Doing nothing is really risky and pointless.

The tech is awesome the cost is affordable and getting caught is a really bad experience. There is no better time than now to get your affairs in order.

We live in a world where the risk of losing your important files, resources and reputation is no longer a topic for our employers to worry about. The risk has left the office and is now invading our homes and professional lives.

As I begin to write this article I am deliberately avoiding the more sensationalist topics about this risk. There is plenty of information on line today you can read and get your fill if needed of just how bad it can be if you do nothing.

In this article I intend to speak about practical steps that you really should take now. These steps will protect you and your communities from losing digital assets.

I am referring to the assets you assume will last forever. Assets you intend to pull out and share with friends family and grandchildren in the future. Perhaps you have files and information you use for your business, professional and community purposes, and overlooked that these won’t be replaceable if ever lost.

For example, these assets may include photo’s, camcorder footage, scans of invoices, certificate, passports. They could be databases, presentations, forms, procedures and more. The point is some if these you may never have the time, opportunity or will to recreate if you loose them. Even movie and photo collections, losing these will at best cost you time to recreate, at worst the subject matter, person or holiday moment will never come again. I for one don’t want to be explaining to grandchildren why photos of their childhood are gone.

So now I have your attention, let’s be pragmatic about what we should protect ourselves against. It helps to make a list of requirements, and this is usually birthed from a list of risks.

The risk list is simple enough to understand, some examples are:

• Virus including malware, PC virus and that nasty ransom-ware that has resurfaced in force recently.
• Failure of any one computer under your control comes in many forms, disk drive, memory or circuits.
• Failure if operating system, updates, firmware changes, upgrades
• Failure of new or old programs, compatibility issues
• Then the old favourites of power failure, lighting, water, heat, fire, theft just to name a few.

In short too many risks to list, the point is you need a plan.

WAIT WAIT, before you tune out or start skipping or not reading this article carefully, I fear I should share a quote from a friend of mine.

A lovely Italian lady lives in Sutherland, who lost a bunch of files recently. Photo’s, memories, files for work and interests, all were important to her when her notebook (of many years) failed and had to be reformatted.

She lost everything.

I hope I can do her justice, however in my defense I don’t speak Italian, but it went something like this.

A4$!K8&HG$%^~Y&5$ (repeated several times for effect I beleive)

Surprisingly she has a good set of lungs which appears to of resulted in a series of shock waves.

The CSIRO, just 5 Km from her home was in lock down for the rest of the day.

OK just joking, not as funny now I read what I have just written, but her experience was genuine and I am sure we have all felt that anger and frustration before.

Your plan needs to:

• Include all possible points of failure
• Create multiple redundancies (i.e. backups of backups, at least two levels ideally three)
• Backup your information to more than one location
• At least one backup of important stuff at another location (In cloud, at a friend, colleague or family member’s location)
• Must be automated (Does not rely on a person to do the task, because (Murphy’s Law) someone will stuff up at the worst possible time
• Must be easy to manage and monitor (KISS)
• Must be capable to alerting you my email, message or some form of notification when a part of the automated backup fails partially or fully
• Must have a means for you to login and rectify any problems from remote location (it’s uncanny that problems seem to appear when I am travelling).

So I guess your saying,

aghh I have not got time for this!

Well you’re in luck because we have a kick starter guide to fast track you through!

Step 1: Make a list of requirements

This is absolutely the simplest and safest place to start. Most people will start with a list of risks, but since your thinking about making an investment that will be with you for many years, why not make that investment do more than just protect!

Buying a NAS today should be fun, because the devices will perform a lot more than just backup.

By this I mean a decent NAS capable of providing a solid backup for the home or office, will these date give you a lot of other nice things that you probably were not expecting. So your list of requirements can and should include a list of additional functions and nice to have features.

Modern smartNAS devices are very clever and can do a lot more than backup, networking and remote access. Plus most of the better products have these features built in at no extra cost.

A quick way to examine your requirements if the smikbox Quick Quiz and requirements tutorial. Just by going through this quiz you will learn more about what you need to be considering.

Home / Office Requirements Tutorial

To complete this tutorial, click on the accordions below and the tutorial in that section will be shown.

[accordion_group][accordion title=”Instructions” icon=”glyphicons-wrench”]

This configurator has 3 sections:

• Section 1 – Personal usage
• Section 2 – Business usage
• Section 3 – Support

You should complete Sections 2 and 3. If you’re intending to use smikBox for business or professional purposes please also complete Section 2.

Sections 1 and 2 have an introductory video at the top. Please watch the introductory video before answering questions.

When you have completed the questions enter your email in the place provided, and make sure to use the same email you will use when placing the order. Your configuration report will be sent to the email provided.

If you complete this questionnaire more than once, the last submission is recorded as your stated requirements.

[/accordion]

[accordion title=”Questions – Section 1 – Personal use” icon=”glyphicons-hygiene-kit”]

[accordion title=”Questions – Section 3 – Setup and Support”  icon=”glyphicons-magic”]

In that way, when our customers and followers want us to cover a new topic, we can call in the best person from any of the smikbox – people around the work, and beam out an on demand session or scheduled event at the best time.

Anyone in our community can catch up on topics they missed at the best time, and our customers and subscribers can suggest topics through Twitter @smikbox !

smikbox TVLive  Starts 20th March 2018

1. You can tag us or send us a direct message on our Twitter account, @smikbox all the ideas and suggestions that you have.
2. Ideas and topic suggestions from our customers and subscribers will be handled first, but anyone who is interested in a topic is also welcome to share their ideas.
3. The channel is to GO LIVE on the 20th March 2018.
4. In the period before we will launch Go Live, we will conduct a number of TEST broadcasts while we work out the mechanics, and while giving you updates, you can also give us your feedback.
5. We will inform our customers and subscribers on their emails, so if you’re not already one of them yet, please register so we can keep in touch.

You can visit the channel using the link below:

smikboxTVLive – How to Channel.
When it opens it will appear as follows:

On the right side, you can access the Chat session to speak directly with the presenter during LIVE sessions while it is being recorded. After the session, you can read it back for up to 12 weeks, before chat is no longer available.

If you want to set up your own channel, I found this video a good place to start.

Best regards,

smikBox – Innovation team

Today there is a greater acceptance of the Clouds role within a company’s risk mitigation strategy as this backup a option that has gradually replaced the use of physical on premise equipment. In their haste many companies, haven’t been quite as careful as they should to plan the subsequent changes this shift has made on the security of their platforms, and in some case have opened up new holes that were previously unthought-of.

Industry has within this new period found that building complex security options by means of firewalls and  control procedures around their physical systems is the most logical precaution, but in doing this it has become clear that traditional security measures come at a high cost and are still not all together without their own risks.

The world has been moving towards virtualization for some time. Several years back their was a misconception that Virtual machines were slower but as always technology has advanced to close that gap. This has given rise to an entire industry that uses virtual systems, data processing centers to provide a pay as you go service (SaaS, IaaS, PasS). These new hosted services running on virtual platforms have an altogether new range of issues that a business professional must take into consideration.

Typically the issues management should consider are the threat of loss through; system disaster, hacking , neglect, human error , business growth or decline, virus, denial of service just for starters.

It makes good sense and is supported by a long list of success cases, to transition your existing on premise systems to virtualized systems running on either a separate sever hosted in the cloud or your own private cloud hosted on premise.  All the major development and new ideas will be directed towards this type of technology, and although single purpose server will remain around for many years to come, its clear that all the new innovations will surface first on technologies that take advantage for virtualization principles, be that VMware, Docker (application) contains or Microsoft services.

From a security and management standpoint, the first step for any company is to; after moving from physical to virtual servers for hosting of business systems to then merge physical / server centric security / server management systems to those provided by vendors (Virtualization and Hypervisor platforms). Whilst their effectiveness can vary (with virtualization focused strategy for VM’s and hypervisor within the virtual system) , it is clear that using the traditional security practices will not be enough moving forward.  A different approach widely adopted can be separate security and infrastructure and that’s where virtualization performs a vital function.

Regardless of whether the company increasing it’s use of virtualization or just transitioning existing servers to a virtual platform, here are some ideas on the benefits.

Variety provides multiple layers of protection

The sheer number of software applications, configurations, business requirements, industries and personal creative biases that are used across systems these days, makes it improbable that identical infrastructures are created. Therefore given each company’s infrastructure in itself unique, this helps to provide a security barrier to any would be perpetrator trying to discover, learn a new environment. So it makes the systems more difficult to crack, and even if the penetrator has deep knowledge of a specific product, it is highly unlikely he/she would know how it is used, configured in your environment. The inverse of this is of course new staff joining an organization has to start all over to learn “where things are”, but most firms have induction programs to overcome this.

Then there is the number of applications, vendor supplied tools, API’s and technologies making it difficult for any would be hacker to know enough to have sufficient experience across all disciplines to be a threat to a modern system.

Again the flip side of this is also that your staff have to be specialized and wont ever become fully acquainted with all the systems in use within your infrastructure. Virtualization is of assistance here as it manages the majority of the tasks needed to protect, recover and maintain the server instances that host your company data and applications. These virtual machines can deploy software using entire server (instances) or as what is called “micro-segmentation” or “application containers” which offer additional layers of protection along side improved performance and further protection against failure coming when applying new software updates.  Security solutions are today custom built to each and every environment, and will differ greatly from company to company.

Virtualization means systems are always on-line

More and more people are recognizing new benefits from having systems always available.

In the past machines needed to be periodically shut down for a variety of reasons. When they were down or undergoing restart people were locked out of the machine and productivity and business opportunity was lost.

Today the nature of virtualization is such that on line backup, snapshot capabilities allow servers to be constantly on and in rare cases where for example an upgrade is underway, people can be quickly provided with a “Cloned” version of a machine to use whilst the main machine is undergoing maintenance.

Business Flexibility

Another benefit of virtualization is in its ability to allow the business to quickly try new ideas and at a low cost. Business units can test a new idea on a server in minutes, whereas with traditional infrastructure, new servers, capital expenditure, staff and resources would need to be found and allocated.

This is not so with virtualization. Today businesses are discover the benefits of being able to spin up a new server and test an idea , market or process with minimal additional costs. A functional manager can approve these projects within their local budget.

Innovation in a sense becomes more a part of day to day activity rather than a strategic capital outlay.

These virtual business experiments can be localized so any possible to avoid security holes being exposed to anyone outside the business unit. Access would always be restricted to specific people or groups to mitigate risk.

Centralized control

Your systems can be accessed internally or externally and today security and encryption technologies are much stronger than 10 years ago, but the centralised control of all these machine is what gives your organization the greatest protection through it’s virtualized environment. The premise behind control is not just to protect servers and all their data. It is to manage access to smaller parts of the infrastructure and give granular control and reporting over usage and access that you can manage centrally with the click of a button.

Proactive

Modern systems are not constrained to the practice of reading log files to identify problems; they are instead systems capable of warning and even take counter measures when there is a problem.

• Once we relied on a firewall to protect our systems and these were usually a physical box.
  Today in which it is considered to be a sophisticated program that can be configured to your environment. Modern virtualized environments give the business to manage software and data at a more micro level. It provides virtual walls that can encapsulate small virtual servers around specific data and applications. These partitions don’t prevent the applications from exchanging data with other enterprise applications.
• Alerts and reconfiguration.
  Most virtual environments are now managed by software. Using this it is possible to configure systems to respond to events. Systems can respond to events by; Cutting access, sending email or SMS, answer phone calls and / or telephone security the company, specific people to alert them of pending issues.
• Innovation.
  Some small to medium enterprises are using virtualization and container based applications on Network Access Storage devices (NAS), iOT, IFTTT and open source free software to take actions in response to events. These actions might include turning on/off equipment, lights, sending messages, locking doors. Many of these environments use virtualization for the more traditional multi-user server access by staff. What is new is the user of smaller servers running as Docker containers or micro-services that perform just one specific task such as interfacing with small iOT devices or managing a task in conjunction with IFTTT.
• Embracing New technologies.
  Some businesses are using virtualization to make use progressive technologies such as Google Home assistant. One company uses Google Home to accept verbal commands to control equipment and assist with routine tasks.

Making businesses more successful

The cultures of modern companies have changed and users that are no longer just a group of people working in offices around the country. Users are partners, shareholders, the industry and as always customers. All these people communicate with the business at different times and in different ways. The modern-day business really needs to keep up it’s competencies so it can react to these needs as they arise.

Much of the initial discussion around use of virtualization within a business starts with the financial justification, which is almost always based on risk and cost saving. Whilst these outcomes and benefits are real and cannot be ignored I would encourage businesses to step back and greet the bigger picture. Virtualization and application containers will be at the forefront of business innovation for the foreseeable future and it’s important to companies to develop the internal competencies needed to use it. It seems likely that company’s all firms will need this to be successful in the future and the earlier adopters should gain an early competitive advantage.

Gartner Says That Consumers Will Store More Than a Third of Their Digital Content in the Cloud by 2016

It’s now 2016 and can’t help but wonder if that came true or not?

There is no hard statistics available yet, but thinking through my friends, family and colleagues considerable amount of photos and files stored in a variety of cloud services; and whilst I also have a smikbox NAS to sync files to my home, there is (excluding movies and large video files) probably a very high percentage of my files in the cloud that is being synced to my Smikbox NAS. Is it over 30%? Probably, but if I didn’t have a smikbox NAS, I think it would have been much lesser.

One of my friends recently lost a large quantity of family photos stored on his personal computer during a failed Windows upgrade, and called me the next day asking about personal cloud options. Unfortunately, it is human’s nature to realize the value of something until it affects another before an action is to be taken; for example, by using external cloud storage that works as an interim as a solution for efficiency. Another example that needs efficient service is a storage that becomes larger and harder to manage (which some cloud storage that provides clunky web interfaces make a tiresome task to skip through and clean up). And as a consequence when this happens, sooner or later it becomes necessary to pay for storage upgrades, finding yourself being trapped in paying more to store your files, some of which might not be something that you really need.

Another trend to watch is that reported by TechTarget after their 2015 business adoption survey who said;

While 50% of respondents said they use the cloud as their primary storage for production data, an even greater number — 63% of IT shops — use the cloud for data backup, according to the TechTarget survey. Meanwhile, 43% of users rely on the cloud for data archives.

Whilst the shift to cloud-based storage and services continues for business, why does it make sense for homes, professionals and small businesses to adopt personal cloud devices?

The answer is that whilst the cloud provides many great benefits including security, redundancy, expandability and convenience, if it is then becomes inaccessible (e.g. our of business, down for upgrade, forgot password, etc.) you are not also able to access your files. Businesses tend to manage redundancy better than home users especially in making plans for safety and redundancy to protect files and data. Additionally, the trends these days that both households and businesses are accumulating and relying upon larger amounts of storage establishing appropriate backup and redundancy systems that do not rely on human intervention are increasingly important.

Personal cloud performs an important role here, using some of the lessons learned serving the redundancy management functions for business over the last decade, scaled down and simplified for individual or the home usage. By making the personal cloud the central management console for one’s digital life, it will help the individual to coordinate the use of cloud services and backup data from cloud services in the home (so there are multiple copies to act as a fails safe [data buffer]).

The transcoding between media servers gives everyone access to music, movies in the NAS, and if a NAS is set up properly to send general traffic through the 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi, then it would divide up movie streaming, backups, file sync, PC network, surveillance video collection, home automation systems between the 5GHz Wi-Fi, 1GB networks (which are 1GB x 4), USB, Power line and Thunderbold, you can actually rid yourself of those annoying network problems such as slow speed, drop outs, jittering and connection failure. Plus, the NAS gives you access to hundreds of new applications and services that you didn’t even know were possible!

Don’t get me wrong, I still use cloud services. However, for me, the ideal combination for the household is to retain my cloud storage at a free or low cost level, then backup to a personal cloud. In that way, I still have the convenience of these services, but can make better choices on what remains in the cloud so as to manage costs, speed and redundancy.

Speaking to my friend at Dicker data this week, he said that the manufacturers expect the growth in adoption of personal cloud devices to grow exponentially in the next five years. However, the main obstacle to growth right now is most people are largely unaware that they need a NAS. And, as household data volume grows and more services rely on collecting data to the market, people will become wiser and will start to take ownership of their digital lives if they don’t want to run the risk of losing important files or paying escalating cloud storage and service costs.

However, we now have higher resolution cameras, surveillance footage, movies, streaming services, multiple social media channels, high quality documents and presentations having sufficient storage, backups and means to find information quickly at home or office; even when accessing remotely is a fundamental requirement of the modern lifestyle.

“I need a way to retain and re-use the information (personal and professional) I accumulate over the years. It’s important to store the important information I accumulate throughout my career, so if I move to another firm I don’t start from scratch, but finding it quickly (from anywhere) when I need it is just as important, sometimes more important that the content quality. Often minutes can count!”

– Mark Stone, CTO

When we think of storage, many of us will assume that it’s all about files and documents, but that’s not all there is to it. The modern lifestyle now includes software applications that store information ranging from personal fitness to garden sprinklers and the list is growing.

	The internet of things (iOT) is upon us! And as we adopt new devices to improve our lifestyles, the data has to be stored and managed that we should take control our ownership of these digital assets as they grow. We can and must ensure that these assets are used for our benefit and not by a distant firm, for purposes we are unaware of or have not agreed to.

Consider that when you sign up for cloud services or purchase software for business or personal use, your reasonable expectation was that this new “thing” would help you. You did not expect it to be incrementally exposed to the influences of others using your data for their purposes. As technology expands the quality of our lifestyles, we must take steps to better manage the digital assets we create.

Professionals and business owners rely on networking to expand their influence, and regardless of whether you’re sitting on an established network or working your way up the ranks in a growing firm, maintaining a relationship in a largely online world with those that will stand with you throughout your career requires a different set of skills from the working professionals.

The people you meet and begin to form relationships with form a network that you need to keep up with through digital social channels. The customer-related management (CRM) was once thought to be the tool for businesses, but today, working professionals are turning to this tool as a means to keep track of skills, resources and contacts they will need to reconnect with at some time in the future.

Using a cloud style network-attached storage (NAS) hosted externally (paid service) or internally using software which are free of service is no longer an option.

The answer is a recursive theme that Cloud services are great and you can and should use them. However, you need the tools to manage your digital world and there is really no better way to have a Personal Cloud box which coordinates and controls this digital side of your life for you.

The good news is, this is all quite simple and “doable” with an intelligent NAS at the centre. A device that stores, manages and protects our digital world.

However, we are going to need to make room in our expectations for a new breed of innovators entering the Frey. These innovators will entertain us with their ideas, innovations and surprise us with the pace at which they come up with new ideas.

Who are these people? You ask. Well. You and me … all of us!

Your children, co-worker, neighbor and/or just anyone.

Some of us will be familiar with the term the Internet of Things or iOT. Politicians are latching onto it, major companies are looking to exploit it for good reasons. The world is poised to be transformed by an army of miniature computing devices that we can use to take care of menial tasks. Well, that’s the idea anyway!

Technology has become smaller, faster better connected as we learn to make our systems more powerful and capability with less size and power consumption. A good example of this is Intel now offers a Windows computer in a device the size of a thumb drive for under $150 US.

Before you start wondering what you would use this for, let me draw your attention to automation of life’s menial tasks. It’s true that while we can do things for ourselves with our busy lifestyles, it is much efficient to have technology work for us. My electronic floor sweeper was not on my shopping list five years ago, but today I confess it has become one of the must-haves.

Here are a couple of people trying out new ideas using new technologies that will get you started:

Netflix Socks

The first is Netflix, where someone has designed a little piece technology to pause the movie if you fall asleep. Yes perhaps it’s a nice to have, but let it open your eyes to possibility, maybe you can do better!

Remote control socks, are you serious?

Okay, just look and let the idea stimulate your creative side.

Netflix Socks is a kit anyone can buy, and link to any device in the house, maybe it will give you an idea that will change the way we live!

Amazon Button

Another idea is the Amazon button, which debuted in 2015, letting you re-order a specific item such as detergent when you’re running low with the touch of a button. However, the technology can be used in other ways through the capabilities of the Internet of Things (IoT).

The button works on the Amazon Web Services framework and allows an average developer to use the IoT device to control just about anything with one press.

MiniCloudBox developers (or anyone with basic experience on AWS) will be able to implement the Dash button to do all sorts of things through AWS or MiniCloudBox.

Watch this example to see how an Amazon iOT button can be used to control a Phillips light and start the air conditioning to cool down the car prior to leaving for work. This example uses Python and C## and would ideally be set up within a container on the Mini Cloud Box so it uses minimal resources, starts whenever the Mini Cloud Box starts and is included in backup schedules.

Great project for the budding household genius to try! Too technical for you?

Don’t worry we have easier things for you to try, stay connected and we will share them with you.

As my storage requirements changed, I moved to a 500MB USB device and when the space ran out a small 2TB NAS (which is painfully slow), which was all good since I was only trying to find a storage solution for those movies, holiday snaps and camcorder footages.

Then, I soon discovered that Cloud Storage services (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox) are great for collaboration, but hopeless for larger files.

Have you ever tried to sync your holiday videos to iCloud or Dropbox?

Don’t hold your breath, the last time I tried this took 14 hours before it had failed and asked me to try again.

If you may ask, well unfortunately most people forget that most ADSL have a maximum upload of 800 kbps.

Then with a growing number of cloud service accounts, passwords, and larger files that were created from my PC, and some DVDs for backup, I then had to turn on and connect to a TV to watch HD movies, which caused me to keep on hunting for a long-term solution.

With a little bit of research, I discovered there was an entire range of mid-sized NAS boxes, which in addition to storage would solve a lot of other problems I had no answer for. Firstly, they run VMWare / Hyperstation images, web servers, home automation, and surveillance; second, they automate organizing my files and media, plus surveillance, web tech and much more.

These boxes can do more like those of the big servers we have in the office, but in tiny little boxes. They don’t have keyboard or monitor (which you can connect if you wish) so they can be placed in a discrete corner and blend into the household decor. At the time there were two manufacturers  QNAP and Synology specializing in this technology, the other manufacturers could manage large storage, but lacked the other capabilities.

Both QNAP and Synology provide intuitive administration consoles to manage its services, and Synology (as of 2016) was only providing units with a maximum memory of 2GB, making them more suitable for home use (virtualization was very slow with 2GB of memory). QNAP by comparison has 4 units, 8 units of memory and fast processors, making them a lot more useful. QNAP also has larger units, which is 16 and 32Gb of memory and larger expansion units making it scale well into small business use cases.

Faster Network speeds in the Home

After setting up a QNAP 8MB or memory device with 4 x 6TB of RAID hot swap storage, I discovered other unforeseen benefits. Transfer speed on/off the device through its 4 x 1GB LAN adapters (two of which are set as a virtual switch so I get one LAN connector that handles 2GB simultaneous transfer), and when coupled with a power line connector between the CloudBox and my HD TV, all my WiFi disconnection issue disappeared.

For years, I was the home technician restarting the router, the Wi-Fi and the PC to reestablish connection. However, the transfer of larger files to the HDTV and other PCs was so quick that it did not require my home router/Wi-Fi (which only has a small powered computer inside) to act as a high-speed switch when network traffic is high. Therefore, packets did not get lost, people did not have to restart and renew DHCP leases because everything suddenly just worked.

Virtualization

With its ability to set up one or more Windows, having Linux servers means that I can run the business and the productivity software without another PC chewing up energy, thus making my home warmer in summer while I hum in the corner when the kids are out and to give myself some time to relax. Plus, these machines are available anywhere 24/7 from the PC or a mobile device. My SOHO business had two Amazon AWS servers that we no longer used, but I wanted to keep them for reference. No problem! Just convert them to a VM, download and run on my CloudBox for free!

Home Automation

Most cloudboxes comes with free surveillance software, so all you need is a few low cost IP cameras in your business. The QNAP comes with a server to run internet of things’ devices (iOT) which according to an article last January 2016 was limited to turning on/off lights, electrical appliances, controlling sound systems. However, all of that is set to change with large manufacturers who are investing profoundly to commercialize new and recent innovation.

Summary

In conclusion, my CloudBox is not just a network-attached storage (NAS). The high reliability of hot swap drives and automated backup and its low-cost set up is very comforting, which I found much better than those I had tried earlier which suggested for me to try out new ideas quickly without spending much time and money.