Rick Holloway | September 23, 2015

The Federal Government’s 30-day Cybersecurity Sprint ended earlier this summer, but the real work continues. Government agencies and equipment manufacturers are awaiting the results of the ongoing cybersecurity review and the release of the Federal Civilian Cybersecurity Strategy – expected soon – but the preliminary principles of the strategy are intriguing on their own.

One thing that’s clear – and not at all surprising – is the government believes the approach to the increasing cybersecurity challenge is both behavioral and equipment-focused. There is no magic bullet piece of hardware or software that will provide adequate protection against all of today’s security threats, but a combination of threat awareness, adherence to best practices and deploying and properly using today’s hardened technologies can reduce risks.

There are eight key principles that will form the foundation of the Federal Civilian Cybersecurity Strategy. They are:

1. Protecting Data: Better protect data at rest and in transit.

2. Improving Situational Awareness: Improve indication and warning.

3. Increasing Cybersecurity Proficiency: Ensure a robust capacity to recruit and retain cybersecurity personnel.

4. Increase Awareness: Improve overall risk awareness by all users.

5. Standardizing and Automating Processes: Decrease time needed to manage configurations and patch vulnerabilities.

6. Controlling, Containing, and Recovering from Incidents: Contain malware proliferation, privilege escalation, and lateral movement. Quickly identify and resolve events and incidents.

7. Strengthening Systems Lifecycle Security: Increase inherent security of platforms by buying more secure systems and retiring legacy systems in a timely manner.

8. Reducing Attack Surfaces: Decrease complexity and number of things defenders need to protect.

I doubt anyone would disagree with those points. But what can we infer if we take a closer look?

It’s not called out specifically, but a consistent theme is access awareness and control. We live in a time when everything is connected—and needs to be, to ensure our data, our networks, our lives move at the speed the world demands. But every connection is an access point, and every access point is a potential vulnerability. Understanding where those access points are and securing them through both technology and best practices is a significant first step in securing a network. This can be as simple as proper credential and password controls.

The point about replacing less secure legacy systems with more secure, modern technologies is important. While there are limits to the effectiveness of software updates and patches, equipment replacement can be costly. Organizations that value security will put plans in place to upgrade equipment over time—and the sooner they start, the better.

One of the more interesting and encouraging points in the preliminary list is the bullet about recruiting and training cybersecurity personnel. This reflects a necessary awareness of the nature of these threats. They aren’t static; hackers are evolving and devising new attacks and tactics every day. It’s critical that our IT personnel maintain the same vigilance and dedication to security and threat education.

Of course, these are simply preliminary indications of the government’s thinking. We’ll know more when the Federal CIO releases the final Federal Civilian Cybersecurity Strategy, and we’ll take a closer look at that strategy and what it means at that time.

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From major retail cyberattacks to Hollywood studio hackers, cybersecurity is now, more than ever, on the mind of every CIO in the world — and rightfully so. According to our recent article in Data Center Journal, the most common cause of a data breach is malicious or criminal attacks, which could end up costing not only nights of sleep for CIOs, but also millions of dollars; in some cases upwards of $5.4 million.

While these attacks can be devastating, there are some best practices to help avoid cyber-disaster:

1. Don’t give hackers a back door: In order to prevent data breaches, consider isolating your network to avoid allowing easy access to your information. Since access can be logged through network isolation, unwanted activity can be monitored and flagged. To isolate your network and limit threats without compromising necessary access or performance, consider utilizing isolated out-of-band management networks. These networks provide full, real-time access without giving hackers back door entry.

2. Enforce the three A’s: Authentication, authorization and auditing are all critical to securing your network. Ensure your cybersecurity by using fine-grain user authentication through a centralized and controlled process, while still allowing easy access for administrators.

3. Ensure trust and best practices with outside vendors: Servicing data center equipment typically requires allowing atypical access to sensitive information about your data center with people outside your organization. Even new technologies are now requiring software updates while sharing IP addresses and network ports to accommodate those updates. While you may feel confident in your organization’s security practices, it’s also important you trust the security measures practiced by those outside parties or contractors, as well.

Security is a complex, never-ending process, but the right partners can help cut through that complexity and ensure your network—and your business—do not become the next victim.

What other best practices do you use to ensure your network is secure?

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“Environmental protection”, “high efficiency” and “energy savings” are topics of very high concern for both large corporations, as well as for individuals since these aspects are part of everyday life and may generate significant cost savings in both cases.

This is also valid for UPS ranging from large ones protecting substantially vast datacenters, to small ones with just a few kilowatts that safeguard a network or single cabinet in more modest settings.

The ECO mode – also known as energy saving mode or high efficiency mode depending on the UPS manufacturer – is currently highly discussed within the industry. The debate primarily focuses on on-line UPS and on large UPS. Nevertheless, energy savings and efficiency are extremely important aspects also in small and micro power UPS (typically from 500 VA to 10 kVA). The reasons are the same as for large power systems: savings on energy costs and lower environmental footprint.

Choosing a UPS in the most proper way, means considering the criticality of the application that needs to be protected, as well as evaluating the energy used by the UPS to protect the load against disturbances and interruptions.

Here I would like to highlight the “inherent ECO mode” that can be found in line interactive UPS products (VI or Voltage Independent according to EN 62040-3).

In this type of line interactive UPS (VI), the power stream flows from the input through several protection devices (overcurrent, overvoltage, etc.) and mainly through an Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) transformer.

The AVR is in charge of providing output voltage regulation, in order to minimize voltage variations in AC supply and ensure a regulated voltage according to the load tolerances.

Because of the high efficiency of the AVR (typically around 98% or 99%) and of the protection devices through which energy flows, as well as the lower quantity of electronic components used in this type of UPS topology, a high performance line interactive UPS can provide an efficiency level higher than 96% at full load. A perfect example of this is Liebert PSI UPS, which makes use of line interactive technology and therefore of AVR, and which can reach the efficiency levels mentioned above. As said, this operation mode is inherent to line interactive UPS topology, and its high efficiency is also ensured in wide load operating conditions and AC mains variation. While ECO mode in on-line UPS is operating in a smaller input voltage range, line interactive topology is able to operate in high efficiency mode during most input voltage changes while still being capable to provide some output regulation.

When comparing a line interactive UPS with a double conversion online UPS there are many aspects to be taken into consideration such as stepwise or pure sine wave inverter, transfer time, size, etc. However one of the main differences is exactly that line interactive UPS feature “inherent high efficiency” because of the VI technology and the use of AVR as mentioned earlier.

The energy savings associated to it are highly appreciated even if we are talking about single phase UPS meaning UPS which range from 0 to 10 kVA, because:

1. Daily saving  just  a  few  watts  in  continuous UPS operation 365 days a year amounts to a significant total yearly saving

2. In applications such as campuses or big corporations where many of these small UPS devices are used contemporarily, the few watts saved daily per each device increase even more the daily and yearly total saving and reduce the total campus or corporation expenditure.

To provide an example, assume a load of 2.5 kW being protected by a UPS. Such load may correspond to a cabinet with several servers for enterprise applications or to a wiring closet distribution panel. Such UPS can work in line interactive mode (assuming 97% efficiency) or operate in double conversion mode with 90% efficiency, using a rough estimation. The difference in power losses and thus energy savings, will be around 200 W. Assuming an electricity cost of 0.138 €/KWh and doing a quick calculation on yearly savings, you can get a value of around 272 € saved per year. This amount can be multiplied for five years and the total saving will reach nearly 1,500 €.

So it will be clear by now that additional to traditional ECO mode (typically used in double conversion online UPS in general and large UPS in particular) there is an inherent ECO mode used in single phase UPS, specifically line interactive ones.

This grants significant savings to customers as the line interactive technology is inherently highly efficient and as the UPS making use of it are typically used daily all year long so in the long term even little daily saving amounts to a considerable total figure.

And what about ECO modes in on-line UPS in this small UPS range? Is there any difference or advantage? There is an interesting story too.

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As many of us know, in traditional data centers, approximately one-half of the energy consumed goes to support IT equipment while the other half is used by support systems.

Moreover, complexity and critical conditions have increased in recent years.  Since the cost of downtime is high (a full shutdown costs more than € 500,000, source: 2011 National Study on Data Center Downtime), availability of IT capacity is generally an important metric on which data centers are evaluated. Today, however, data centers must also operate efficiently while providing flexibility to quickly adapt to changes in computing demand.

Emerson Network Power conducted a systematic analysis of the energy consumed in data centers and of the various approaches that lead to energy conservation.

We have identified five best practices that represent proven approaches to improve overall data center performance:

1. Maximize the return temperature at the cooling units to improve capacity and efficiency;
2. Match cooling capacity and airflow with IT loads;
3. Utilize cooling designs that reduce energy consumption;
4. Enable data center monitoring to improve capacity, efficiency and availability;
5. Utilize local design and service expertise to extend equipment life, reduce costs and address your data center’s unique challenges.

Do you know further practices that can serve as the foundation for data center design?

If you want to learn more, read the white paper.

You can also read more about SmartAisle.

This article was written by: Matej Kordisch, Emerson Network Power. To read more Blogs by Emerson, please visit: http://blog.emersonnetworkpower.com/