Protected Harbor Recognized as a Top Managed Service Provider by Design Rush

Protected Harbor Recognized as a Top Managed Service Provider

 

Protected Harbor Recognized as a Top Managed Service Provider by Design Rush

 

Today Protected Harbor was recognized as one of the Top Managed Service Providers by DesignRush, a B2B (Business to Business) marketplace for agencies. This accreditation is only given to companies that have been thoroughly researched and analyzed based on their history, vision, business model, products or services, company executives, and advisors.

“At Protected Harbor, we aim to set the standard for excellence in managed services and technology. We want to help businesses and individuals get the best-managed services, from designing their infrastructure to cybersecurity. We want to simplify the technology adoption process and allow companies to quickly make informed decisions about the future of their business technology.” – Richard Luna.

Previously, Protected Harbor was also recognized as a top cloud computing company in the US by Goodfirms.

Protected Harbor was chosen by DesignRush for demonstrating a commitment to technical excellence, innovation, and customer satisfaction while serving small to mid-size businesses.

DesignRush helps companies select the ideal firm that can best represent their brand, comprehend their objectives and collaborate successfully with them. Protected Harbor’s 90+ Net Promoter Score for their Managed IT Services, Network and Infrastructure Services, IT Help Desk, and IT Support made the company a perfect fit.

This recognition is a testament to the company’s commitment to excellence in customer service and exceptional customer support. Protected Harbor strongly emphasizes customer satisfaction and pays close attention to the needs of its existing customers. By providing high-quality security services and utilizing live chat and customer support tools, the company has improved customer satisfaction and retained its customer base.

Protected Harbor also conducts customer satisfaction surveys to ensure that it is meeting the needs of its customers and addressing any concerns they may have. Through these efforts, the company has achieved a low churn rate and maintained a high level of satisfaction among its customers.

The dedication to providing an excellent customer experience has helped it to stand out in a crowded market and solidify its position as a top-managed service provider.

Protected Harbor helps local, and national businesses use technology to solve their business problems and are committed to driving digital transformation for small and midsize businesses.

The company has over 30 years of experience deploying advanced engineering solutions centered on collaboration, cloud migration, networking, cyber security, and Managed Services. With Protected Harbor, businesses and organizations can feel confident that their data is secure and protected in the cloud.

Protected Harbor Recognized as a Top Managed Service ProviderThe award of Top Managed Service Provider by DesignRush recognizes Protected Harbor as a top IT Company and technology consultant whose forward-thinking approach to providing managed services is changing the landscape of the business technology.

With digital and technological techniques that support your company’s objectives, Protected Harbor’s IT specialists will help reduce stressful day-to-day tech issues, minimize costly downtime, and improve operational maturity.

Like many other local IT companies, Protected Harbor helps with everything from IT support, remote workforce solutions, and IT infrastructure to cloud migration, VoIP phone systems, and data center hosting.

But unlike traditional MSPs, we pride ourselves on our customer’s happiness. That’s why we ensure our 24/7/365 customer service is second to none. Whenever you need us, we’re always here. Got a problem at 2:00 am? A live person will be there to answer your call and resolve the issue before sun-up.

Protected Harbor’s approach to customer service goes beyond just solving problems and closing tickets. We aim to connect on a human level, getting to know you and your business so we can function like an extension of your team.

That is why over 90% of our business comes from client referrals, and we have a 98% customer retention rate. Protected Harbor is the last I.T. company you will ever have to hire. Contact our team today to experience what a true partnership and excellence in customer service is like.[/vc_column_text]

Is the Cloud Answer to Everything?

Is the Cloud Answer to Everything?

The cloud is a popular topic, with big and small organizations looking at cloud solutions to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and accelerate new projects. A recent survey found that 66% of businesses currently use the cloud in some capacity. But is it the answer to everything? Is the cloud the best option for your business? The quick answer is No! – but there’s more to it than that. Read on to find out if the cloud is right for you and your business or if another solution might suit you better.

We are excited to bring you another much-requested video on our series Uptime with Richard Luna. We are discussing Cloud and Is the Cloud answer all your problems. Watch the video to understand it in detail.

 

Why the Cloud is Such a Big Deal

If you think back to when you were a child, the internet probably wouldn’t have even been on your radar. It’s only been around for a few decades, so it’s not surprising that it’s still such a new concept, even though it’s become a massive part of our daily lives.

When you hear the word cloud, what do you think? Most people think of a massive server that holds all the data for an organization, storing it in a remote location. This is an oversimplification, but it gets the point across. As a business owner, you need to know what the cloud means and what it could mean for your organization.

For a good reason, the cloud has become a massive trend in recent years. It offers various benefits that traditional on-premises solutions cannot match. Hybrid cloud solutions, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are just some examples of cloud offerings available to businesses. One of the significant advantages of cloud computing is the flexibility it provides. Businesses can choose between public and private clouds or even create multi-cloud environments that utilize multiple clouds to meet their specific needs.

Cloud solutions like IBM Cloud, and Protected Harbor Cloud can simplify management and reduce overhead costs, as businesses no longer have to worry about maintaining and upgrading their hardware or operating systems. Moreover, businesses can quickly scale up or down their resources as required with the cloud, making it a more cost-effective solution. These and other benefits of cloud computing have made it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes and industries.

 

Is the Cloud Right for You?

Whether or not the cloud is right for you depends on your business, needs, and how it aligns with your goals and vision for the future. If you’re unsure if the cloud is the right solution, consider the following questions: Is your organization ready for a significant change or transformation? Do you have a reliable and secure internet connection? Does your organization have a substantial amount of data? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, the cloud might be your ideal solution.

Cloud computing services are viable options for businesses looking to modernize their IT infrastructure. However, choosing the right cloud solution depends on various factors, such as the business’s size, industry, and requirements. For instance, small business owners might benefit more from SaaS offerings that allow them to access the software through the cloud rather than investing in costly hardware and maintenance.

On the other hand, larger companies with complex IT infrastructure might find IaaS or PaaS more suitable, as they offer greater control and customization over the environment. Additionally, businesses with a hybrid cloud architecture, combining on-premises and cloud infrastructure, may require a hybrid cloud infrastructure to ensure seamless integration between the two.

Furthermore, choosing a cloud provider is also critical, and businesses must select a reliable provider such as Alibaba Cloud that offers high availability and scalability. Virtual machines and other computing services provided by the cloud can also be advantageous, allowing businesses to quickly spin up new resources or scale up existing ones to meet their demands. Ultimately, the decision of whether the cloud is right for you depends on your unique business needs and goals.

 

What Else Should You Be Considering?

While the cloud may be a good fit for your business, there are a few other things you may want to consider before making a decision. What are your security needs? If you’re storing data remotely, you must be confident that it’s secure. Being compliant with government regulations like HIPAA and GDPR is another critical factor. Finally, you’ll also want to consider your budget and ROI. If you don’t have the budget to use a cloud-based solution, you might want to look at other options.

 

Summary

The cloud is a popular solution for many businesses but isn’t the best solution for everyone. No single technology or vendor can be the answer to everything. Cloud providers are trying to solve different problems at different scales. As with any technology, the cloud has its strengths and weaknesses, and it’s essential to understand them before making decisions.

There are many Cloud service providers in the US. Among all, Protected Harbor was one of the top Cloud service providers in the US. Our cloud services include AWS Migration, Office 365 Migration, Google Cloud Migration, Hybrid Cloud, Private Cloud, and Dedicated Cloud Infrastructure.

If you’re still unsure about the Cloud or its features, contact one of our experts immediately. They’ll recommend the best-suited strategy for your business. We are also giving away a free IT Audit to help the company identify its weak points. Keep watching the video for more.

GoodFirm.co Recognizes Protected Harbor as a Top Cloud Computing Company

GoodFirm.co Recognizes Protected Harbor banner

 

GoodFirms.co Recognizes Protected Harbor as a Top Cloud Computing Company

 

goodfirms logo

Today, Protected Harbor was recognized by GoodFirms, a leading review platform for software and service providers, as one of the Top Cloud Computing Companies in the United States.

GoodFirms is a revolutionary research and review platform with a worldwide database of software service providers. To link service providers and their relevant customers, GoodFirms analyses the company on three crucial parameters: Quality, Reliability, and Ability. Customer reviews and published interview articles are also considered for the evaluation process.

Here is what GoodFirms’ Anna Stark had to say about Protected Harbor’s IT Support and Cloud Computing Solutions:

Started in 2009, Protected Harbor delivers technology stability and durability for organizations, resulting in flawless operations of desktops, data centers, and applications. The company implements a Technology Improvement Plan (TIP) that involves industry best practices to resolve issues. The TIP offers protection with the help of unique Application Outage Avoidance (AOA) technology and support from the Support Resolution Team.

Interestingly, Protected Harbor works with organizations to solve more complex problems and be more responsive. The company focuses on direct end-user support while assuring that the company’s back-end operations like web servers and computer networking run effortlessly.

The team strives hard to resolve issues before they become problems, enabling organizations not to be worried about the technology. The company aims to turn technology back into a benefit and not a cost center. The team finds long-term solutions that help clients focus on their business processes. The clients can have reliable, durable, and secure business technology solutions with Protected Harbor.

Indeed, the Protected Harbor guard businesses and their IT operations from attacks, whether known or unknown, that include Ransomware, Malware, Viruses, and Phishing. The customers can efficiently make their business IT strong and keep their business protected and safe from ransomware attacks, viruses, useless subscriptions, phishing attacks, and end-user problems with Protected Harbour.

 

Protected Harbor aims to ensure clients achieve optimal technological productivity. The company treats clients as partners and thoughtfully listens to the client’s business and technology issues, and delivers technology solutions tailored to the client’s business requirements.

Protected Harbor offers a wide range of secure colocation solutions for healthcare organizations to handle healthcare challenges. Team Protected Harbor enables clients to protect their desktop issues such as ransomware, malware, and virus protection. Clients have complete remote access and 24 hour, 365-day support.

The unified VoIP solution and VoIP software phone system, video conferencing, and mobile app are easy to use and effortlessly protect clients’ phones. Plus, the clients can have the power of desktop QuickBooks and the security and convenience of a remote desktop connection with Protected Books. The protected data center and hosting solution virtually eliminate crashes, failures, and outages.

This one-stop technology company offers solutions that involve software, hardware infrastructure, cloud migration, disaster recovery, security, and cloud back-up. The company offers customers remote cloud access, 99.99% uptime, proactive monitoring, and private cloud backup.

The team of experts enables clients to get value from the virtual office-hosted solutions and efficiently work with businesses of all sizes to carry out business operations faster. The clients can migrate their systems to the cloud to reduce and control IT costs, enhance security and disaster preparedness, minimize maintenance, and increase the workforce’s productivity.

Consequently, the excellent cloud computing services enable Protected Harbor to gain a prestigious position amongst the renowned cloud computing companies in the United States at GoodFirms.

Apart from the services mentioned above, Protected Harbor delivers specialized IT services for small and medium-sized businesses. The certified IT engineers focus on keeping clients’ businesses going. The team builds reliable IT infrastructure with a strategic approach that drives clients’ business growth.

 

About the Author

goodfirm authorWorking as a Content Writer at GoodFirms, Anna Stark bridges the gap between service seekers and service providers. Anna’s dominant role is to figure out company achievements and critical attributes and put them into words. She strongly believes in the charm of words and leverages new approaches that work, including new concepts that enhance the firm’s identity.

Hidden Costs of the Cloud

Hidden Costs of the Cloud

What You Need to Know‍

The cloud has undoubtedly transformed the way organizations operate.

The cloud offers many benefits, including on-demand resources, scalability, and cost-efficiency. Most businesses nowadays have shifted to either a hybrid or a hybrid private cloud architecture. However, cloud adoption hasn’t been smooth for everyone.

Several hidden costs of the cloud may catch you off guard if you’re not fully aware of them. Understanding these costs is essential to budget accurately for your IT services in the long run.

Welcome to another video in our series Uptime with Richard Luna, where Richard Luna, CEO of Protected Harbor, will discuss the cloud’s actual costs. Below, we will touch on some of the hidden costs of the cloud, how they can impact your business and what you can do about it.

 

What Are the Hidden Costs of the Cloud?

As we’ve already established, the cloud has some hidden costs that many companies are unaware of. This can affect their budgeting, decision-making, and long-term strategy. Business leaders may alter their entire IT strategy based on these hidden costs. From a financial standpoint, hidden fees can include data transfer, cloud utilization, migration, and business process reengineering costs.

Data Transfer Costs – These are costs associated with transferring data between on-premise resources and cloud-based resources. Depending on where your data is stored, you may have to incur data transfer costs.

Cloud Utilization Costs– Public cloud service providers demand a fee each time a business tries to access its data. Cloud companies are betting on huge demand despite the low fees, which occasionally amount to cents per hour.

Migration Costs – Organizations migrating their applications to the cloud may incur costs for retooling legacy applications for the cloud.

Business Process Reengineering Costs– Organizations occasionally anticipate that a move to the cloud will boost overall functionality and efficiency. However, the reality is any problems that may have existed before a cloud move will persist there. The initial transformation might be finished, but continuous business modifications will still be required, increasing spending.

 

Understanding Cloud Offerings: Comparing Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services

Regarding cloud offerings, two of the most popular options are Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Both platforms offer various computing services, including virtual machines, edge locations, and private IP addresses. However, there are some differences to be aware of. For example, GCP offers VPC peering connections that allow customers to connect to their own premises data center.

In contrast, AWS offers Amazon CloudFront, a content delivery network that can speed up website loading times. In terms of data transfer pricing, GCP charges $0.01 per GB, while AWS charges $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB. It’s important to consider these factors when deciding which platform to migrate to the cloud and any additional data transfer charges that may apply.

 

Whats the real cost of the cloudPrivate Cloud: A Better Alternative

Richard recommends, “To overcome some of the hidden costs of the cloud, organizations can opt for the private cloud.” A private cloud is an on-premises version of the public cloud where IT organizations control access, security, and the level of scalability.

A private cloud is an isolated environment within your organization’s data center. It has its dedicated hardware, software, networking resources, and other utilities. A private cloud may incur some hidden costs. But these hidden costs are typically less than those of public cloud services.

You can also use a public-private hybrid cloud. This combines a public cloud platform and a private cloud environment. A hybrid cloud is often used to host sensitive information because it’s more secure than a public cloud. You can also host non-sensitive information on a public cloud platform while keeping your critical data private.

 

Conclusion

Many cloud providers offer their services, but not all are the same. If you want to avoid hidden costs and stay safe, you need to move to a private cloud. This way, you will have complete control over your data without worrying about any unexpected charges. With a private cloud from Protected Harbor, you can optimize your IT investments, avoid data breaches, and save money.

At Protected Harbor, we keep up with the latest technology, continuously invest in our people and infrastructure, and always look for ways to improve. We are experts in cloud implementation, partner with the biggest names in the software industry, and are dedicated to delivering a superior experience for every customer. If you’re looking to opt or migrate to a private or hybrid cloud or even other managed IT services, our experts are there to help you.

Contact us today for a free IT audit and cloud consulting!

Keeping Your SaaS Secure:

keeping your saas secure

Keeping Your SaaS Secure: 6 Things You Can Do Now to Prepare

Security is one of the top concerns among Security as a Service (SaaS) customers. It’s a problem that many SaaS vendors struggle with, and for a good reason.

As more businesses move their processes to the cloud, hackers see this as an opportunity to exploit security vulnerabilities and steal sensitive data. For this reason, keeping your SaaS secure is no longer just about staying compliant with regulations like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). It’s now about protecting your customers and your business from cyber-attacks. With so much on the line, it’s important now more than ever to take the steps needed to protect your SaaS from potential threats in the future.

How secure is your SaaS? How prepared are you for a cybersecurity attack? You can find out with our free whitepaper! Inside, you’ll learn all about the major cyber threats of 2022, such as the evolution of ransomware, the rise of cloud apps, and more. You’ll also find out the biggest challenges facing today’s SaaS businesses and how to overcome these issues. Finally, you’ll get actionable insights and tips you can use today to keep your SaaS secure.

This blog post in particular will outline the six simple ways to keep your SaaS secure while reducing operational risks and liability.

 

So, what exactly is SaaS Security?

When we talk about SaaS security, we’re referring to the various ways you can protect your software against threats. This can include software and hardware solutions that help prevent and identify cyber-attacks. When it comes to SaaS security, there are three main components you need to think about: data, infrastructure, and people.

Data security refers to the privacy and security controls that prevent unauthorized parties from accessing sensitive data. Infrastructure security refers to the resilience of the hardware and networks that power your SaaS. People security refers to the policies and procedures that prevent employees from unintentionally introducing vulnerabilities into your software. Essentially, SaaS security is all about keeping your customers’ data safe and your own.

 

6 SaaS Security Best Practices

Whether you’re testing a new tool or releasing a new feature, it’s crucial to consider your SaaS security. To maintain the security and privacy of your data, keep the following best practices in mind.

1. Encrypt your Data

Your technological stack’s top priority should be encryption at all layers. In the event of a breach, effective encryption makes sure that consumer data isn’t quickly publicly disclosed.

Customers’ concerns about their data protection are growing as high-profile leaks like the Cambridge Analytica incident occur more frequently. By discussing your encryption policies, reassure your clients that your solution always protects their sensitive billing information.

Use one of the many popular encryption techniques to ensure that the information you rely on isn’t kept in plain text.

2. Give Priority to Privacy

Most compliance and regulatory processes demand privacy and security declarations, but that isn’t their only use. It teaches your team and customers how to handle important data by developing a strong statement for your product.

Develop your privacy policy by defining the specific details that need to be included in it with the help of your development and legal teams.

3. Educate Your Clients

By 2020, 95% of cloud security problems will be the clients’ fault, predicts a Gartner study. Make sure you actively reach out to individuals whenever you are onboarding new clients or send critical updates to existing ones to explain how this may affect their security.

Most customers are unaware of the implications of this shift toward a totally cloud-based architecture, which is being made by an increasing number of SaaS providers. Ensure your consumers understand how to protect their information to reduce security concerns and limit risks.

Keeping Your SaaS Secure middle4. Backup User Data in Several Locations and Isolated Backups

Effective client data management is crucial because many firms aren’t prepared for impending data breaches. By creating multiple copies of your data, you can assure that no one system failure will compromise your security.

Many cloud platforms on which SaaS businesses rely on as a part of their product will offer this functionality. Still, you must be vigilant about backups to prevent potentially catastrophic losses of customer data.

5. Use More Robust Passwords

Many people still use the same password for each login, even though they know the risks involved. By requesting stronger passwords from users when they create accounts, you can stop them from exposing your data to possible cyber criminals. Consider establishing case-sensitivity rules and authentication mechanisms.

An emphasis on security will only become more crucial as the subscription economy develops. As your business expands, always re-evaluate your present procedures to ensure that you are maintaining compliance.

6. Speak With a Cyber-security Company

Third-party security organizations can provide essential industry knowledge about what you need to do to keep your platform secure. Their testing procedures ensure that your infrastructure, network, and software are always safe. These third-party suppliers can assist you in developing plans for if and when a breach occurs while you are building your product.

 

Conclusion

Making sure the user data in your SaaS product is secure requires more than a one-time effort; it must become integrated into your company’s culture. The first step is to select the best SaaS cloud security solution for you. Implementing new security measures is the second phase, an ongoing activity you must regularly perform to keep up with the always-changing threat landscape.

Download our white paper, “Cybersecurity Risks of 3rd Party Cloud-Apps in 2022” to understand the SaaS and cloud cyber-threat landscape in 2022 and how you can mitigate those risks. Also, keep reading our blogs for more information on cybersecurity.

Cloud Application Migration Fear

cloud application migration fear

Cloud Application Migration Fear

Many organizations fear migrating their applications to the cloud because it can be an extremely challenging and complex task. This process will require proper planning, effort, and time to succeed.

The security measures and practices that organizations have built for their on-premise infrastructure do not coincide with what they require in the cloud, where everything is deeply integrated.

Before streamlining your workflow with cloud computing, you must know the most challenging security risks and how to avoid them. Let’s explore how organizations should approach the security aspects of cloud migration, from API integration to access control and continuous monitoring.

This article will highlight some of the organizations’ most common fears while moving from on-premise infrastructure to a cloud environment.

 

What is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving data, programs, and other business components into a cloud computing environment.

A business can carry out a variety of cloud migrations.

One typical model for cloud migration involves moving data and applications from an on-premises data center to the cloud. Still, it is also possible to move data and applications across different cloud platforms or providers. Cloud-to-cloud migration is the term for this second situation.

Another kind of migration is reverse cloud migration, commonly called cloud repatriation. From one cloud platform to another, data or applications are transferred in this case.

Cloud migration, however, might not be suitable for everyone.

Scalable, reliable, and highly available cloud environments are feasible. These, however, are not the only considerations that will influence your choice.

 

Why is Security in the Cloud the Biggest Fear for Organizations?

Security is the biggest challenge organizations face because public clouds offer shared resources among different users and use virtualization. The ease of data sharing in the cloud creates serious security concerns regarding data leakage and loss.

The major risk in any infrastructure is neglecting security vulnerabilities due to a lack of expertise, resources, and visibility. Most

providers contain various processing and cloud storage services. Therefore, it’s easy for hackers to expose data via poorly configured access controls, data protection measures, and encryption.

 

How to Reduce Cloud Migration Security Risks middleMost Common Exposure Points for Cloud-based Applications

Overcoming cloud migration challenges before they arise can help any organization to migrate smoothly and save them from potential cyber threats. But first, we need to understand the weak links and exposure points that can put security at risk.

Let’s discuss the weakest links that cause cloud application migration fears:

1. Data Theft Causes Unauthorized Access

Providing administrative access to cloud vendors poses serious threats to the organization. Criminals are gaining access to programs like Office 365 through installations that give them administrative rights. In fact, very recently a phishing campaign leveraging a legitimate organization’s Office 365 infrastructure for email management has surfaced on the cyber scam scene.

Hackers are always evolving their phishing tactics; everything they do is considered smarter and more sophisticated.

If criminals get access to users’ cloud credentials, they can access the CSP’s (Cloud Solution Provider’s) services to gain additional resources. They could even leverage those cloud resources to target the company’s administrative users and other organizations using the same service provider.

Basically, an intruder who obtains CSP admin cloud credentials can use them to access the organization’s systems and data.

2. Third-party Products Comes With Security Risks

Organizations outsource information security management to third-party vendors. It reduces the internal cybersecurity burden but generates its own set of security risks. In other words, the cybersecurity burden shifts from an organization’s internal operations onto its third-party vendors. However, leveraging third-party services or products may come with compliance, business continuity, mobile device risks, etc.

Last year, the Russian Intelligence Service compromised SolarWinds, a famous monitoring tool based on open-source software. They had created a backdoor within the coding and submitted it into the base product. Hackers used a regular software update to inject malicious coding into Orion’s software for cyberattacks.

Vulnerable applications are entry points for cybercriminals. They are always in search of weak spots to infiltrate the system. Applications are used in every industry for better workflow and management. However, there is a need to protect these applications by limiting their access and implementing available patches for better security. Frequent updating of applications and systems helps to protect your IT infrastructure from potential attacks.

3. Hackers Can Compromise Vulnerable VPN Devices

VPNs (Virtual Private Network’s) provide an encrypted connection that hides your online data from attackers and allows businesses to protect their private cloud resources. Many cloud applications need a VPN to transfer data from on-premises infrastructures to the cloud. VPNs are configured to operate one way, but they are often bidirectional. This often opens your organization up to an attack occurring in the cloud service provider.

One such attack has been observed where cybercriminals exploit VPN servers’ vulnerabilities to encrypt the network with a new ransomware variant. By exploiting unpatched VPN applications, hackers can remotely access critical information, such as usernames or passwords, and allows them to log in to the network manually.

Reconfiguring a VPN to access a newly relocated app in the cloud can be disruptive and complicated for its users. Most people don’t use VPNs for cloud application migration because they don’t trust them.

It’s better to install on-site hardware, build VPNs’ deployment on that hardware, migrate them into the on-site deployment, and then move the VMs (Virtual Machines) into a data center. This can be achieved by enabling transparent, unfiltered connectivity between environments. Enterprise cloud VPN can achieve this configuration between a cloud and on-premises networks.

4. Accidental Exposure of User Credentials

Cybercriminals generally leverage cloud applications as a pretext in their phishing attacks. With the rapid use of cloud-based emails and document-sharing services, employees have become habitual of receiving emails with links asking them to confirm their credentials before accessing a particular site or document.

This type of confirmation makes it easy for intruders to get employees’ credentials for their cloud services. Therefore, accidental cloud credentials exposure is a major concern for organizations because it can compromise the security and privacy of cloud-based data and resources.

5. Lack of Secure API

Using API (Application User Interface) in the cloud allows organizations to implement better controls for their applications and systems. However, using insecure APIs can come with grave security risks. The vulnerabilities that exist within these APIs can provide an entry point for intruders to steal critical data, manipulate services, and do reputational harm.

Insecure APIs can cause security misconfigurations, broken authentications, exposed data, broken function-level authorization, and asset mismanagement. The most common example of an insecure API is the Facebook-Cambridge Analytical Scandal which allowed for Cambridge Analytica to access Facebook user data.

 

How to Reduce Cloud Migration Security Risks?

Organizations can take various steps to mitigate cloud migration security risks. Here are some recommendations on how to migrate your applications to the cloud.

1. Develop a Plan

Outline the expertise, resources, and tooling you need to get started. Use automated tools supporting optimization and data discovery analysis to define the right migration method for your company.

2. Start Small

To reduce the fear and accelerate cloud adoption, start with an automatic workload lift and shift over in small portions. It helps to introduce cloud benefits and security risks. Moreover, this approach reduces uncertainty and lets organizations benefit from infrastructure savings.

3. Leverage Business Units to Drive Cloud Adoption

Utilize your business units to promote cloud adoption by investing in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This does not require any rewriting of your applications. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) already exists and is running in the cloud which lets you decommission on-premises CRM and is easier than full on-board migration.

4. Make a Set of Security Standards

Develop baseline security standards by collaborating with your governance team. The list must include cloud workload vulnerability posture, control plane configuration, and cloud infrastructure privilege assignment.

5. Invest in Cloud Security Management

Organizations should monitor their cloud security posture from the control plane to asset configuration. When your cloud deployments increase in complexity and numbers, a service tracking all configuration settings becomes valuable to detect any misconfigurations causing security vulnerabilities.

 

Ready to Migrate Your Applications to the Cloud?

Most organizations lack the experience and confidence to migrate to the cloud fearing the associated risks that come with it. The reason is that they don’t have the right time and resources in place to facilitate the move.

Leveraging partners and service providers can help to overcome those fears and make the cloud application migration smoother for your organization. With the support of Protected Harbor

Cloud Migration Services, our clients can transform their existing apps and achieve “future-ready” business outcomes. These services range from planning to execution. Our comprehensive strategy is supported by the understanding that successful modernization uptake requires a diverse blend of suitable solutions with a range of risk and reward profiles.

Our enterprise application migration services offer thorough, extensive, reliable procedures for transferring sizable application portfolios to cloud platforms, and they are easily scalable from one to many apps. We can assist you with application inventory, assessment, code analysis, migration planning, and execution using our tried-and-true tools.

We provide deep industry expertise and a robust set of advanced tools. Experts at Protected Harbor migrate your applications to the cloud and help you increase and optimize the productivity and flexibility of your workforce. Visit here to get more information about Protected Harbor’s cloud services.

Eye Care Leaders Data Breach Caused by Cloud EHR Vendor. Don’t be the Next.

eye care leaders data breach caused by cloud ehr endor dont be the next

 

Eye Care Leaders Data Breach Caused by Cloud EHR Vendor. Don’t be the Next.

Data Breach Caused by Cloud EHR VendorThe databases and system configuration files for Eye Care Leaders, a manufacturer of cloud-based electronic health record and practice management systems for eye care practitioners, were recently hacked.

What Happened

The breach reportedly compromised Eye Care Leaders’ cloud-based myCare solution, with hackers obtaining access to the electronic medical record and public health information (PHI) databases on or around December 4, 2021, according to breach notification letters provided by some of the affected practices. The hacker then erased the databases and system configuration files.

When the breach was discovered, Eye Care Leaders promptly locked its networks and initiated an investigation to avoid additional unauthorized access. That investigation is still underway, and it’s unclear how much patient data was exposed. However, it’s possible that sensitive data was seen and exfiltrated before the database was deleted. Patients’ names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, health insurance information, Social Security numbers, and personal health information regarding care received at eye care offices were all stored in the databases.

More than 9,000 ophthalmologists use the Durham, NC-based company’s products. It’s unclear how many providers have been affected at this time. Summit Eye Associates, situated in Hermitage, Tennessee, has revealed that it was hacked and that the protected health information of 53,818 patients was potentially stolen. Evergreen Health, a division of Kings County Public Hospital District No. 2, has also acknowledged that patient data has been compromised. According to reports, the breach affected 20,533 people who got eye care at Evergreen Health. The breach has been confirmed by Allied Eye Physicians & Surgeons in Ohio, which has revealed that the data of 20,651 people was exposed.

The records of 194,035 people were exposed due to the breach at Regional Eye Associates, Inc. and Surgical Eye Center of Morgantown in West Virginia. Central Vermont Eye Care (30,000 people) recently reported a data breach affecting EHRs. However, HIPAA Journal has not been able to establish whether the cyberattack caused the data loss at Central Vermont Eye Care on Eye Care Leaders.

 

Confidential Information Exposed

In this distressing incident, Eyecare Leaders, a prominent eye care technology company, experienced a severe data breach, compromising the sensitive information of numerous patients associated with Retina Consultants of Carolina. The breach has raised significant concerns about the security and privacy of patient’s medical records and personal data.

Eyecare Leaders, known for providing comprehensive technology solutions to eyecare practices, play a crucial role in managing and safeguarding sensitive information within the healthcare industry. However, this breach has exposed vulnerabilities within their systems, potentially leading to unauthorized access and misuse of patient data.

The breach highlights the pressing need for robust cybersecurity measures in the healthcare sector, urging organizations like Eyecare Leaders to strengthen their data protection protocols and mitigate the risk of future breaches. Meanwhile, Retina Consultants of Carolina patients are advised to monitor their accounts, remain vigilant against potential identity theft, and seek guidance from healthcare providers to ensure the security of their confidential information.

 

Update

Over the last two weeks, the number of eye care providers affected by the hack has increased. The following is a list of eye care practitioners who have been identified as being affected:

Affected Eye Care Provider Breached Records
Regional Eye Associates, Inc. & Surgical Eye Center of Morgantown in West Virginia 194,035
Shoreline Eye Group in Connecticut 57,047
Summit Eye Associates in Tennessee 53,818
Finkelstein Eye Associates in Illinois 48,587
Moyes Eye Center, PC in Missouri 38,000
Frank Eye Center in Kansas 26,333
Allied Eye Physicians & Surgeons in Ohio 20,651
EvergreenHealth in Washington 20,533
Sylvester Eye Care in Oklahoma 19,377
Arkfeld, Parson, and Goldstein, dba Ilumin in Nebraska 14,984
Associated Ophthalmologists of Kansas City, P.C. in Missouri 13,461
Northern Eye Care Associates in Michigan 8,000
Ad Astra Eye in Arkansas 3,684
Fishman Vision in California 2,646
Burman & Zuckerbrod Ophthalmology Associates, P.C. in Michigan 1,337
Total 522,493

Data Breach Caused by Cloud EHR Vendor smallProtected Harbor’s Take On The Matter

There are more than 1,300 eye care practices in the United States alone. And with more than 24 million Americans affected by some form of visual impairment, the demand for eye care services continues to grow.  In response to these growing needs, we have seen an increase in cloud-based electronic health record management software solutions to streamline operations while increasing efficiency and security.

Unfortunately, this also means that cybercriminals see the eye care industry as a prime target for hackers because their information is so sensitive and accessible. That’s why you must know which cloud EHR vendors were hacked recently.

Protected Harbor’s 5 ways to prevent unauthorized access to your company data:

  1. Strong Password Policy– Having your users add symbols, numbers, and a combination of characters to their passwords makes them more difficult to crack. Having a minimal amount of characters and changing it periodically (every 60 or 90 days) ensures that outdated passwords aren’t reused for years, making it much easier to get unwanted access to the account.
  2. MFA– Multi-factor authentication is a great approach to ensure you only access the account. You will need another device (usually your mobile device) nearby in addition to your usual login and password since you will be required to enter a code that will be produced instantly.
  3. Proactive Monitoring- Preventing unauthorized access is the initial step, but monitoring login attempts and user behaviors can also provide insight into how to prevent it best. For example, if you have logs of failed login attempts for a single user. You can launch an inquiry to see whether the user merely forgot their password or if someone is attempting to breach the account.
  4. IP Whitelisting- IP Whitelisting compares the user’s IP address to a list of “allowed” IP addresses to determine whether or not this device is authorized to access the account. If your firm only uses one or a limited number of IP addresses to access the internet, as is usually the case, you can add a list of IP addresses that are granted access. All other IPs will be sent to a page that isn’t allowed.
  5. SSO (Single Sign-On)- If your firm has a centralized user directory, using it to acquire access makes things more accessible and more manageable for you. You’ll have to remember one password, and if something goes wrong, your network administrator can deactivate all of your applications at once.

Richard Luna, CEO of Protected Harbor, stated: Unfortunately, this is how things will be in the future. The development tools used to create websites and mobile applications were created in the 1990s. Data transferability, or the ability to move data from one device to another, was a critical concern back then. The emphasis back then was on data proliferation. FTP comes to mind as a secure method with no encryption. Authentication was designed for discerning between good actors, not to harden data and protect against data theft because all data exchanges were between good actors back then. Now that we live in a different environment, we may expect more data breaches unless security is built into data transfer protocols rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

We’ve been helping businesses respond to these attacks for some time now, including ransomware attacks and cross-pollinating destructive IP attacks across numerous access points and multiple AI use. If a company has 50 public IPs and we’re proactive monitoring the services behind them, and a bad actor assaults one of them, ban them from all entry points in all systems, even if it involves writing a synchronized cron job across firewalls or other protection devices. Add in artificial intelligence (AI) and comprehensive application monitoring, and a corporation has the tools to detect and respond to such threats quickly.

Final Thoughts

Data security isn’t a one-time or linear process. You must invest ongoing resources, time, and effort to ensure data security against unwanted access.

Cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated every day, and they are employing cutting-edge technologies to target businesses and get illicit data access.

As the number of data breaches rises, you must become more attentive. It’s critical that your company implements concrete security measures and that each employee makes cybersecurity a high priority.

If you’d want us to conduct an IT security audit on your current security policies, we’ll work with you to ensure that you’re well-protected against unauthorized data access and other cyber risks. Contact us today!

What kinds of clouds are there? Which one is ideal for your company?

what are the types of clouds which one best for your business

 

What are the types of clouds? Which one’s best for your business?

What are the types of cloudsWhen you think of cloud technology, the first thing that comes to mind is big companies like Google and Amazon using it to run their massive online operations. But the truth is, this type of software has many small-time entrepreneurs using it to run their businesses. And if you’re not sure which kind of cloud computing service is right for your business, here’s a brief explanation about the different types of clouds and why you should choose one over the other.

What is a Hybrid Cloud?

The hybrid cloud integrates private cloud services, public cloud services, and on-premises infrastructure. It provides management, orchestration, and application portability over all three cloud services. As a result, a unified, single, and flexible distributed computing environment is formed. An organization can deploy and scale its cloud-native or traditional workloads on the appropriate cloud model.

The hybrid cloud includes the public cloud services from multiple cloud service providers. It enables organizations to

  • Choose the optimized cloud environment for each workload
  • Combine the best cloud services and functionality from multiple cloud vendors.
  • Move workloads between private and public cloud as circumstances change.

A hybrid cloud helps organizations achieve their business and technical objectives cost-efficiently and more effectively than the private or public cloud alone.

Hybrid Cloud Architecture

Hybrid cloud architecture focuses on transforming the mechanics of an organization’s on-premises data center into the private cloud infrastructure and then connecting it to the public cloud environments hosted by a public cloud provider. Uniform management of private and public cloud resources is preferable to managing cloud environments individually because it minimizes the risk of process redundancies.

The hybrid cloud architecture has the following characteristics.

1. Scalability and resilience

Use public cloud resources to scale up and down automatically, quickly, and inexpensively to increase traffic spikes without affecting private cloud workloads.

2. Security and regulatory compliance

Use private cloud resources for highly regulated workloads and sensitive data, and use economic public cloud resources for less-sensitive data and workloads.

3. Enhancing legacy application

Use public cloud resources to improve the user experience of existing applications and extend them to new devices.

4. The rapid adoption of advanced technology

You can switch to cutting-edge solutions and integrate them into existing apps without provisioning new on-premises infrastructure.

5. VMware migration

Shift existing on-premises infrastructure and workloads to virtual public cloud infrastructure to reduce on-premises data center footprint and scale according to requirements without additional cost.

6. Resource optimization and cost savings

Execute workloads with predictable capacity on the private cloud and move variable workloads to the public cloud.

Hybrid cloud advantages

The main advantages of a hybrid cloud include the following.

  • Cost management_ Organizations operate the data center infrastructure with a private cloud. It requires a significant expense and fixed cost. However, a public cloud provides services and resources accounted for as operational and variable expenses.
  • Flexibility_ An organization can build a hybrid cloud environment that works for its requirements using traditional systems and the latest cloud technology. A hybrid setup allows organizations to migrate their workloads to and from the traditional infrastructure to the vendor’s public cloud.
  • Agility and scalability_ Hybrid cloud provides more resources than a public cloud provider. This makes it easier to create, deploy, manage, and scale resources to meet demand spikes. Organizations can burst the application to a public cloud when demand exceeds the capacity of a local data center to access extra power and scale.
  • Interoperability and resilience_ A business can run workloads in public and private environments to increase resiliency. Components of one workload can run in both environments and interoperate.

Reference Link

https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/hybrid-cloud

What is a Public Cloud?

A public cloud is a computing service provided by third-party service providers across the public Internet. It is available to anyone who wants to use these services or purchase them. These services may be free or sold on-demand, allowing users to pay per usage for the storage, bandwidth, or CPU cycles they consume. Public clouds can save organizations from the cost of buying, maintaining, and managing on-premises infrastructure.

The public cloud can be deployed faster than on-premises and is an infinitely scalable platform. Each employee of an organization can use the same application from any branch through their device of choice using the Internet. Moreover, they run in multi-tenant environments where customers share a pool of resources provisioned automatically and allocated to individual users via a self-service interface. Each user’s data is isolated from others.

What are the types of clouds smallPublic cloud architecture

A public cloud is a completely virtualized environment that relies on a high-bandwidth network to transmit data. Its multi-tenant architecture lets users run the workload on shared infrastructure. Cloud resources can be duplicated over multiple availability zones for protection against outages and redundancy.

Cloud service models categorize public cloud architecture. Here are the three most common service models.

  • Infrastructure-as-a-Service_ in which third-party providers host infrastructure resources, such as storage and servers, and virtualization layer. They offer virtualized computing resources, such as virtual machines, over the Internet.
  • Software-as-a-Service_ in which third-party service providers host applications and software and make them available to customers across the Internet.
  • Platform-as-a-Service_ in which third-party service providers deliver software and hardware tools for application development, such as operating systems.

Advantages of Public Cloud

The public cloud has the following advantages

1. Scalability

Cloud resources can be expanded rapidly to meet traffic spikes and user demand. Public cloud users can gain high availability and greater redundancy in separated cloud locations. Apart from the availability and redundancy, public cloud customers get faster connectivity between the end-users and cloud services using the network interfaces. However, latency and bandwidth issues are still common.

2. Access to advanced technologies

Organizations using cloud service providers can get instant access to the latest technologies, ranging from automatic updates to AI and machine learning.

3. Analytics

Organizations should collect useful data metrics they store and the resources they use. Public cloud services perform analytics on high-volume data and accommodate several data types to give business insights.

4. Flexibility

The scalable and flexible nature of the public cloud allows customers to store high-volume data. Many organizations depend on the cloud for disaster recovery to back up applications and data during an outage or in an emergency. However, it’s tempting to store all data, but users must set up a data retention policy to delete data from storage to reduce the storage cost and maintain privacy.

Limitations or challenges of Public cloud

  • Runway costs_ Increasingly complex pricing models and cloud costs make it difficult for companies to track IT spending. It is cheaper than on-premises infrastructure, but sometimes organizations pay more for the cloud.
  • Limited controls_ Public cloud customers face the tradeoff of restricted control over the IT stack. Moreover, data separation problems arise due to multi-tenancy and latency issues for remote end-users.
  • Scarce cloud expertise_ The skill gap among IT experts in the cloud is another challenge. Without expertise, companies can’t handle the complexities of advanced IT demands.

What is a Private Cloud?

A private cloud is defined as computing services provided over a private internal network or the Internet, only to specific users rather than the general public. It is also known as a corporate or internal cloud. The private cloud provides many benefits to businesses, such as scalability, self-service, and elasticity to a public cloud. In addition, it gives extended, virtualized computing resources through physical components stored at a vendor’s data center or on-premises.

One of the main advantages of the private cloud is that it provides an enhanced degree of control to organizations. As it is accessible to a single organization, it enables them to configure the environment and manage it in a unique way tailored to the particular computing needs of a company.

A private cloud can deliver two models for cloud services. Infrastructure-as-a-Service enables a company to use resources, such as network, storage, and computing resources. And platform as a service that allows a company to deliver everything from cloud-based applications to sophisticated enterprise applications.

Private Cloud Architecture

A private cloud with a single-tenant design is based on the same technologies as other clouds. Technologies that allow customers to configure computing resources and virtual servers on demand. These technologies include

1. Management software

It provides administrators with centralized control over the applications running on it, making it possible to optimize availability, resource utilization, and security in the private cloud environment.

2. Automation

It automates the tasks, such as server integrations and provisioning, which must be performed repeatedly and manually. Automation minimizes the need for human intervention and gives self-service resources.

3. Virtualization

It provides an abstraction to IT resources from their underlying infrastructure and then pooled into the unbounded resource pools of storage, computing, networking, and memory capacity divided across multiple virtual machines. Virtualization allows maximum hardware utilization by removing the physical hardware constraints and sharing it across various applications and users.

Moreover, private cloud customers can leverage cloud-native application practices and architecture, such as containers, DevOps, and microservices, to bring greater flexibility and efficiency.

Benefits of private cloud

Advantages of private cloud include

  • Freedom to customize software and hardware_ Private cloud users can customize software as needed with add-ons via custom development. They can also customize servers in any way they want.
  • Full control over software and hardware choices_ Private cloud users are free to buy the software and hardware they prefer or services provided by the cloud service providers.
  • Fully enforced compliance_ Private cloud users are not forced to rely on the regulatory compliance provided by the service providers.
  • Greater visibility and insights into access control and security because all workloads execute behind the user’s firewalls.

Challenges or Limitations of private cloud

Here are some considerations that IT stakeholders must review before using the private cloud.

  • Capacity utilization_ Organizations are fully responsible for enhancing capacity utilization under the private cloud. An under-utilized deployment can cost significantly to a business.
  • Up-front costs_ The cost of required hardware to run a private cloud can be high, and it will need an expert to set up, maintain and handle the environment.
  • Scalability_It may take extra cost and time to scale up the resources if a business needs additional computing power from a private cloud.

Is hybrid cloud the best option for you?

Because not everything belongs in the public cloud, many forward-thinking businesses opt for a hybrid cloud solution. Hybrid clouds combine the advantages of both public and private clouds while utilizing existing data center infrastructure.

Cloud computing is becoming more and more popular, but many businesses are still unsure which type of cloud is right for them. This article explored the pros and cons of hybrid, public, and private clouds and provided advice on which type of cloud is best for your organization. Protected Harbor offers a wide range of cloud computing services to help businesses reduce costs and increase efficiency by outsourcing data storage or remote office functions. It can host a wide range of applications, including e-mail, video conferencing, online training, backups, software development, and much more. Protected Harbor is the right choice for businesses of all sizes. We are providing a free IT Audit for a limited time. Get a free IT consultation for your business today.

Typical errors made by businesses while moving to the cloud

common mistakes organizations make while migrating to the

 

Common mistakes organizations make while migrating to the cloud.

 

mistakes while migrating to the cloudCloud service providers like AWS, Google, and Microsoft Azure allow organizations to host their data effortlessly without a need for specialized hardware. Many small and large organizations are rapidly moving to the cloud from traditional hardware IT infrastructure. Cloud services provide the benefit of just paying for the resources you actually use, which save you from additional cost.

Cloud environments are generally reliable, scalable, and highly available, prompting both start-ups and enterprise-level businesses to take advantage of migrating to the cloud.

“The sun always shines above the clouds.” But what’s missing in this quote is that beneath the cloud, there are often torrential downpours, high winds, and lightning. The same is the case with cloud computing. However, cloud computing provides a lot of benefits, there are some pitfalls as well.

This guide has compiled organizations’ common mistakes while migrating to the cloud. Avoid these common mistakes to ensure a smooth transition to the cloud that showers your organization with benefits.

 

1. Migrating to the cloud without governance and a planning strategy

It’s simple to provision resources in the cloud, but there are unplanned policy, cost, and security problems that can be incurred. Here planning and governance are essential. A related mistake IT managers make is that they do not understand who within the organization is responsible for a specific cloud-related task, such as data backups, security, and business continuity.

Making a shift to a cloud platform with proper planning and governance can significantly level up your organization’s productivity and eliminate the infrastructure-related roadblocks. Moreover, you can get the highest return on investment with a cloud migration while starting with clearly defined business objectives, governance, and a planning strategy.

 

2. Migrating all data at once

You have assessed the cost and benefit, run tests to ensure your applications are correctly working, and are ready to shift to the cloud. You may want to migrate all of your data to the cloud at once to speed up the process, but it can cost you more downtime in the long run.

When you migrate to the cloud, you are more likely to experience some issues. Therefore, if you shift all data at once and a problem occurs, you can lose your business-critical or sensitive data. To avoid this situation, execute your cloud migration in steps. Start with the test or non-essential data and then proceed with the critical data.

 

3. Not designing for failure

Being a pessimist can put you at risk while migrating to the cloud. As the traditional IT infrastructure, cloud servers are also prone to downtime. In this case, the best workaround is to design for failure. Amazon mentioned that “there is a need to design for failure in its cloud architecture best practices, and if you do so, nothing can defeat you.” Designing for failure includes setting up for safety to ensure that any outage that occurs results in minimal damage to the company.

I am designing a cloud infrastructure by keeping failure and downtime in mind, incorporating a fault-tolerant cloud-optimized architecture. The recovery strategies should be in-built into the design to ensure minimal damage and optimal output even when the cloud architecture faces downtime.

 

4. Neglecting security aspects

However, cloud service providers offer a security layer, but it is prone to security threats if the application has flaws. Any potential risk can cost you a lot if your IT infrastructure has flaws while migrating to the cloud. It is even more critical while dealing with sensitive data, such as healthcare or financial data.

The implications of attack in the case of financial data are severe. Potential security risks include account hijacking, data breaches, abuse of information, and unauthorized access. Data encryption and robust security testing are a must while migrating data to the cloud. Neglecting cloud security can put an organization to severe damage. It is always recommended to go through the Service Level Agreement (SLA) that you sign with the cloud provider.

 

5. Not controlling cost and prioritizing workloads

Once you see the power of cloud computing, it can stimulate enthusiasm for cloud-based projects. But if you start the process by defining use cases and understanding the cost modeling, it will help you keep track of cloud computing costs. Consider a common scenario_ when organizations use cloud services, they sometimes migrate large data sets or non-priority workloads to the cloud that might be better handled in another way.

As the data scales, the cloud cost exceeds it, and added expenses can obscure the financial benefit offered by the cloud. Having a robust understanding of what you want to achieve from a business point of view and developing a cost-based assessment will ensure that you get the cloud benefits.

 

managed service provider

6. Inadequate understanding of organization infrastructure and networks

It is essential for organizations to thoroughly understand their assets and workflow before migrating to the cloud. Organizations have inadequate knowledge of how their systems and data need to work together. As a result, they fail to create a complete map of their network and infrastructure and deliver failure.

Each cloud service provider offers unique attributes. Organizations can’t compare these providers when they do not fully understand what they need in a provider. Moreover, when organizations move their data to the cloud without proper understanding, it can cause breaks in their IT infrastructure that negatively impact consumers.

 

7. Not having an exit strategy

An exit strategy outlines meditations regarding extracting your applications from a cloud whenever required. Many organizations think an exit strategy is unnecessary as they don’t expect to get back from the cloud. However, it’s essential to have an exit strategy, even if you never use it. It also needs to be considered for changing service providers, not just bringing workloads back on-premises.

 

Conclusion

Organizations need to consider all mentioned aspects while migrating to the cloud. Taking these considerations into account before migration can help organizations reduce potential risks. Cloud migration is a complicated process that can benefit from professionals’ assistance. Help your organization avoid these mistakes by working with experienced partners.

Cloud migration is a complicated process, and disregarding any piece or feature can jeopardize the migration’s success. Protected Harbor guarantees 99.99 percent uptime with a remote tech team available 24×7, remote desktop, complete cybersecurity, and more. With the appropriate mix of business processes, technology, and people, you’ll be well on your way to reaping the benefits of cloud computing that so many businesses are currently reaping. Just make sure you’re aware of the pitfalls and typical blunders we’ve discussed that can sabotage your cloud migration. Contact us today to migrate to the cloud.

AWS VS Azure Serverless CRS/ Event Sourcing Architecture

AWS VS Azure Serverless CRS/ Event Sourcing Architecture

 

AWS vs Azure

For the past few years, serverless cloud computing has been the talk of the town, especially when it comes to resource efficiency and cost reduction. However, only cloud-optimized design patterns and architectures can make this achievable. The cloud is transforming how software is planned, produced, delivered, and used. It works by focusing on the development of small and independent businesses.
This article will examine the serverless CQRS and event sourcing architectures of Azure and AWS. Let’s get this party started.

 

CQRS and Event Sourcing Pattern

Command and Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) is a pattern that can be leveraged where high throughput is required. It provides different interfaces for reading data and operations that alter the data. CQRS addresses various problems. In conventional CRUD-based systems, conflicts can arise from a high volume of reading and writing to the same data store.

The event sourcing patterns are used with the CQRS to decouple read from write workloads and enhance scalability, performance, and security. Microservices replay events via the event store to compute the appropriate state. The event sourcing patterns work efficiently with the CQRS because data can be reproduced for a particular event, even if the query and command data stored have different schemas.

 

AWS Lambda VS Azure Functions

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service software executing code in response to a triggered event. It automatically manages all the computing resources for streaming regular operations without provisioning or managing servers. AWS lets you trigger Lambda for over 200 services and SaaS applications on a pay-as-you-go basis. It performs resource management, such as server and operating system maintenance, code and security patch deployment, automated scaling and power provisioning, code monitoring, and logging.

Key Functionalities

  • Develop custom back-end services
  • Automatically respond to code execution requests
  • Run code without provisioning or managing infrastructure

Azure Function helps you accelerate and simplify serverless application development. You can develop applications more efficiently with a serverless compute, event-driven platform that helps resolve complex orchestration issues. Unlike AWS Lambda, Azure Functions provide multiple feature deployment options, including One Drive, KUdu Console, GitHub, Visual Studio, DropBox, and Zip,

Key functionalities

  • Schedule event-driven tasks across services
  • Scale operations based on customer demand
  • Expose functions as HTTP API endpoints

 

AWS Dynamo DB VS Azure COSMO DB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database that provides predictable and fast performance with seamless scalability. It lets you offload the administrative burden of scaling and operating a distributed database without hardware provisioning, replication, setup and configuration, cluster scaling, or software patching. Moreover, it provides encryption at rest, eliminating the complexity and operational burden involved in protecting sensitive data.

Critical features of AWS DynamoDB include

  • Automated Storage scaling
  • Fully distributed architecture
  • Provisioned throughput

Azure COSMO DB is a fully managed NoSQL database service for advanced application development. With CosmoDB, you can get guaranteed single-digit millisecond response times and availability, instant and automatic scalability, backend by SLAs, and open-source APIs for Cassandra and MongoDB. You can enjoy fast reads and writes with multi-region and turnkey data replication. Moreover, it provides real-time data insights with no-ETL analytics.

Key features include

  • Fast, flexible application development
  • The guaranteed speed at any scale
  • Fully managed and cost-effective serverless database

 

AWS Cognito VS Azure B2C

Amazon Cognito gives authorization, authentication, and user management for your mobile and web applications. Users can directly sign in with a username and password or use a third party, such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple, or Google accounts. The two main components of AWS Cognito are identity pools and user pools. Identity pools let you grant users access to other AWS services, and user pools are user directories providing sign-up and sign-in options for application users.

Features of Amazon Cognito include

  • Built-in, customizable web UI
  • User profiles and directory management
  • OpenID Connect providers

Azure Active Directory B2C is an identity management service enabling custom control of how users can sign up, sign in, and manage profiles using Android, iOS, .Net, and single-page (SPA). You can provide your customers with the flexibility to use their preferred enterprise, social, or local account identities to access applications. Azure B2C is a customer identity access management (CIAM) service capable of supporting millions of users and authentications per day.

Features of Azure B2C include

  • Strong authentication for customers leveraging their preferred identity providers
  • Integration with databases and applications to capture sign-in
  • Customization for each registration and sign-in experience.

 

AWS API Gateway VS Azure API Management

AWS API Gateway is a fully managed service making it easy for developers to create, deploy, monitor, maintain, and secure APIs at any scale. These APIs are the “front door” for applications to access business logic, functionality, or data from backend servers. Through API Gateway, users can create WebSocket and RESTful APIs enabling real-time two-way communication applications. Moreover, it supports serverless and containerized workloads and web applications.

Azure API Management is a way to create modern and consistent API gateways for back-end services. It helps organizations publish APIs to external and internal developers to unlock the potential of their benefits and data potential. Each API consists of one or more operations, and it can be added to products. Today’s innovative organizations are adopting API architectures to accelerate growth. Moreover, it lets organizations build applications faster and deliver prompt value to customers using the API-first approach.

 

Conclusion

If you want to exploit the full potential of serverless cloud computing, all non-functional requirements should be known before developing an application. Know your business requirements and choose the right cloud service provider with the correct services and features. This prior knowledge will help you find exemplary architecture and design patterns and combine them. Software developers and software architects should give more thought to the event sourcing architecture in the case of distributed systems.

Protected Harbor is the market’s underdog player that consistently exceeds consumer expectations. It has endured the test of time with its Datacenter and Managed IT services, and all clients have said: “beyond expectations.” It’s no surprise that businesses prefer to stay with us because we offer the best cloud services in the industry and the best IT support, safety, and security. This is the road to the top of the heap.