There can be little argument against business enterprises growing concerns with security. Not just security from the perspective of protecting valuable IT resources from physical harm but the more insidious stealth attacks on company and personal information.
If there's an opportunity for financial gain by simply copying the information from an unprotected file, then there will be a community only too willing to try. Until recently, the press reported such incursions as being perpetrated by hackers, but increasingly, especially where government data centers have been involved, the rhetoric has ratcheted up a notch and the press is calling such incursions attacks. None of this is lost on users relying on HP NonStop systems where managing the potential risk from intrusion into these optimized real time, transaction processing platforms, has only increased the need for greater diligence that can only come with heightened monitoring.
In a feature article in the July & August, 2015, issue of the HP bimonthly magazine, The Connection, where the topic is security, I look at the benefits that come from monitoring – after all, there should be a flashing red icon that is brightly illuminated the instant a potential attack is detected and before any meaningful harm can be caused. And this is an ideal opportunity for IR Prognosis to shine, especially when it comes to the monitoring of NonStop systems, as any product or process that generates an alert can be correlated with other actions in real time. In the post of June 16, 2015, Walking the Line Between Innovation and Icky: Big Data and Privacy, Dell Chief Research Officer (and database and big data authority), Shawn Rogers, said: ‘With the advent of big data technologies, there's more and more data included in analytic work streams that simply wasn't available before". Furthermore, Rogers observes earlier in the post, "Advances in data mining andbig data analyticsare enabling innovation at the speed of business. We can mash-up, manipulate and mine information to do great, new insightful things. We can take advantage of derived data, which leverages several points of data to create new data about just about everything." And that includes security and protecting critical business and customer information.
As I prepared for my article in the upcoming issue of The Connection, I asked IR about their take on the role Prognosis plays in overseeing security. IR Chief Solutions Officer, John Dunne, was quick to respond. "Clearly, NonStop applications performance management and monitoring is very important and IR Prognosis has been providing a way for users to set thresholds and then automate the process all the way through to resolution." Dunne then added that, "For those customers with larger enterprise monitoring products deployed then yes, Prognosis contributes much-needed alert information that helps in providing greater insight as to what's happening across the enterprise." Yes, derived data created by Prognosis, whether as a flashing red light or simply an alert entry on a console log, is often the first insightful clue that something amiss is under way.
It is reasonable to believe that no NonStop solution is more at risk than those solutions deployed by global financial institutions (FI's). This I referenced in the upcoming article to The Connection where I also added how it would be all too simple to just admit that they are more at risk because that's where the money is, but nevertheless, payments solutions providers are either partnering with established monitoring companies or developing integrated solutions themselves.;When it comes to NonStop, and payments solutions," said Dunne, "IR has a version of Prognosis tailored to meet the needs of payments solutions providers and as such, we are now a partner of ACI Worldwide and provide unique capabilities when it comes to both BASE24 and BASE24eps. With IR Prognosis Payment Transactions Solutionit becomes easy to spot patterns in data and to stop problems in their tracks, respond to issues faster, and prevent outages enabling any BASE24 / BASE24eps user to get back to doing what he/she does best."
Monitoring is not a silver bullet when it comes to preventing unwarranted intrusions by parties intent on disrupting business. However, the arrival of big data, derived data and even console single pane of glass all prove to be valuable contributions in the war against those perpetrating attacks of the likes that seem to be occurring on a daily basis. When it comes to NonStop systems, the implementation of Prognosis represents a crucial component in any business arsenal and as such, has become a real world go-to product that best ensures those flashing red lights catch our eye when the situation calls for our immediate response!
