Virtual Desktop Archives

Using IaaS to Grow Your Business

Posted on July 3, 2020 at 8:00 am.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is an instant cloud computing infrastructure provisioned over the internet. In an IaaS model, a cloud provider hosts the infrastructure components that’s normally present in an on-site data center, including servers, storage and networking hardware.

IaaS provides a range of services to accompany infrastructure components, such as billing, monitoring, security, backup and recovery. These services are policy-driven, allowing users to automate and orchestrate important tasks. In general, credit unions benefit from IaaS because they don’t have to maintain the hardware, networking or maintenance involved with physical assets like servers and data centers.

For many credit unions, especially small and medium-sized institutions, IaaS is an affordable, high-performing tool that keeps costs low. Managing IT resources on-premise can be cost-prohibitive, so IaaS makes you more competitive with larger companies.

Here’s what IaaS can do:

Enhance business continuity by maintaining access to your applications and data during a disaster or outage. Organizations are better equipped to handle unpredictable and growing storage needs, especially for the management of backup and recovery systems.
Accommodate specifications on-demand. Teams can quickly set up and dismantle test and development environments, expediting the process to bring new applications to market. Essentially, it’s easier to scale up development-test environments with IaaS.
Increase stability, reliability and support on an ongoing basis without having to upgrade software or troubleshoot equipment.
Support new Software as a Service (SaaS) applications for call centers, customer portals and e-commerce solutions – anything that makes it easier and more efficient to do business.

Advantages

Powered by VMware vCloud technology and accessed through vCloud Director, the IMS cloud is designed to support development, testing, disaster recovery and production.

We offer a self-service, enterprise-grade cloud IaaS solution for your specific needs. Our latest offering reduces capital expenses by eliminating upfront costs that comes with setup and ongoing maintenance. The IMS pay-as-you-go model allows you to pay for only the components you need.

We invite you to make the most of your virtual data center and optimize cloud costs. Contact us when you’re ready to free up your team to focus on growing your credit union.

Protect Data When Working from Home

Posted on May 28, 2020 at 8:00 am.

Written by Devon Wilson

With so many people working from home during this time, virtual desktops have become the norm for credit unions today. Remote connections provide workers with the ability to access data at home, on the road or a remote office. However, the increase in remote work has also led to an increase in cyberattacks. As end-user applications are evolving, so are the techniques bad actors are using to attack your data system.

Credit unions should ensure they have the proper security protocols in place to stay safe. There are multiple vulnerabilities where remote desktops are exposed to malware attacks, including email and user-installed applications. Attackers like to gain control over a personal and work laptop and impersonate the user.

Additionally, there may be logistical challenges with assessing hardware needs, privacy and managing multiple devices. But, adopting the right security practices will protect data across all endpoints. Taking a comprehensive approach to security will allow you to easily manage the status of these areas.

Since employees are connecting to your system through a corporate virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), it’s important to have security solutions in place to work across different platforms. Everything from transferring data to personal devices to using unsecured networks are common mistakes employees make when working from home. Here are a few things to keep an eye on with your team:

Using an insecure network. It’s possible employees are using home networks that are less secure compared to being at the office with WiFi acting as the biggest offender. That’s why your credit union should use a secure, virtual desktop environment to access sensitive information and apps.

Transferring data to personal devices. Your credit union may have issued workers with a company laptop but your team may also be using a personal computer to work. It’s not uncommon for employees to move documents from work computers to a home computer, smart device or personal cloud service for ease of use. Unfortunately, the security mechanisms in place are far less secure than a business laptop or a VDI.

Sharing access credentials. Bottlenecks often occur when one employee has to wait for another colleague to complete a task. To expedite the process they might share their login credentials to an application or database so their colleague can access what’s needed and reduce that bottleneck. Not only is this an unapproved action it becomes problematic when done over an insecure network.

Inadvertently sharing private information with friends. While teams have transitioned to hosting meetings via video chat and using social media as an outline to stay connected, workers may be leaking sensitive information without knowing it. This may be leaving a comment on Facebook about what it’s like working from home, taking a photo or video of your home office or displaying a computer setup. These are all risk factors to causing data leaks.

To avoid these pitfalls, your IT team should implement additional security controls and set up guidelines on what to install, download or share to avoid security breaches when working from home. They should also retrain staff on the most appropriate ways to handle sensitive information. Performing continuous security testing will reduce the possibility of malicious attacks on your system.

Financial institutions are always a target for cyber attacks, so it’s critical you identify any vulnerabilities. The most effective thing to do is enable our private cloud to deliver easily managed services. IMS provides a complete virtual workspace that allows your credit union to rapidly transform desktops and applications to users on any device, anywhere in a secure way.

Is the Public Cloud Worthy of our Trust?

Posted on January 24, 2018 at 11:23 am.

Written by Kelly Gardner

The Cloud as we all know it, has become such a massive reality in our daily lives that may seem a bit overwhelming at times. For many people, the Cloud seems to hold a strange, almost magical mystique. When discussions turn to the Cloud, there is sometimes a hushed reverence that permeates the conversation, something akin to prayer and worship. For certain individuals, the Cloud evokes a nearly religious devotion, but is the Cloud worthy of such avid devotion or is the Cloud more of a flawed Deity, no less vulnerable than the humans who created it and continue to nurture it today?

Let’s take a quick look at the Cloud’s simple origins. In its simplest form, the Cloud is merely a server or several servers, sitting in a data center somewhere and connected by intranet for private use or provided for public use via internet. The Cloud Almighty has been in existence since January 1, 1983, when ARPANET adopted TCP/IP, which took on a more familiar form in 1990 when ARPANET was decommissioned and computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee was credited with inventing the World Wide Web.

A private cloud typically provides connectivity between two dedicated sites and is locked down for use by an organization. Also known as an internal cloud, where all data is protected behind firewalls on the company’s intranet. A private cloud is a common option for companies with more than one data center and all the hardware and components needed to create a cloud. All maintenance and updating of infrastructure is the sole responsibility of the company. Private clouds may offer an increased level of security and there is very little or no sharing of resources with other organizations.

The typical public cloud is a scenario where data is stored in a data center of a service provider and the provider is responsible for management and maintenance of the data center and all related functions. More and more companies are moving toward the public cloud or a mixture of private/public options. Some companies feel security may be lacking with the public cloud, however, breaches are rare and your data typically remains separate from others.

Smaller companies may tend to choose a public cloud in their effort to reduce maintenance costs, infrastructure expenses, OPEX and CAPEX. Larger companies may be inclined to choose a private cloud to maintain greater control and an enhanced sense of security… whether real or perceived.

When it comes to Private or Public Clouds, there is still a preverbal elephant in the room. This elephant looms large in the psyche of companies of any size, whether large or small. Cloud Network Outages are huge lumbering Mammoths that represent a catastrophic event no company wants to experience. Amazon Web Services (AWS), is another behemoth which is the dominant market player in the space. The AWS idea was conceived as early as 2000, and while the AWS concept began to take shape and was publicly discussed in 2003, and the first customer facing launch took place in 2005. Those individuals religiously devoted to the Public Cloud often place AWS on a very tall pedestal and AWS enjoys an exalted position of respect and dominance in the public cloud arena, but not all is Roses and Tulips in the Kingdom of Cloud. AWS continues to prick its fingers on the thorns of Network Outages.

The most recent AWS Network Outage occurred in the Northern Virginia region on the morning of February 28^th, 2017, as the S3 Team was debugging an issue causing the S3 billing system to progress more slowly than expected. An employee error took down a large swath of Amazon services for nearly 4 hours. Another AWS Network Outage took place in Sydney, Australia in June 2016 as massive thunder storms caused AWS EC2 and EBS services to fail and a significant number of prime websites and other online presence were down for 10 hours over a weekend. Since AWS’s inception there have been 7 notable Network Outages.

What conclusions can be drawn about the Public Cloud from events like these? Some might say that regardless of the problems that exist, there are few inventions that positively influence our lives so profoundly on a daily basis. Others might say that events like these point to dangerous flaws in the systems that impact our lives and there is much to be concerned about.

Regardless of your perspective of all things Cloud and Internet, one thing is certain, both are here to stay and what the future holds may be significantly different than how it is imagined today.

All Howl-ows…Tide?

Posted on October 24, 2017 at 9:59 am.

Written by Devon Wilson

Every October, a large segment of our population is simply enthralled with having the living spook scared out of them and with Halloween rapidly approaching, we thought it would be ghoulishly appropriate to share some frightening fun facts about our fascination with All Hallows’ Eve.

Halloween is believed to have originated in Ireland with the ancient Celtic Festival known as Samhain (pronounced säwėn), which is celebrated on November 1^st. However, the night before Samhain, (October 31) the Celtic people believed that the dead returned as Ghosts to roam the countryside. Villagers left food and wine on their doorsteps to keep the Ghosts at bay, and when the villagers left their homes, they wore masks so the dead would mistake them for fellow Ghosts.

In the 8^th Century, the Christian Church turned Samhain into All Saints Day. October 31, or All Saints Eve had evolved into Halloween or Hallowe’en, also known as Allhalloween or All Hollows’ Eve. Observances encompass All Saints’ Eve (Halloween), All Saints Day (All Hallows) and All Souls’ Day which last from October 31 to November 2 annually. Each of these observances stem from Allhallowtide, which is a time to remember the dead, including martyrs, saints and all faithful departed Christians.

In Medieval Britain, the tradition of “Souling” began on All Souls Day (November 2^nd) in which the needy would beg for pastry know as soul cakes and in return they would pray for people’s dead relatives. As time passed, the practice of “Souling” evolved into “Guising” where young people would dress up in costume and accept food, wine, money, and other offerings in exchange for singing, reciting poetry or telling stories or jokes. In the 19^th Century, Irish immigrants instituted the tradition of dressing up in costume in America. In the 1950’s the tradition of Trick or Treating went mainstream with a whole new generation.

According to the National Retail Federation, Halloween is the second highest grossing holiday after Christmas and Nielson Research reports that nearly 600-million pounds of candy is purchased each Halloween. Halloween spending also extends to costume purchases of nearly $2.6 billion… adult costume purchases rack up to nearly $1.22 billion, kids costumes $1.04 billion, and millions are spent each year on pet costumes. Let’s not forget all the life-size skeletons, blow-up monsters, fake cob webs, mantle pieces and other scary decorations, which average around $1.96 billion annually. We spend approximately $360 million on Halloween related greeting cards and there is an annual spike in alcohol purchases in the days preceding Halloween.

Want to have a little spooky fun? Try these Halloween related activities: