Infinite Named One of the Fastest Growing Private Companies in America in the Inc. 5000

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Infinite Resource Solutions, an Atlanta-based staffing, resource, and professional services firm, has been named the 2,516 fastest growing private company in America by Inc. Magazine’s in the 34th annual Inc 5000 list.

This achievement marks an incredible milestone for Infinite. “Only a tiny fraction of America’s companies ever get to celebrate this achievement,” said Daveenia Beller, Infinite co-Founder and Managing Partner. “To be recognized as one of the fastest growing private companies in America is an honor.

Since its founding in 2008, Infinite has become an established leader in the resource management and professional services industries.  A certified woman-owned business, Infinite focuses on resource management and professional services and since its founding has experienced successive year over year growth, establishing an impressive foothold in the security and technology industries. With a reputation for being responsive, ethical, and reliable they have become respected leading international provider of business-to-business outsourced services. Infinite has recently been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies on America.

“The Inc. 5000 list stands out where it really counts,” says Inc. President and Editor-In-Chief Eric Schurenberg. “It honors real achievement by a founder or a team of them. No one makes the Inc. 5000 without building something great – usually from scratch. That’s one of the hardest things to do in business, as every company founder knows. But without it, free enterprise fails.”

This achievement places Infinite in rarefied company. The elite Inc. 5000 group include companies such as; Microsoft, Timberland, Vizio, Intuit, Chobani, Oracle, and Zappos.com. Each year Inc. publishes the list of the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America and celebrates their inclusion at its annual Conference and Gala. The 35th Annual Inc. 5000 Conference and Gala will be held October 18- 20, 2016 at the JW Marriott Hill Country in San Antonio. Featured keynote speakers include Tony Robbins, Marvell Technology’s Weili Dai and New Belgium Brewing’s Kim Jordan.

About Infinite Resource Solutions

Infinite, a leading services provider, offers a unique combination for consulting talent and implementation expertise on demand.  Infinite, is best known for providing plug-and-play solutions where subject matter expertise is inaccessible.  As a consultative partner, Infinite understands your business, delivers distinct value, and maximized return on investment.  A Certified Women Owned Business, Infinite is a leader in resource management and professional services in the IT and security industry.  www.infiniters.com.

The Infinite Competitive Advantage

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In a competitive and often volatile technical job market environment, it is essential for a company to focus efforts on performing at the highest level of customer service. Attracting and hiring candidates that can deliver the hard technical skill sets and successfully merging them into an existing company culture requires specific human resource talents that many organizations find difficult and expensive to maintain. With the market for qualified candidates shrinking; attracting, evaluating and delivering important new human assets can be costly and time consuming. In a this tight, talent market the biggest added value decision for companies unfamiliar with the process of recruiting the candidate that can differentiate their firm from the rest of the competitive field is hiring the right staffing firm to find the most qualified person who wants to work for them.

“A hiring manager’s time is better spent driving process than pouring over hundreds of potentially unqualified resumes,” says Chris McKeon, Account Manager at Infinite Resource Solutions (Infinite), a premier provider of staffing solutions dedicated to responding to the changing demands of increasingly competitive talent marketplace. “Our two tier interview system acts as a filter to make sure only qualified applicants ever hit the manager’s desk.”

Learning the clients business is the primary concern at Infinite, where their process for learning the clients business focuses on a company’s culture. Individual organization employment environments are key factors to understanding the various recruiting tactics that work best for each customer. “Team and company culture facts rarely show up on a job description, that’s why it is our responsibility to learn the environment thoroughly to find the best fitting applicant. Someone may look good on paper but not have the soft kills to succeed in a particular atmosphere. Our goal is to set every qualified candidate up for success,” says McKeon.

Working with an experienced and highly respected staffing firm can pay big dividends for firms seeking additions to their human capital. Internal human resource recruiting teams find significant advantages to consulting with a staffing specialist like Infinite, where their business model produces quick results while controlling recruiting costs. At Infinite, experience has produced a process of identifying and utilizing the right mix of social media outlets, job boards, email campaigns and personal contact phone calls to identify potential candidates, and they’re no retainer policy means that they get paid only when a qualified candidate is placed with a satisfied client. Infinites highly trained recruiters and two tiered interview process, once by the recruiter and once by the account manager, assures a continued focus on delivering talent that is compatible with the company culture and other intangible requirements.

“Our expertise is derived from building a company with individuals that offer more than a decade of experience delivering best-in-class, professional services and IT staffing solutions to small, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies,” concludes McKeon. “We add value that directly impacts your competitive advantage.”

For more information on how Infinite can partner with you to achieve the right solutions for your business, contact Chris McKeon at (678) 823-6317.

Designing and Implementing Creative Solutions for Complex IT Challenges

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With a daily emergence of new threats, it is vital that companies take steps to insure effective information security processes and policies are in place. Network security appliances and their respective security service subscriptions can help to secure enterprise assets from breach. While deploying and supporting these appliances is a critical first step, ongoing review and management of them, specifically their service subscriptions requires diligence on behalf of the enterprises’ information technology teams.

Security applications that monitor the network for malicious activities can produce reports to make it easier for IT management to detect and respond to threats in their environment. These are not a “one-size fits all” solution. Many organizations find it imperative to alter, or “change-out”, an existing application or device to an updated version to keep enterprise assets protected from the latest threats. Making these changes or upgrades, while maintaining system security, can prove to be challenging and is often best left to specialists like Infinite Resource Solutions (Infinite). Infinite’s expertise stems from their direct work with original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s) that are leading the way to a more secure enterprise. Infinite offers best-in-class, professional services and IT staffing solutions to small, mid-sized, and Fortune 500 companies, with a focus on next generation security services.

“An experienced professional services organization can often bring a much needed outside perspective to the client’s network, employing best practices and creative solutions to complex challenges in order to enhance their enterprise security”, says Clint Nelms, VP Professional Services for Infinite Resource Solutions. “Infinite has a proven track record of providing the best solutions at the right time to make the most impact for our clients.”

A member-owned cooperative, an Infinite client, needed to migrate its existing firewalls to newer, next generation firewalls to boost perimeter security. The client was concerned about the expiration of the security services subscriptions with their legacy incumbent vendor, in this case specifically Intrusion Detection and Intrusion Prevention features. The infinite team was able to think outside the box and design a solution as well as migration path that addressed the expiring legacy subscriptions while still moving forward with the firewall migration. This addressed the operational and security concerns raised by the organization surrounding their exposure to attack during the deployment, while still replacing the older equipment with newer cutting edge technology. Once the new platform was deployed to the environment, the new firewall provided IPS/IDS protection until the final firewall design implemented in production. The Infinite team met with decision makers and the client’s security staff and listened to their concerns. From there they proposed, configured, and implemented this creative solution in the first two days of the engagement.

As a result of the successful implementation, the client avoided downtime and the risk of degrading their security perimeter. The client was also able to save the cost of renewing its subscriptions and licenses for the legacy appliances. With Infinite’s expertise, the creative effort allowed the team to architect and implement a Layer 3 design in a measured fashion and replace and implement the client’s legacy equipment with no loss of business continuity and with minimal risk to the system.

If you are looking for a solution to solve complex IT challenges in your business, contact Clint Nelms for more information at (678) 379-2804.

Executing an Effective Staffing Strategy

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The staffing and recruiting industry has been growing at an unprecedented rate due to a recovering economy that favors the broadening service offerings of the staffing and recruiting industry. According to the American Staffing Associations (ASA) Staffing Employment and Sales Survey, “U.S. staffing companies employed an average of 3.13 million temporary and contract workers per week in the first quarter of 2015, up 5.5% from the same period in 2014.” Overall, staffing and recruiting firms provide employment opportunities for more than 14 million employees each year in virtually all sectors of occupations, across all industries.

In order to remain competitive in an ever more complex business environment, employers are turning to staffing firms to grow their talent base. Today companies are facing unprecedented competitive challenges that demands renewed focus on the cost of maintaining many traditional, internal organizational functions:

Budget Constraints – Recruiting, hiring and maintaining full time employees is becoming an increasingly expensive process. For many organizations, supporting in-house human resource functions has become a considerable financial liability. For companies seeking resources, in many cases, candidates can be contracted through a staffing firm at a lower rate than onboarding W2 employees.

Rapidly Expanding Resource Requirements – Volatility in many industries is creating abbreviated ramp-up times. The need to fill open positions quickly has many organizations seeking the services of a staffing agency when the internal human resource functions are unable to respond to the increased number of open positions.

Demand for Rare Skillsets – As technologies rapidly change, companies must secure highly specialized resources. As with the IT sector, as data security breaches require more sophisticated systems, the need for experts is at an all-time high.

Productivity and Speed – Staffing firms have access to a larger pool of top quality candidates which decrease the amount of time spent searching for a specific job requirement. Companies can maintain focus on productivity as opposed to searching for talent.

To mitigate these challenges, finding the right partner to outsource staffing responsibilities focused and experience in finding and recruiting top talent becomes critical to maintain a return on investment. “Whether a client is faced with a decrease budget or in need of highly specialized talent to resolve a data breach, staffing agencies is a solution,” says Daveenia Beller, Founder and Managing Partner at Infinite Resource Solutions (Infinite). “Companies must be able to expand its workforce quickly and efficiently. There is a point for most companies, especially mid-size companies, when engaging a staffing agency saves the company from sorting through hundreds of resumes they would get from posting on a site like Career Builder or LinkedIn.”

The traditional full-time or permanent career hiring model of the past decade is being replaced with a new, more efficient employment environment for businesses and more flexible workplace options for employees. Direct hire, where the company recruits and hires a candidate and adds them to their permanent head count is no longer the main element in many organizations hiring strategy. Some companies opt for a contract for hire relationships with candidates. After reviewing the candidates on the job performance for a limited period of time, usually three to six months, the company can exercise an option to convert the temporary contractual relationship to a permanent hire.

An experienced staffing professional, like Infinite, can offer a broader perspective to the most efficient and effective employer/employee relationship, helping to determine the best employment relationship to yield higher dividends over the span of an employee’s tenure with a company. “Infinite is able to provide the right strategy for staffing to align with business goals as well as to meet the demand for top talent,” comments Beller. “We are able to provide staffing solutions for our clients whether it’s a direct hire, contract to hire, or contract position.”

Infinite’s expertise is derived from building a company with individuals that offer more than a decade of experience delivering best-in-class, professional services and IT staffing solutions to small, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies.   “Our ability to find the highest quality talent in the marketplace to drive your business has been proven. We are diligent in delivering, not just a candidate, but a solution for your business, states Beller.

For more information on how Infinite can create an effective staffing strategy for your company, contact Clint Nelms at (678) 379-2804.

 

Focus and Intensity Fundamental to Effective IT Security

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Hackers and data breaches are becoming the focus of IT leaders in organizations across the globe. Most recently, it was announced that a breach of the Office of Personnel Management-(OPM) information systems would impact 4.2 million Americans. Not long after the announcement, the OPM adjusted upward the impact of the invasion and confiscation of proprietary data. The breach would affect more than 25.7 million previous and current federal employees whose personnel information had been unlawfully pilfered by an intruder.

According to OPM, the agency was breached twice prior to the agency becoming aware of the intrusion. The types of information stolen from the background check databases include Social Security numbers, residency and educational history, employment history, information about immediate family, and other personal and financial history. The government agency stated that usernames and passwords that background investigation applicants used to fill out their background investigation forms were also stolen. The incident once again demonstrates, whether in government or private industry, the need for dynamic security continues to intensify.

Threats like web-based malware attacks, targeted attacks and application-layer attacks are rapidly changing the threat landscape from bad to critical. The majority of the increased intrusions are exploiting weaknesses in applications, as opposed to weaknesses in networking components and services. “With the growing proliferation and sophistication of hackers, combined with our increased reliance on interconnected applications, devices and systems; it’s imperative that both private and public organizations intensify their approach to network security”, says Clint Nelms, Vice President of Professional Services at Infinite Resource Solutions (Infinite). “We have the tools and the latest in processes and technologies to prevent, protect, detect, and respond to elevated threats to information systems.”

One tool in the security professional’s tool box has become a staple in fighting off unwanted hackers is Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW). An enhanced, integrated security platform that combines traditional firewall functions with other analysis and filtering functionalities can provide more layers of security to protect networks against intrusion by today’s hackers. Previous firewalls, with port focused capabilities, were once effective in blocking unwanted applications. In the past, administrators could prevent an unsafe application from exposing sensitive data by by blocking the associated ports and protocols. Preventing more sophisticated and aggressive attacks with this older technology is not as effective now that hackers hide malicious activities inside protocols like HTTPS. These days port based security strategies are not dynamic enough to keep up with sophisticated attacks.

With hackers focused on stealing our information, many CTOs and IT departments find their efforts to secure systems behind an increasingly more complex learning curve. Providing a focused and intensive defense is often better left to a team of professional subject matter experts who can design and deploy a next generation solution. Infinite Resource Solutions is a leading international provider of business-to-business professional services, offering clients solutions to the increasingly complex threats of data breach.

A recent Infinite client, an American manufacturing company, was routinely reviewing traffic passing to and from its servers when they noticed an unusual traffic pattern. A large amount of traffic was leaving one of its servers headed for an international destination. In addition to their concern that valuable data was being unlawfully exposed, the traffic was having a negative impact on the amount of bandwidth available for the organizations production environment. The company was faced with the immediate need to locate the traffic’s source, stop the bandwidth utilization, investigate the severity and scope, and assess next steps.

Infinite’s security expertise was the perfect choice to combat the problem. By deploying a next generation security solution the Infinite team was able to analyze the traffic, isolate it, and then stop it from reaching its destination. By leveraging new firewall rules designed to block traffic from the client’s server to the internet, the team stopped the bandwidth abuse and paved the way for a full forensic investigation by the appropriate agencies. Infinite’s agility and quick response exceeded the client’s desired results.

Infinite’s team of experts can assist with the design and implementation of your security solution. To learn more about Infinite’s capabilities contact Clint Nelms at 678.379.2804.

Getting the Most from Your Wide Area Network

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In any competitive environment productivity and performance are hallmark elements of an organization that often determines success or failure. The workplace of today is far different from the workplace of even the most recent past. Technology solutions and systems have vastly improved to meet the demands of a more connected and faster paced business environment. As CTOs assess its WAN solutions requirements to aptly manage and maintain current demand.  Applications like unified communications and video conferencing, branch-office expansion, data center consolidation and increased Internet traffic mean more interest and focus on getting the most out of networks capabilities.

Infinite’s recent white paper entitled, “How Is Your Organization Delivering on WAN Solutions?” speaks to the importance of WAN optimization and why it has become a priority for today’s CIOs. “Business goals dictate the need for streamlined performance of WAN networks,” comments Clint Nelms, VP of Professional Services, Infinite Resources Solutions (Infinite). “WAN optimization is a critical element in maintaining network infrastructures.”

While some IT departments respond to the challenge by increasing bandwidth spend, that can prove to be very expensive and cause additional performance issues. “A lot of organizations have run up against the reality that you can only increase bandwidth so much before the cost becomes prohibitive,” says Henry Svendblad, a principal research analyst at Nemertes, a technology consultancy. The right WAN optimization solution can make a big difference in improving performance, and can greatly improve productivity.

As companies grow and demands for IT professional services escalate, managing the operational aspects of the business is critical to the continued success and survival of the organization. When it comes to WAN optimization, every organization must take different approaches in order to meet their specific needs. Partnering with a professional services organization can help identify the best solutions to produce positive results as organizations scale and position themselves to better meet the challenges of the future.

To learn more about Infinite’s highly specialized team of WAN engineers, contact Clint Nelms at 678.379.2804.

Part 2: Raising the Level of the Cybersecurity Game Plan

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Infinite Resource Solutions is a leading international provider of business-to-business services whose team of professionals offer their clients solutions to the challenges of staffing professional services and IT infrastructure. They deploy business solutions that solve a broad range of challenges in new and dynamic ways for their clients. Infinite recently published a white paper titled, “Infinite Resource Solutions: Safe and Sound.” Part I discussed the realities of cyber security attacks, and in Part 2 Infinite explores enhanced security solutions designed to interdict attacks on besieged servers.

Virtually every organization today is interconnected to the rest of the world through email and the internet. Businesses are so completely dependent upon the internet that it is hard to imagine life without connectivity. News of the latest security breaches cover the pages and airwaves each day, disrupting the well-ordered operation many industries and millions of individual lives.

The very attributes that make the internet attractive and available to all to use are the same reasons hackers are able to ply their disruptive craft so effectively. Hacking no longer requires super intelligence or highly specialized computer talents to gain access to today’s computer networks. Most malicious hackers today do not possess a high level of software development skills, but instead make use of intrusion tools commonly available on the Internet.

According to research from CompTIA, business leaders are aware of the growing organization of hackers, their increased proliferation and the implications for greater and more disruptive attacks to company systems. IT security professionals are utilizing new technologies in conjunction with traditional tactics to stem the threats. Data loss prevention (DLP) is one of the most common new tools, along with Identity and access management (IAM) and security information and event management (SIEM).

One tool in the security professional’s tool box has become a staple in fighting off unwanted hackers. Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) are an enhanced, integrated platform that combine traditional firewall functions with newer more aggressive technologies.  The goal of NGFW is to include more layers of security to protect networks against intrusion by today’s increasingly sophisticated hackers.

Clint Nelms, Vice President of Professional Services at Infinite Resource Solutions (Infinite) says, “Even the most modest of organizations can afford to provide the necessary security by connecting with professionals who are experienced in encryption, intrusion detection and Next Generation Firewalls.”

With the growing sophistication of hackers; combined with our increased reliance on interconnected applications, devices and systems, it’s imperative that organizations initiate a proactive approach to network security which seeks the latest in processes and technologies to prevent, protect, detect, and respond to elevated threats to their valuable data systems.

Click here to download the complete whitepaper. For more information on how Infinite’s expert team of professionals can help advance your company’s network security efforts, contact Clint Nelms at 678.379.2804.

Image courtesy of Ventrilock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

PART I: Organizations Must Intensify Efforts to Secure Assets

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Infinite Resource Solutions is a leading international provider of business-to-business services whose professionals offer perspectives on issues related to staffing, professional services, and IT infrastructure and who deploy business solutions that solve a broad range of challenges in new and dynamic ways for their clients. Infinite recently published a white paper titled, “Infinite Resource Solutions: Safe and Sound.” Part I in the series investigates cyber security.

With the intense media coverage of large network intrusions by hackers, it is inconceivable that anyone is unaware of the effects that breaches of cyber security have on the financial health of victim organizations, the overall economy and the propriety of personal information of millions of people. Security breaches are on the rise and as the number of information security incidents continues to mount, so do the financial losses of small to large organizations whose very existence relies on the free flow of and convenient access to important data. While large organizations tend to rack-up the largest portion of the financial costs of cyber-breaches, small and medium business are also experiencing the devastating impact caused by a malicious attack.

The Ponemon Institute recently found that almost 17,000 malware alerts surface every week and DDoS attacks, which are among the most widely used methods to take down websites, increased 240 percent in 2014. The Global State of Information Security® Survey 2015 (GSISS) revealed a 48% increase in the number of detected incidents in 2014, a total of 42.8 million. The total financial costs associated with cybersecurity breaches soared to 34% over 2013. It is predicted that the future will see increased attacks as hackers intensify their focus on mobile devises and poorly protected networks. As organizations increasingly adopt a BYOD approach, they are making their systems more vulnerable to attack by criminals who are getting better and more efficient at applying their illicit craft.

But as the frequency and costs of security incidents continue to rise, the GSISS survey concluded that many organizations have yet to put into place key information security processes, technologies and employee training that sufficient to protect their organization from a costly intrusion. Most companies “are only investing in security to check the box,” remarked Ray Suarez, director of product management at Core Security. “About 10 percent of the companies I talk to are serious about security and approaching it appropriately,” he recently told TechNewsWorld.

Because of these threats organizations need to make security and integrity a primary goal of their operations. Data integrity and security impact performance and perceived company value. It’s imperative that company leaders awaken to the increased threat and invest in the necessary processes and technologies to prevent, protect, detect, and respond to elevated threats to their systems. Whether it is fortifying in-house IT security or contracting with an outside IT security service partner who is experienced and capable of developing and implementing an effective cyber security strategy, organizations must intensify their cybersecurity actions to secure their valuable information assets.

In our next post, Infinite concludes its series by addressing the impact of next generation firewalls for IT organizations.  Click here to download the complete whitepaper. For more information on how Infinite’s team of professionals can help advance your company’s network security efforts, contact Clint Nelms at 678.379.2804.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Getting to the Cloud from Here

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Much of the hype surrounding the benefits of cloud computing to enterprise is real. Moving IT operations, either in whole or in-part, has considerable implications to an organizations operational flexibility, efficiency and improvements to IT functions. The question for many organizations isn’t so much the goal but rather the path to the goal. Dennis Ravenelle, release project manager for Harvard University Information Technology said costs are a main and obvious driver. When Harvard weighed options for an IT service management (ITSM) solution, the cloud solution was almost $500,000 less expensive than the in house offerings. In a recent article in Campus Technology, Revenelle recounted the contrast between the complexity and costs involved in upgrading software. “In 2008 we upgraded our on-premise ITSM tool suite. We were a couple of revisions behind. The project was estimated to take six months and cost $600,000. It ended up close to $1 million and took almost a year,” he said. Contrast that experience to, when in January 2014, Harvard upgraded its cloud-based solution. After six weeks of testing, on a Saturday night they pushed the button and went live with it. “We had stood up expanded stabilization support for Monday. But by the middle of the day we called it off because it was a non-event. The upgrade cost us virtually nothing. These are some of the considerations.”

Such stories have enterprise cost conscious and efficiency pun dents wanting to jump in to author their own fables of success. But moving workloads to the cloud is a process fraught with potential pitfalls. As is often the case, experiences such as these are usually far more complicated than their simplistic narration reveal. So what does one need to consider before committing to moving the in house IT infrastructure up to the cloud? According to Mike Martin, Senior Vice President, Solutions & Services for Logicalis, a global IT provider, “It’s about doing your due diligence.”

While every cloud migration strategy will have elements that are unique to specific industry and organization size, some best practices before formulating the strategy are common to developing an effective cloud migration plan. Navigating the process of moving a physical, in house environment to the cloud requires in-depth preparation and planning. Basic planning is essential, and creating a cloned, parallel environment to test the process of migration is essential to test and remove any flaws encountered during the move.

First, evaluate all your applications and determine how each contributes to the organizations operation. Determine which applications will provide the most benefits from transition to the cloud. Software and hardware that is approaching the end of their optimal life cycle may be best suited for early migration.  Newer technological assets can continue to be utilized in house effectively until a later departure.

Thoroughly investigate and define your security needs and calculate the risk factors of the move. Establish security policies for each application. These policies will play a key role in identifying a cloud provider who will meet those specifications. Vet potential cloud providers carefully and thoroughly. It’s vital to learn as much about your cloud provider as possible in order to instill confidence and trust in their abilities and their commitment to serving your computing needs. Once an inventory of the services you want to move to the cloud is complete, a determination can be made as to the type of cloud environment they need and the impact the move will have on your organization’s infrastructure and facilities, then you can begin to develop a cloud migration strategy.

And remember, as with any journey to a new and unfamiliar place, having someone along for the ride, who has traveled the path before you and is familiar with the twist, turns and pitfalls that can be encountered along the way, can be invaluable to reaching your destination sooner, less expensively and with fewer trials and tribulations. Contracting the services of an outside team of IT professionals, who are well schooled and experienced in the process of developing and implementing an effective strategy, can be some of the best money spent on your journey to the cloud.

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A Measurement of Trust and Confidence in the Cloud

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A recent Gartner study predicts double-digit growth in all cloud sectors, reaching a total spend of $210 billion dollars by 2016. But as enterprise organizations continue to investigate the benefits to moving data and application management to third party cloud service providers, concern for data security and privacy remains the primary reason for a pause to full implementation. According to a 2014 global study from BT, data security and trust in cloud-based services is a cause for unease among IT decision makers within large organizations.  Almost half of respondents admitted that they are “very or extremely anxious” about the security implications surrounding the cloud. The question many IT decision makers are asking is; When relying on a cloud provider, how do you know what security protocols are in place and how well are they performing? As is the case with all partnerships, trust is paramount to a relationships success.

Prof. Edward Humphreys, Convenor of the ISO working group is responsible for information security management standards including ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27002 and the cloud security standard ISO/IEC 27017. He believes that creating a climate of trust is the most important prerequisite when outsourcing IT. “Companies need to have assurance in the underlying cloud provider,’ Humphreys says,  “Many users may not understand that they need to select a cloud service provider that has good governance over the processing of personal data; and those that do know this may have difficulty knowing how to verify that good governance is in place. This situation can lead to increased risks for the protection of personal data.”  ISO/IEC 27018:2014 establishes commonly accepted control objectives, controls and guidelines for implementing measures to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in accordance with the privacy principles for the public cloud computing environment.

Microsoft has announced that it is the first major cloud provider to adopt the first international cloud privacy standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Independent auditors at the British Standards Institute (BSI) have verified that Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online are all in compliance with the standard. “Adherence to ISO 27018 provides a number of important security safeguards,” said Microsoft executive vice president and general counsel Brad Smith, “It ensures that there are defined restrictions on how we handle personally identifiable information, including restrictions on its transmission over public networks, storage on transportable media and proper processes for data recovery and restoration efforts. In addition, the standard ensures that all of the people, including our own employees, who
process personally identifiable information, must be subject to a confidentiality obligation. The validation that we’ve adopted this standard is further evidence of our commitment to protect the privacy of our customers online.”

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