your IT facilities with it, you need redundant data centers that are geographically diverse. Keeping everything in one building is efficient, but it is risky for floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and fires. A separate facility across town is one step better. A facility someplace else in the country that doesn’t have the same risks is better yet.

Omaha isn’t subject to earthquakes and certainly not likely to be a victim of any coastal tsunamis. The Scott Data center design protects it from any potential seismic activity. It is elevated out of the flood plain to avoid any issues with an overflowing Missouri River. Yes, tornadoes can be an issue in the MidWest, but the Scott facility can withstand 250+ mph winds and the uplift of tornado level winds.

There are also financial advantages to locating in Omaha. Electrical power is available and costs well below the national average. You know that data centers are power intensive, both for equipment operation and cooling. There are also pricing and tax incentives that make Omaha an attractive place to build an expensive and sophisticated facility like a data center.

By the way, Scott Data Center meets the security requirements of the Department of Defense. That includes a 24/7 security desk, gated perimeter, dual authentication, surveillance cameras, barrier wall, man-traps, biometrics, generator backup and redundant cooling. Think your equipment and data will be safe? You think right.

Are you thinking about relocating your data center or establishing a complementary or alternative colocation facility to current coastal locations? Get features and pricing on colocation data center facilities available in Omaha and nationwide to meet your business needs.



Photo of Omaha skyline courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

A New Cloud In IT Managed Services

Lots of companies are thinking seriously about moving their IT services to managed solutions in the cloud. The next issue is which cloud. How about the new cloud?

NewCloud Networks is a managed service provider that’s been around since 1988. They handle everything from small business voice and data needs right on up to national and international networking.

NewCloud believes in tailored solutions, not fitting your requirements into one of a few options. They’ll customize a server, virtual desktop, hosted VoIP, business email or other solution to match your current and projected needs. They’ll even become your IT department if you need one. Who needs an IT department in the cloud? Companies that are just growing out of the do-it-yourself startup phase or those who have been contracting this work out and frustrated with the quality of technicians they’re dealing with.

The cloud is all about virtualization. Instead of owning or renting specific hardware resources, you pay by usage for virtualized servers, storage and bandwidth to support your businesses processes. There’s a liberating aspect to this approach. You are no longer stuck with too small a solution as your company grows. You are also no longer forced to overprovision to make sure that you have have the capability of supporting seasonal needs and sudden spikes in traffic. When, and only when, you need more resources you add them quickly.

Are you currently hosting your own database, email or CRM server on-site? Is your data center easy to scale and have you taken the proper safety precautions to ensure that your system is protected no matter what? If you are wincing, even a little bit, the cloud may be where you really belong.

NewCloud Networks hardware is carefully contained in their SAS 70 Type II compliant data center with constant monitoring to ensure that your server is running continuously. Each virtual server can be independently rebooted in minutes. Quickly configure and deploy new servers. One physical server may be running several processes or you can run virtual servers across multiple physical boxes.

NewCloud offers Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) service running AppAssure software powered by Dell. This offers automatic verification that your backup is recoverable and that the application data is recoverable with a 5 minute recovery point and near-zero recover time objective. You’ll have both application item and file level recovery. All of this is protected with full redundancy, including data center connection to two separate power grids and two separate Internet feeds.

How about your desktop PCs? Are you always buying new machines and adding resources the ones you have just to keep up? If so, desktop virtualization offers some real advantages. Your actual PC becomes a virtual machine in the cloud where it is easy to turn up more CPU and RAM whenever you need it. You can access this desktop from wherever you happen to be using whatever you have connected to the Internet. All the heavy duty processing is done in the virtual machine.

You may already be sold on moving your IT applications and data to the cloud, but how about your business phone system? That’s right. Your PBX telephone switching can also be virtualized with the same advantages as virtual servers for cloud computing. You’ll enjoy the latest in enterprise communication features without the headaches of having to buy and deploy such a system yourself. You can even include your cell phones in this system. Mobile phones don’t play well with many in-house PBX systems. They fit right into the cloud for seamless communications capability.

Is now the right time to consider a move to the cloud? If you are even curious as to how your particular company can benefit, get expert consultation on the cloud resources available right now from NewCloud Networks and other cloud networking companies.

Why The Smart WAN Beats A Dumb Pipe

The basic building block in constructing Wide Area Networks has been the “dumb pipe.” This refers to a bandwidth connection between point A and point B. There’s nothing stupid about these connections. They do one thing and one thing well. They get your packets from place to place with no effort on your part. The reason you’d want something smarter is that IT needs are getting more sophisticated. Either you add more smarts within your organization or gain this capability as a service.

Level 3 Communications, a major domestic and international fiber network carrier, has seen the transition from simple to high performance networking requirements and is launching what they call the “Smart WAN.” This is a bundled solution that includes all of the bandwidth services you traditionally associate with the WAN, plus managed services to optimally tie everything together.

Let’s take a look at some of the services you find in this bundle and how they can benefit your organization.

You’ll want a connection to the Internet, of course. This is a dedicated bandwidth line that can range from a T1 or Ethernet over Copper connection on the low end on up to Gigabit Ethernet or 10 GigE for high performance needs. Level 3 can make whatever connection you need, including video transport and content delivery outside but in parallel with the Internet.

Nobody in their right mind would simply plug an Internet port into their company network these days. All the benefits of worldwide connectivity bring along all the problems with bad actors scattered around the globe. Some want to bring down your organization just for fun. Others want to steal your intellectual property for sale to a competitor. Level 3 offers managed security services to keep the threats at bay. These include managed firewalls, intrusion detection and protection, and IPSEC secure remote access. You’ll need this if you employ remote workers or employees that need access to the company LAN while traveling.

Beyond the Internet, you may want a VPN to tie together your business locations in other cities, states and countries. Level 3 has an extensive MPLS network in place that can support any needed protocol. Some of the standard services include EVPL or Ethernet Virtual Private Line, a Layer 2 Ethernet service that replaces long haul dedicated point to point lines and can also provide point to multipoint data service. IP VPN service offers any to any, full mesh WAN connections plus managed routing to simplify your support needs. There’s also VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service that lets you interconnect your far-flung LANs in to a single company network. WAN optimization ensures that you are making best use of the bandwidth you have without overpaying for unnecessary higher level line services.

You can go out and procure any of these services separately, of course. That’s been the traditional approach to building business WAN networks on an ad-hoc basis. When all you need is a phone line and broadband Internet access, it’s no big deal to handle it yourself. What’s different lately is that companies are embracing cloud services that need high performance secure connections, perhaps shared among many different locations. This puts an additional demand on IT resources, at a time when increasing staff is difficult to impossible.

Level 3’s Smart WAN looks to offload the burden of setting up and running your WAN for maximum effectiveness. In addition to bandwidth and managed services, Level 3 can provide architecture, design, project management, monitoring & measurement and field service.

Are you finding that your WAN needs are getting hard to handle and perhaps costing more than you think they should? Perhaps you need a “smarter” WAN approach. Get competitive quotes for managed WAN services and see if you can get higher network performance at better prices than what you are doing now.

Meshed MPLS Forms a Cloud of Clouds

MPLS networks have risen to prominence lately as replacements for old-school Frame Relay networks that link multiple business locations. MPLS networks are highly popular because of their ability to transport nearly any protocol with high quality and reliability. One remaining wish has been the ability to use a multitude of carriers at various locations and still have them interconnected by a managed MPLS network. That desire has now been realized.

AireSpring, one of the fastest growing and most innovative competitive carriers, is now offering what they call a Meshed MPLS Network. Just what does such a networking scheme do and how is it different from the meshed network connections inherent in any MPLS network?

MPLS networks can be thought of as classic clouds. You connect each of your locations to the cloud by means of a last-mile access network and then instruct the MPLS network operator how each location should connect to the others. These can be private point to point links, a star network with corporate headquarters at the center, or a meshed network arrangement. The meshed approach is highly popular because it allows any location to communicate with any other location at will. You don’t have to be actively managing or even monitoring the network, as the service provider takes care of that.

The one fly in the ointment is that you need to contract with one MPLS network provider for all your connections. That service provider will take care of getting the access connections, even if it means subleasing copper or fiber from another carrier. But what if you already have contracts with carriers to provide MPLS mesh networks for particular geographical territories?

This can happen easily if your company grew by mergers and acquisitions. It can also happen in decentralized organizations or conglomerates of businesses that haven’t traditionally had a need to connect with each other. Not all carriers have a nationwide footprint. It’s common for some carriers to be strong in parts of the country and not have a presence at all in others. All of this results in the head-scratching problem of how you tie together disparate WAN networks.

This is the problem that AireSpring’s Meshed MPLS Network solution addresses. Their MPLS Mesh (tm) creates a NNI (Network to Network Interface) that ties together multiple carrier solutions running at T-1 or higher speeds into one MPLS Virtual Private Network. You then have the choice of linking all of your sites into a single IP network or segmenting your data into multipole secure networks. Note that the segmenting can now be logical and not geographical.

Meshed MPLS technology gives companies a flexibility that they haven’t had before. You can now pick and choose which carrier you want to serve which locations to minimize your telecom costs. Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms ensure that you can converge your entire network for voice, data and video. Your critical business applications will get the prioritization that they need for high quality performance.

Are you frustrated with your current hodge-podge of disparate telecom services that don’t quite perform the way you need and cost you a small fortune? It’s time to take a look a consolidating all that with a more advanced networking solution. Get MPLS network service pricing and features for all your business locations now. You’ll likely find you can have higher performance and lower cost at the same time.

Why Managed IT Services Are So Popular

There’s been a profound shift in the way information technology services are implemented. What’s happened recently is that service providers have entered the realm of managed iT services en masse. Some of this has been a direct result of the rise of cloud computing. Other offerings have been a recognition that both staffing and capital are much more restricted than ever before.

Call it the business environment wrought by the Great Recession or call it a paradigm shift in technology. The upshot is that companies are taking a much closer look at procuring more and more of their IT services through colocation, cloud computing, or managed network services.

Just what makes managed IT services so attractive? To some, it’s a way to put the monkey on somebody else’s back. To others, outsourcing wins the make versus buy cost tradeoff. For many other business, there is so much volatility in the economy that it just makes sense to pay as you go.

Cloud computing fits the pay as you go model perfectly. You know that running your own data center involves buying lots of equipment, installing it in racks located within an environmentally controlled room, and then managing a continuous stream of patches, upgrades and trouble tickets. It’s also a balancing act. If you buy too little in the way of processing or bandwidth, you run the risk of being unable to serve an unexpected surge of customer orders. Buy too much and it sits there unused, but costing just the same.

When you “rent” in the cloud, you have an almost unlimited pool of processing power, storage and customer bandwidth to draw from. There is an expert staff that keeps everything running smoothly 24/7 without your involvement at all. Best of all, you pay for what you need while you need it. Scaling up or down can be done rapidly. There’s less pressure to correctly predict short term business activity when you can adjust on the fly as needed.

Hosted business telephone is another huge growth area for managed IT services. It’s come about for the same reasons that pushed cloud computing in to the limelight. Any business that needs more than a few handsets and outside lines finds itself becoming a small independent phone company. The cost of a PBX system to manage all the in-house and outside connections can run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. You traditionally connect it to all those desk phones through its own network and then have staff to manage the moves, adds and changes.

Once enterprise VoIP became feasible using converged voice and data networks, the dedicated phone network was no longer needed. The IT staff could manage the phone equipment too. But why pay for equipment at all? Just extend your LAN with a SIP trunk to a managed service provider and that expensive central switch, the staff needed to keep it running and all the outside phone trunks become something you can rent by the month.

Do you have a dedicated remote data center for backup storage and disaster recovery? It’s a form of expensive insurance you can’t do without unless there’s an equivalent alternative. That alternative is encrypted cloud storage. You have the protection against outages without having to buy and maintain the asset that gives you that protection.

IT departments have also been expected to manage WAN bandwidth, even to the extent of creating their own MAN and WAN networks using dedicated point to point lines. All that grief goes away when you use managed Ethernet and MPLS network services. The service provider has the responsibility of keeping the packets flowing, even in the middle of the night.

Is your company ready to consider managed IT services as an alternative to doing it all yourself? Perhaps you just want to shop for the best deals on these managed services. Either way, get availability and pricing for competitive Managed IT Services now and see how much you can save.