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SQL Server: Recovering operations after a disaster

disaster plan

Datacenters disappear. Not often, but it happens. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 swallowed whole datacenters in Lower Manhattan. Hurricanes Irma and Maria wiped out virtually all the datacenters in Puerto Rico in 2017. Cloud datacenters are not immune, either. The Azure Central Region outage of 2018 occurred after a lightning strike queued up a sequence of automated responses that failed in a spectacularly Rube Goldberg-like manner and proceeded to take multiple Azure availability zones offline for the better part of a day.

Sometimes it’s possible to anticipate the arrival of a disaster; other times, the disaster arrives without warning. Either way, the production infrastructure your organization depends on is going to be offline for some time. That does not, however, mean that your operations must go offline. It means that you need to have a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place that can provide an alternative means of keeping your operations running when your primary infrastructure is out of commission.

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Silicon Power unveils Stream S05 USB HDD

Are people really still buying mechanical hard drives in 2022? Believe it or not, yes! And no, these consumers are not crazy. Actually, if you don't care about performance, the cost per GB is still much lower with hard disk drives compared to solid state drives. And so, if your sole focus is getting the highest capacity for the lowest price (speed be damned), a HDD can make sense.

Silicon Power seems happy to cater to those that still want portable external hard drives, and today, the company announces its latest model. Called "Stream S05," this USB-A HDD is quite unremarkable. Hell, even the aesthetic is rather ho-hum -- a boring black rectangle. The drive is offered in several capacities, however, ranging from 1TB to 5TB, with the larger capacities being physically thicker.

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Get 'Content Marketing Strategies For Dummies' ($18 value) FREE for a limited time

Blogs and social platforms are all the rage right now -- especially for strategists looking to cultivate influence among target audience members through content marketing. 

Content Marketing Strategies For Dummies explains how you can use content marketing to gain an edge over your competition, even in the most crowded of marketplaces. This timely text introduces you to the Five C Cycle: Company Focus, Customer Experience, Content Creation, Channel Promotion, and Closed-Loop Analysis.

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Top tips for investors looking to navigate the current crypto winter

Cryptocurrency

The crypto market has experienced a lot of turbulence in 2022 -- and we’re barely over the halfway mark. From Luna’s extraordinary fall from grace to Bitcoin dipping below the $20,000 mark for the first time since late 2020 -- investors have been riding a financial rollercoaster in the past few months.

Despite the doom and gloom outlook of many, confidence remains amongst investors as we head into a 'crypto winter'. Latest research from Bank of America, which included findings from 160 of its clients -- indicates that blockchain technology and the digital asset ecosystem are here to stay, and investors aren’t deterred by the state of the market. Unsurprisingly, as a result, the bank’s leadership remains optimistic for mainstream digital asset adoption in the future.

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Lack of automation costs enterprises millions

Automation

A lack of automation capabilities for managing IT performance costs an average of $46 million a year according to a new study. While 57 percent of organizations see automation as the key enabler for closing the modernization skills gap in managing IT Operations.

The report from research firm Digital Enterprise Journal also reveals a 54 percent increase in cost of one hour of IT service down time since 2019. In addition 68 percent of IT teams' time is spent on tasks that do not contribute to key business outcomes.

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KB5015814 update is causing Start menu problems and 0x8007007e errors in Windows 11

Windows 11 laptop

The release of the KB5015814 update for Windows 11 earlier this week was supposed to fix problems with PowerShell as well as addressing security issues. But as has become disturbingly common, there have also been unwanted side effects for those who jumped on the update and installed it as soon as it was offered up.

Some users are experiencing problems with the Start menu, with complaints indicating that the menu is being interrupted by an app opening and closing. There are also complaints about errors appearing after a failed installation of the KB5015814 update -- specifically error codes 0x8000ffff, 0x8007007e and 0x80073701.

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Best Windows apps this week

Four-hundred-ninety-nine in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Could Microsoft be switching from a one feature update per year release cycle to a three year cycle with frequent feature drops? That's the big rumor at the moment.

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The artificial intelligence tug-of-war in the world of cybersecurity [Q&A]

pixel padlock

It's a rare cybersecurity product these days that doesn't claim to have some form of AI capability. But exactly what benefits does AI deliver? And is there a risk of an arms race as threat actors also turn to the technology?

We spoke to Corey Nachreiner, CSO at WatchGuard Technologies, to find out more about the role of AI in cybersecurity.

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Get 'Get Heard, Get Results: How to Get Buy-In for Your Ideas and Initiatives, 2nd Edition' ($9 value) FREE for a limited time

You have ideas. You have projects and initiatives that you want to make a reality. But let's face it -- unless you can get others to work with you, those ideas aren't going anywhere.

Your ability to capture people's hearts and minds is the key to getting results. In his engaging style, author Simon Dowling will show you not just how to get heard, but how to create true buy-in around your ideas and initiatives -- dealing with pushback along the way and turning talk into action.

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Disaster Recovery Planning: A successful framework for strategy and execution

The rise in cyber incidents is set to continue on its meteoric trajectory over the next decade. Ransomware attacks on a business, consumer, or a device are anticipated to take place every two seconds by 2031 -- a worrying escalation from every 11 seconds in 2021. And by 2025, damages are projected to reach a staggering $15 trillion annually, up from $3 trillion in 2015, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.

At the same time, users demand better performance and user experience year-after-year, and the subsequently increased threat landscape poses real challenges in connectivity and data security. 'Insider threat' also poses a considerable risk, with 80 percent of breaches involving privileged credentials misuse or abuse and malicious insider activity from recent employees.

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In machines we trust? The critical role of digital identity management

The introduction of the cloud has brought a lot of change to the world. A big one for enterprises is that it’s no longer a necessity to guard data on-premises. Most organizations today rely on a hybrid approach to hosting their applications, with an average of three or more different clouds driving various applications in their infrastructures.

While the cloud has delivered plenty of benefits to these businesses and transformed the way they think about data and security, they’re not all properly managing and securing applications across the enterprise.

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Security and automation are top priorities for IT pros

The top three priorities for IT professionals are improving IT security overall (52 percent), increasing IT productivity through automation (33 percent), and migrating to the cloud (32 percent), according to a new report.

A survey of almost 2,000 IT pros from Kaseya also reveals the main three challenges are cybersecurity and data protection (49 percent), insufficient IT budgets and resources to meet demands (29 percent), and legacy systems that hamper growth and innovation (21 percent).

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Media Player for Windows 11 now lets you rip CDs like it's 2002

Yesterday, Microsoft rolled out a new Windows 11 build for Insiders in the Dev Channel and two new versions of the popular Camera and Media Player apps.

The main new feature introduced into Media Player (version 11.2206.30.0) is support for CD ripping, because, yes, that’s apparently still a thing.

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Microsoft teams up with Netflix to offer cheaper, ad-supported subscriptions

Netflix logo and remote control

Netflix has previously confirmed plans to introduce an ad-supported tier that would provide a lower cost subscription entry point. Details have been somewhat lacking, but it has just been announced that Microsoft is partnering with the streaming video service as it introduces cheaper plans.

The company has signed a deal with Netflix, with the streaming giant describing Microsoft as "our global advertising technology and sales partner".

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Wordle finally offers to sync your game stats between devices

Wordle

Word-guessing game Wordle took the world by storm, so it was little surprise when it was snapped up by a big name -- the New York Times. There were promises that the game would not be changed and that it would remain free, and players raised a collective eyebrow skeptically.

Anyone playing the game in the last few days will probably have noticed something. While the NYT is not going back on the promises it made, players are being encouraged to create a New York Times account. The carrot being dangled as an incentive is the ability to have game statistics synchronized between devices.

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