Kategorie: Business

The needs of businesses and corporations are rapidly changing. A global pandemic has changed how we do business, how we live, and how we work. More than ever, we are looking to managed hosting providers and cloud computing to meet the demand for quarantine and work from home orders. But how can you compare one vps hosting provider to another?

More than ever, we rely on virtual and cloud computing to connect teams of all sizes to complete our day to day tasks. We also rely on cloud servers to keep our websites and applications running. Our businesses need servers that offer the best performance for the platforms that keep sites going.

Fortunately, there are many VPS hosting providers to compare from to meet your pricing needs. But, where performance is concerned, there is one clear winner: Liquid Web.

Liquid Web’s VPS Hosting Outperforms Its Closest Competitors in LAMP Stack Performance

Cloud Spectator conducted performance studies on four major cloud service providers. The report breaks down performance in five categories: Virtual Processor (vCPU) Performance, Random Read/Write IOPS, Apache Web Server Performance, MySQL Mixed Workload, and PHP Performance.

We must keep in mind that this comparison is a server-side performance test. Your mileage may vary when it comes to the site or application you have developed. The VPS hosting comparison performed by Cloud Spectator tests server performance for platforms that rely on the LAMP stack. Such platforms include WordPress, Joomla, or other commonly used CMS and eCommerce software.

What is the LAMP Stack?

The LAMP Stack is the collection of web service software for Linux servers. LAMP is an acronym for the original four software components that make up the “stack” or suite of software:

• L – The Linux Operating System
• A – Apache Web (HTTP) Server
• M – MySQL relational database management system
• P – PHP programming (scripting) language

The components of the stack are interchangeable with other options that exist. These are the necessary components with which most Linux servers start.

To measure the performance of websites for this study, Cloud Spectator examined the performance of Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and each piece of the LAMP stack.

How Testing Was Done and the Data Collected

Cloud Spectator collected data on entry-level virtual machines (VMs) across Liquid Web (VPS), Amazon, Rackspace, and DigitalOcean for 48 hours. In those 48 hours, Cloud Spectator ran multiple types of performance tests. The median results are in their report.

The VMs tested with each provider were as follows:

• Amazon AWS: C5.Large with SSD EBS – US East
• DigitalOcean: 4GB Compute Optimized – US East (NYC)
• Liquid Web: 2GB SSD VPS – US Central (Zone C)
• Rackspace Cloud: Compute Optimized 4GB – US Central (Dallas-Fort Worth)

The Linux operating system used in this testing was Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

LAMP Stack Performance Results

vCPU Performance

The virtual processor (vCPU) of a VPS what a standard CPU is to a physical computer. The vCPU performs the server’s processing tasks, such as reading and writing data, compressing images, or encrypting data. It aids in delivering the desired website experience to the user.

The faster a processor completes its tasks, the better the performance users will experience. Cloud Spectator ran several processor-intensive jobs across Amazon, DigitalOcean, Liquid Web, and Rackspace VMs. The results show Liquid Web leading in the rankings for single-core vCPU performance.

Random Read/Write IOPS Performance

To measure Disk I/O (input/output) or storage performance, they looked at the results for Random Read/Write IOPS (input/output operations per second). IOPS is a metric commonly used to measure disk I/O performance.

When it comes to blogs, eCommerce sites, and mobile apps, a considerable amount of files get stored. These files need to be updated or refreshed periodically, which means faster read/write performance directly impacts your website or application’s responsiveness.

Random read/write performance can have a notable impact on any I/O intensive application’s performance. Some such applications are Magento, WooCommerce, and many other eCommerce content management systems (CMS). While it is essential to have fast read performance, what matters most to business owners when traffic is high is how many orders your CMS application can handle. Liquid Web provides the top disk performance no matter what the application requirements are.

Apache WebServer Performance

Apache Webserver is a widespread web server that handles client request traffic to your website or application. Other commonly used web servers are Nginx or LiteSpeed. For this test, each server was running Apache.

The more per second requests Apache can serve, the more responsive the website or application is. The number of website requests depends on the vCPU performance, examined previously.

Performance data for Apache was collected by running Apache and Apache Benchmark on the same VM (localhost) to isolate VM performance. Liquid Web’s VPS offers the best raw Web server performance.

MySQL Mixed Workload

MySQL is a database management system that stores all of the critical information that a website needs to deliver a fully dynamic and vibrant Web experience to your end-users. If a user is required to login to access specific parts of your website, the user identity and credentials would presumably get stored in a MySQL database. Additionally, customers who purchase something from your online store will search (reads) and refresh (writes) the online store’s database.

Cloud Spectator created a test for MySQL databases to examine the performance of each server type. They included both reads/writes to the database. The database comprised roughly 5 million rows and was reviewed with 24 simultaneous threads to ensure requests were coming in and out continuously, stress-testing the system. The results illustrate Liquid Web’s superior database performance.

PHP Performance

PHP is a programming language commonly used by many popular Content Management Systems. One of PHP’s most prevalent use cases is to generate the dynamic content on a website and query MySQL for precise data. For example, PHP will produce the registration page and transfer it to MySQL, which will store that information in the database for long-term retention and future transactions.

Apache and PHP must perform as quickly as possible to avoid website performance degradation. eCommerce stores rely on transaction speed and response time. PHP performance is measured by testing numerous aspects of the PHP interpreter used by VMs to execute PHP code. The PHP interpreter performance is directly affected by the vCPU. Better vCPU performance translates to high PHP performance, although various other aspects of the VM and operating system (OS) may also impact performance.

In the tests performed by Cloud Spectator, Liquid Web’s PHP performance topped the competition.

VPS Hosting Comparison: Why is Liquid Web Better?

What sets Liquid Web’s performance apart is a combination of best practices and ingenuity. Our servers, built specifically for high performance and incredible speed, are the direct result of our team’s technical prowess, technology knowhow, and a drive to implement the best products for our customers.

We’re incredibly proud of the performance results we see from our VPS Hosting. The performance comparison showcases the real power of our Cloud Platform. Liquid Web’s VPS Hosting surpasses our competitors in vCPU Performance, Random Read/Write IOPS, Apache Web Server Performance, MySQL Mixed Workload, and PHP Performance.

The post VPS Hosting Performance Comparison: Liquid Web VPS Hosting Tops EVERYONE appeared first on Liquid Web.

In today’s hosting world, you have dozens of hosting options to choose from. You have shared hosting, dedicated hosting, CMS specialized hosting, reseller hosting, and so on. On the top of most lists are vps vs cloud hosting, but what are the differences? Cloud hosting can refer to many different types of cloud solutions.

Many IT professionals get lost searching for a cloud solution with the agility and flexibility needed for their growing application or website, all at a palatable price point.

Here are the basics about three of the most popular cloud hosting solutions, as well as distinct advantages and disadvantages when it comes to choosing between VPS Hosting, Cloud Dedicated Hosting or Private Cloud Hosting.

What is VPS Hosting?

The term “VPS” stands for Virtual Private Server. Let’s break down each part of this server type to its basic function.

Virtual

Virtual in VPS simply means that you do not own a physical server. Instead, you have a virtual instance that is working on a parent server.

For example, imagine that you have one super PC, and from that PC you spawned an additional 10 PCs that are using the resources of that super PC. You can manipulate resources that each of those spawned PCs through virtualization.

This is exactly what a VPS Server is: a spawned PC using virtualization to utilize a specific part of the CPU cores, memory, and RAM of a Cloud Dedicated Server.

Private

Private means that your VPS is just yours. The environment is not shared with anyone else, which is also known as single-tenancy. Your resources are your own, and whatever you do won’t affect users of other VPS instances on the Cloud Dedicated parent server. Likewise, anything other tenants do on the other VPS instances cannot affect your VPS instance.

Server

A server is a machine or a computer that provides hosting services. This means that your VPS instance is still a server, even though it doesn’t exist in a physical form. VPS Hosting is a virtual server that is created through virtualization, creating a viable and scalable hosting solution perfectly suited for many SMBs.

Now that you have a better understanding of what VPS actually is, we will go through some advantages and disadvantages of VPS Hosting.

Advantages of VPS Hosting

Root Access

You are free to do whatever you want with your VPS. You can manage your server however you like. Root access is at your disposal and you can install whatever you want, whenever you want.

Single-Tenancy

VPS hosting is highly efficient. On shared hosting you are depending on traffic from others. On VPS instances, your hosting instance is isolated from other instances on the same parent server. Your traffic and resources are yours alone.

Easy to Scale

You can easily and quickly scale VPS with a single click. Having on-demand access to more CPU, RAM, and storage can be extremely helpful, as well as keep your site from crashing during busy sales seasons.

Secure

VPS hosting is very secure as well. Everything that you are running from your server is completely safe from the eyes of other users on the parent server. So if you are on a parent server with 8 other VPS instances, you or them won’t be able to see each other’s instances.

Automated and Fast Deployment

Deployment is so easy that it can be done with a single click thanks to automatization. When you order your VPS instance through our Manage interface, it will be deployed in an hour or so.

Easy Backups

In case of something going wrong on the server and it is beyond repair, backup can be done easily through a server image that can be created with a single click. When you have a server image, you can quickly restore a VPS instance to a previously working state.

Disadvantages of VPS Hosting

Limited Configurations

Every VPS is deploying from previously created automated scripts (automation that we mentioned above). It means that you have to choose VPS instances that the hosting company has previously defined.

For example, if you want a VPS instance that runs on Debian OS and has 4 CPU cores and 4 GB of RAM, and the hosting company doesn’t offer that, it isn’t an option. You are not able to choose a VPS with one OS and then simply install another one on it.

Liquid Web has many options when it comes to OS selection and resource allocations for VPS Hosting.

Hardware Issues on Parent Server

If there are issues with the parent server’s hardware, things are likely out of your hands. Unlike VPS, the parent server is an actual physical instance that can, just like everything else, break.

Something meaningless and easy to fix can happen, like a snapped power cable. Or something more serious could have happened, like an entire motherboard going bad and needing to be replaced. These things are rarely happening, but they do.

Rest assured that when something like this happens at Liquid Web, our technicians are on it in a blink of an eye to get everything in order as soon as possible.

Now that you are familiar with pros and cons of VPS Hosting and you know some basics about VPS Hosting, let’s learn about some basics of Cloud dedicated hosting.

What is Cloud Dedicated Hosting?

To put it simply, a Cloud Dedicated Server is an actual dedicated server with a virtual layer that is running on top of it.

The implementation for Cloud Dedicated Servers is similar to our Cloud VPS, with our Cloud platform taking care of the provisioning. This allows our Cloud Dedicated servers to have a scalable, virtual environment. But instead of sharing the resources with other users, you have the full use of them.

The main difference between traditional dedicated servers and cloud dedicated servers is if your content ever outgrows the server on which you are running it, upgrade of the server will have to involve migration, because a new server has to be put up with additional resources.

With cloud dedicated, that is something that you can completely avoid. It’s running on cloud, thus it can be scaled “on the go.” This comes in handy because downtime during resize is minimal. Migration processes are not something that is easily done in most cases and it requires some time. With Cloud dedicated you can upgrade your resources in a blink of an eye, making migrations painless.

Advantages of Cloud Dedicated Hosting

Root Access

Just like VPS Hosting, Cloud Dedicated servers also have root access which gives you complete freedom when it comes to configuration and tweaking.

Single-Tenancy

A Cloud Dedicated server is completely owned by one tenet. You are not sharing resources or space with anyone.

Easy to Scale

For those expecting a high influx of traffic or planning a new product launch, Cloud Dedicated servers can scale and increase RAM or CPU cores with a single click.

Scale Down to VPS Hosting

You can even scale a Cloud Dedicated Server down to a VPS Server, which is extremely useful if you see you aren’t using the full server resources and your budget has tightened.

Disadvantages of Cloud Dedicated hosting

Cloud Dedicated hosting has a few limits when it comes to server deployment. For example, if you deploy a CentOS Cloud Dedicated server with InterWorx as the control panel, you will need to migrate if you want to switch your control panel or distribution system to cPanel or Debian, respectively.

Now that we have covered vps vs cloud dedicated hosting, what are the possibilities and features of VMware Private Cloud?

What is VMware Private Cloud?

VMware Private Cloud gives you the ability to optimize, reconfigure, or scale up your resources on the fly. Our Private Cloud environment is powered by VMware which adds a nice kick of power, performance, and the security to the package.

Private Cloud environments allow you to move compute power and data storage between virtual machines (VMs) that you deploy.

Just like any other cloud environment, Private Cloud uses virtualization. You can use it to combine computing power into shared pools which will be automatically provisioned based on the needs of your business.

Our VMware Private Cloud product is fully managed, which means that we take care of the entire hosting infrastructure. All that you need to do is to deploy VM’s and your applications.

With our Private Cloud, you also get load balancing and VMware backups powered by Acronis Cyber Backup.

Liquid Web server nodes are built on top-of-the-line dedicated hardware, combined with ultra-fast NetApp SAN storage. This helps VMs deliver maximum speed, scalability, and reliability for our customers.

Each of our Private Cloud plans has no limit on how many VMs can be deployed, and you won’t be charged extra even if you spin 20 VM instances. But, the amount of VM’s that can be deployed do depend on the resources that you have at your disposal.

Advantages of VMware Private Cloud

Total System Control

VMware Private Cloud offers total system control and increased security through dedicated hardware and physical infrastructure that’s used exclusively by the company that owns it.

Predictable Billing

With the Public Cloud, the price of your service can be pretty unpredictable. With the Private Cloud at Liquid Web, you receive the same monthly bill, which helps with budget allocation and decreased infrastructure spending.

Better Customization

Because you have complete control over your private cloud, it is much easier to reallocate resources and get your cloud to perform specifically according to requirements that you and your team need.

Disadvantages of VMware Private Cloud hosting

Pricing

VMware Private Cloud is a solution for companies and businesses that have outgrown traditional dedicated servers and need maximum uptime and scalability, making it more expensive than traditional infrastructure.

Choosing the Right Cloud Solution

VPS Hosting, Cloud Dedicated Hosting, and VMware Private Cloud are all cloud solutions that can help growing SMBs, each with their distinct advantages and disadvantages. Reflect on not only your current demands but predicted growth over the next few years when making your choice on your next cloud hosting solution.

The post Comparing VPS, Cloud Dedicated, and VMware Private Cloud Hosting appeared first on Liquid Web.

The Answer to the Need for Effective Public Cloud Support and Cost Savings is Managed Cloud Servers

Over the last few years, companies have flocked to the cloud, putting at least a quarter of their data on Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and other public cloud platforms. They now realize that the anticipated benefits of lower costs, simplicity, increased speed, and always-on availability are not as easily achieved as originally represented, and almost impossible to achieve on their own.

What are the Challenges of Unmanaged Public Cloud Infrastructure?

Unanticipated challenges of a company attempting to manage their own public cloud infrastructure are:

• Limited IT expertise, the inability to easily compare services across vendors, and an inadequate understanding of how selecting individual cloud services can impact price, causes companies to continually overspend.
• The benefit of public cloud elasticity becomes a financial drawback when over-provisioning occurs, or server and application resources are added in a time of need but not removed when no longer needed.
• Focus on public cloud infrastructure, data, and ongoing usage requirements limit the time and resources available to concentrate on other IT projects, strategic initiatives, or corporate goals.

While public cloud computing is a valuable resource, without support from an MSP partner it can quickly become a financial liability for businesses trying to do it on their own.

As an MSP, the addition of Managed Cloud Servers to your portfolio of services can be a financially lucrative opportunity.

• You can cross-sell additional services to existing customers for whom you may currently sell traditional managed services.
• You can onboard new customers with a managed cloud server solution and cross-sell additional security, continuity, and compliance services.
• You can become an expert in helping businesses migrate from on-premise servers to the cloud.
• You will increase your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and realize a steady increase in revenue growth.

Managed Cloud Servers

What are Managed Cloud Servers?

Managed Cloud Servers enable you to combine the best elements of public cloud and private cloud hosting to deliver to your customers a highly scalable, reliable, secure, and customizable cloud solution at a more cost-effective price.

You can provision the specific dedicated IT resources your client needs exactly when they are needed. There is no need to provision and pay for extra resources, only to have them sit unused in anticipation of use months in the future.

Since each virtual server acts as a private cloud stack, you can configure the stack as needed. It can be as unique as each clients’ business needs.

The value of Managed Cloud Servers to you as an MSP is the technical support, expertise, and infrastructure resources available to and managed for you. Proactive network management, system administration, performance testing and maintenance, sophisticated redundancy measures, and multi-level security enable you to support your client without having to worry about infrastructure management.

Benefits of Managed Cloud Servers for Your Clients (and You)

1. Dedicated Expertise

Your clients want an MSP partner who has the expertise and focus to help them transform their business. Digital transformation, cybersecurity, compliance, and mobile device management are just four complex elements of IT management that today’s companies require.

Managed Cloud Servers enable you to effectively deliver on your clients’ needs by leveraging a dedicated team of engineers who focus solely on cloud infrastructure management, so you don’t have to. Their wealth of expertise and 24/7 network monitoring and management removes the burden of infrastructure management from your shoulders and enables you to focus on helping your clients achieve their business goals.

2. Controlled Spending

While many businesses flocked to the public cloud based on the promise of significant IT cost savings, they now realize that for inexperienced managers, the public cloud can be more expensive than even a dedicated private cloud option.

Managed Cloud Servers enable you to rein in your clients’ IT expenses, helping them stay on budget. 24/7 usage monitoring helps eliminate unused or underutilized infrastructure, hardware, and application resources, requiring your client to pay only for the computing resources they use. The ability to spin up virtual servers on-demand and eliminate them when not needed maximizes cost optimization.

3. Security

Your clients appreciate the agility and scalability of the public cloud but require the protection of a private cloud to keep their data and employees secure.

A Managed Cloud Server infrastructure provides the capabilities of a public cloud but is built from the ground up with security at its core. It enables you to provide your clients with the security management they need but does not require you to maintain servers or continually monitor network threats.

4. Agility

The Covid-19 pandemic has provided us with the perfect example of why your clients must be able to adjust to a crisis in near real-time. While agility may have seemed more like a buzz word in the past, it is now a must-have element of IT governance.

Transforming from premise-based applications and databases to an always-on public cloud that accommodates their newly remote workforce requires the tools and human resources to be as agile as the situation demands.

5. Scalability and Speed of Deployment

The need to stay two steps ahead of competitors requires your clients’ IT resources to scale on-demand as business and market requirements change. They must be able to immediately spin up servers and applications in times of high demand, and just as quickly eliminate those resources when they are no longer needed or there are budgetary constraints.

Managed Cloud Servers are a ready-to-scale service that you can implement and deploy at a moment’s notice. You can quickly and easily enable one server, and add additional servers when unexpected website usage or database spikes are observed. When the need for additional servers and system resources is over, these resources can just as easily be removed.

6. Improved Efficiencies and Reduced Waste

An unmanaged public cloud can quickly become unwieldy with application and infrastructure waste. Your clients can easily become confused over which services are right for today’s requirements as well as anticipated future needs. This results in excess resources which may or may not work well together.

Managed Cloud Servers enable you to help your clients eliminate waste and achieve their business goals with effective service evaluation, selection, prioritization, and implementation.

7. Availability

Redundancy measures and guaranteed uptime availability are two critical capabilities of a cloud environment. Constant availability ensures that your clients’ employees can be their most productive wherever they may be and able to work when and how it is most convenient for them.

While high-availability resources are important, you do not have the time to deploy, monitor, and maintain them. Managed Cloud Servers provide load balancing, clustering, storage and failover protection, firewall protection, redundant network paths, and other high-availability measures. They are fully managed to maintain a consistently available infrastructure so you will not have to stress over managing them yourself.

Companies who once eagerly moved to the public cloud now realize that with minimal internal IT expertise and no external technical support, the anticipated benefits of the public cloud are impossible to achieve on their own. They need the dedicated support of a trusted MSP partner like you.

Liquid Web’s Managed Cloud Servers

Liquid Web’s Managed Cloud Servers are built on an out of the box, ready to scale, fully managed public cloud platform which provides you with the flexibility to meet the changing IT needs of clients while our team of highly skilled engineers manages and maintain all infrastructure components for you. Automated provisioning, 24/7 infrastructure management, advanced monitoring, and multi-level security standards are included.

Because we know that no two businesses’ IT needs are alike, Liquid Web also offers a comprehensive portfolio of bare metal, dedicated server, web hosting, and hybrid cloud solutions combined with application services and fully managed support. We can deliver the right IT solution for the right business requirements, right now.

Need a Managed Cloud Solution With Rapid Deployment and Scalable Resources? Try Managed Cloud Servers With Liquid Web.

The post What is a Managed Cloud Server? How Can It Benefit My MSP Clients (and Me)? appeared first on Liquid Web.

How often do you think about your Windows-based dedicated server running out of disk space? Yet having enough free storage is critical to maintaining stellar server performance. 

Without it, not only will you see the immediate reduction in speed, but other automatic processes, such as backups, also wouldn’t be able to run properly.

Let’s walk through some examples of what could be taking up space on your server disk and what you could do to free it up.

Why Does Your Server Disk Get Full?

Depending on the size of the SSDs you selected when you set up your dedicated server, running out of space could be either a rare mishap or near regular occurrence. In case you’re self-managing your server, you might not even realize it’s low on space unless you’ve configured specific notifications or frequently check the state of your backups.

Backups do tend to take up lots of storage and will eventually max out your capacity if not managed properly. Likewise, log files, temp files, and databases can accumulate indefinitely, either on your disk or in the Recycle Bin.

To make sure your dedicated server is always performing at its best, schedule regular server disk space checks (e.g., every month or so) and go through the suggested checklist of actions below.

1. Delete Outdated Backups

If you’ve never deleted server backups before, you might be able to free up gigabytes of space by deleting older backups. 

The key here is for your company to decide on its backup strategy (do you need to keep files for a week, month, year?) to follow.

On your Windows server, check the C:\Backups folder to see the list of all backups made so far, and delete any that you don’t need.

Additionally, if you’re running an SQL Server, you might want to find its backups, too and then either delete outdated ones or at least compress them in a zip folder.

2. Optimize SQL Databases

Speaking of SQL Servers, depending on the amount of information being kept in your databases, you can explicitly shrink your databases too:

1. Right-click on the database and select Tasks ➙ Shrink ➙ Files
2. Choose “Reorganize pages before releasing unused space”
3. Set “Shrink file to” to the minimum amount indicated

However, before proceeding with any modifications to your SQL Server, make sure all the information is safely backed up.

3. Clean Up IIS Log Files

Just like backups and databases, Internet Information Services (IIS) log files can take up most of the available server space over time. But there are a few things you can do.

By default, IIS logs are saved in the LogFiles folder, which you can find at %SystemDrive%\inetpub\logs\LogFiles. 

If your server has more than one hard drive, you should probably store the LogFiles folder on the largest one and preferably put it somewhere close to the root to not forget about it.

Another thing you can do is compress the IIS logs folder. Luckily, you can shrink it down significantly, to just about a few percent of the original size. To do so:

1. Right-click on the folder and choose Properties
2. Navigate to the General tab ➙ Advanced
3. Check “Compress contents to save disk space”
4. Click OK ➙ Apply ➙ OK again

Finally, you can simply delete old IIS log files, either by writing a script and creating a recurring task in the Server Manager ➙ Tools ➙ Task Scheduler, using a specific IIS log cleaner tool, or doing so manually.

4. Uninstall Third-Party Software

It’s likely that, over time, the way you use your server has changed, which could mean that some programs you thought you needed in the beginning are no longer relevant for your situation. That means you may have unused software that can be removed to save disk space.

To remove unused software:

1. Launch Control Panel by using the Windows + X shortcut
2. Open Uninstall a Program
3. Go through the list and click Uninstall on anything you don’t need

After you go through the first four steps of optimizing backups, databases, IIS log files, and third-party software, remember the most important step of all — emptying your Recycle Bin.

Since you can’t see the $Recycle.Bin folder by default:

1. Open Windows Explorer ➙ Folder Options
2. Switch to the View tab
3. Click to “Show hidden files, folders, and drives”
4. Uncheck “Hide protected operating system files” and “Hide extensions for known file types”

Now that you can see C:\$Recycle.Bin, open it, select all the files inside and delete them.

5. Add More Server Disk Space

While cleaning the hard drive on your server regularly will help your company become more efficient and improve overall performance, at some point, the amount of storage you have will simply become insufficient for your growing needs.

Fortunately, adding more disk space to your dedicated server is easy and can be done at any time with immediate results.

Get More Disk Space on Your Dedicated Server

Need a bit more guidance on the best way to manage your server storage capacity? Contact one of the Liquid Web technicians today for a truly tailored and scalable approach to your dedicated server setup.

The post 5 Ways to Free Up Disk Space on a Dedicated Windows Server appeared first on Liquid Web.

The best ideas for how to improve DELMIAworks comes from our customers. Our most recent release, DELMIAWorks 2020, reflects what they’ve asked for along with improvements we’re seeing are needed across our worldwide manufacturing customer base. Every DELMIAWorks customer has the opportunity to be a co-collaborator in creating new features, enhancements, and suggesting improvements on MyIQMS, where they can submit new ideas.

Based on customers’ requests, we’re augmenting the core of DELMIAWorks2020 with improvements to accounting, time-saving improvements to scheduling reports, cost analysis, customer pricing management, and more. We’ve also augmented the RealTime Production Work Center, Shop Floor User, RealTime Process Monitoring Work Center, and Advanced Warehouse Management Modules.

A few of the exciting new features in DELMIAWorks2020 update include:

• Inventory Activity Cost Journal (IACJ) enables customers to accelerate inventory reporting and achieve greater inventory transaction and accounting accuracy. IACJ generates financial entries based on real-time inventory transactions, automatically balancing inventory accounts using translog tables and recipe cards to generate journal information for greater efficiency and less latency.

• Customer Price Book and Pricing Management enhancements that streamline price maintenance and enable more efficient pricing strategies. Advanced filtering and Customer Price Book Maintenance is streamlined with configurable options customers can use to save time when managing prices and maintaining price lists.  

• Advanced Warehouse Management Systems (AWMS) new features to streamline Directed Pick Ticket Workflows. SQL Queries can now be customized to specific logic workflows customers prefer using for picking transaction rules. There are improvements to Distribution Routing Rules in the Customer Maintenance module that provide customers new options for customizing their shipping and distribution experience. 

• Right-To-Erasure (RTE) Tool is included in DELMIAWorks2020 in response to and in compliance with Article 17 of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). The RTE Tool enables searches of the database, based on personalized data subject information, and then allows the anonymization of any or all personalized information that is held in the system. GDPR is European legislation affecting all companies who hold personal data of European Data Subjects (otherwise known as individuals or persons). GDPR is legislation passed by the European Parliament / Council of 27th April 2016 under EU 2016/679. This legislation provides the ability to protect personalized data of persons or individuals who have entered into lawful obligations ‘lawful basis’, where such data is held, stored, save, or accessible with a system/computer media, but can be anonymized or deleted at the request of the data subject

• Improvements to RealTime Work Center and RealTime Monitoring that save valuable customer time and streamline Work Center performance. Based on customer feedback, Group Codes are now included so users can easily identify like types of inventory items as designated by the user-defined Group Code set under the Additional tab on the FG item Inventory record. RealTime Monitoring now supports Inspection Parts To Go, which displays the number of items to go before an inspection is due.

Conclusion

DELMIAWorks2020 addresses our customers’ requests for streamlining core aspects of their manufacturing operations, including inventory accounting, pricing, and warehouse management. We’ve also added a Right-To-Erasure (RTE) Tool, so every customer affected by Article 17 of GDPR can stay in compliance. Adding to our strengths in RealTime Monitoring, we’re introducing improvements to  RealTime Work Center and Inspections To Go logic, all based on customer’s requests and insights.

The post Our Customers And Their Collaboration With Us Defines DELMIAWorks2020 appeared first on IQMS Manufacturing Blog.

• Enterprises who are increasing the average number of endpoint security agents from 9.8 last year to 10.2 today aren’t achieving the endpoint resilience they need because more software agents create more conflicts, leaving each endpoint exposed to a potential breach.
• 1 in 3 enterprise devices is being used with a non-compliant VPN, further increasing the risk of a breach.
• 60% of breaches can be linked to a vulnerability where a patch was available, but not applied. Windows 10 devices in enterprises are, on average, 95 days behind on patches.

CIOs, CISOs and cybersecurity teams say autonomous endpoint security is the most challenging area they need to strengthen in their cybersecurity strategy today. Software agents degrade faster than expected and conflict with each other, leaving endpoints exposed. Absolute’s 2020 State of Endpoint Resilience Report quantifies the current state of autonomous endpoint security, the scope of challenges CISOs face today and how elusive endpoint resiliency is to achieve with software agents. It’s an insightful read if you’re interested in autonomous endpoint security.

Endpoint Security Leads CISOs’ Priorities In 2020

With their entire companies working remotely, CIOs and CISOs I’ve spoken with say autonomous endpoint security is now among their top three priorities today. Cutting through the endpoint software clutter and turning autonomous endpoint security into a strength is the goal. CISOs are getting frustrated with spending millions of dollars among themselves only to find out their endpoints are unprotected due to software conflicts and degradation.  Interested in learning more, I spoke with Steven Spadaccini, Vice President, Sales Engineering at Absolute Software and one of the most knowledgeable autonomous endpoint cybersecurity experts I’ve ever met. Our conversation delved into numerous cybersecurity challenges enterprise CIOs and CISOs are facing today. My interview with him is below:

The Seven Toughest Questions the C-Suite Is Asking About Endpoint Security

Louis: Thank you for your time today. I have seven questions from CIOs, CISOs and their teams regarding endpoint security. Let’s get started with their first one. What happens if an endpoint is compromised, how do you recover, encrypt, or delete its data?

Steven:  It’s a challenge using software agents, both security and/or management, to do this as each agents’ tools and features often conflict with each other, making a comprised endpoints’ condition worse while making it virtually impossible to recover, encrypt, delete and replace data. The most proven approach working for enterprises today is to pursue an endpoint resilience strategy. At the center of this strategy is creating a root of trust in the hardware and re-establishes communication and control of a device through an unbreakable digital tether. I’m defining Endpoint Resilience as an autonomous endpoint security strategy that ensures connectivity, visibility and control are achieved and maintained no matter what is happening at the OS or application level. Taking this approach empowers devices to recover automatically from any state to a secure operational state without user intervention. Trust is at the center of every endpoint discussion today as CIOs, CISOs and their teams want the assurance every endpoint will be able to heal itself and keep functioning

Louis: Do endpoint software security solutions fail when you lose access to the endpoint, or is the device still protected at the local level?

Steven: When they’re only protected by software agents, they fail all the time. What’s important for CISOs to think about today is how they can lead their organizations to excel at automated endpoint hygiene. It’s about achieving a stronger endpoint security posture in the face of growing threats. Losing access to an endpoint doesn’t have to end badly; you can still have options to protect every device. It’s time for enterprises to start taking a more resilient-driven mindset and strategy to protecting every endpoint – focus on eliminating dark endpoints. One of the most proven ways to do that is to have endpoint security embedded to the BIOS level every day. That way, each device is still protected to the local level. Using geolocation, it’s possible to “see” a device when it comes online and promptly brick it if it’s been lost or stolen.

Louis: How can our cybersecurity team ensure compliance that all cybersecurity software is active and running on all endpoints?

Steven: Compliance is an area where having an undeletable tether pays off in a big way. Knowing what’s going on from a software configuration and endpoint security agent standpoint – basically the entire software build of a given endpoint – is the most proven way I’ve seen CISOs keep their inventory of devices in compliance. What CISOs and their teams need is the ability to see endpoints in near real-time and predict which ones are most likely to fail at compliance. Using a cloud-based or SaaS console to track compliance down to the BIOS level removes all uncertainty of compliance. Enterprises doing this today stay in compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, PCI, SOX and other compliance requirements at scale. It’s important also to consider how security automation and orchestration kicks on to instantly resolve violations by revising security controls and configurations, restoring anti-malware, or even freezing the device or isolating it from data access. Persistent visibility and control give organizations what they need to be audit-ready at every moment.

Having that level of visibility makes it easy to brick a device. Cybersecurity teams using Absolute’s Persistence platform can lead to humorous results for IT teams, who call the bricking option a “fun button as they watch hackers continually try to reload new images and right after they’re done, re-brick the device again. One CIO told the story of how their laptops had been given to a service provider who was supposed to destroy them to stay in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and one had been resold on the black market, ending up in a 3^rd world nation. As the hacker attempted to rebuild the machine, the security team watched as each new image was loaded at which time they would promptly brick the machine. After 19 tries, the hacker gave up and called the image rebuild “brick me.”

Louis: With everyone working remote today, how can we know, with confidence where a given endpoint device is at a moments’ notice?

Steven: That’s another use case where having an undeletable tether pays off in two powerful ways: enabling autonomous endpoint security and real-time asset management. You can know with 100% confidence where a given endpoint device is in real-time so long as the device is connected to a permanent digital tether . Even if the device isn’t reachable by your own corporate network it’s possible to locate it using the technologies and techniques mentioned earlier. CIOs sleep better at night knowing every device is accounted for and if one gets lost or stolen, their teams can brick it in seconds.

Louis: How can our IT and cybersecurity teams know all cybersecurity applications are active and protecting the endpoint?

Steven: By taking a more aggressive approach to endpoint hygiene, it’s possible to know every application, system configuration and attributes of user data on the device. It’s important not to grow complacent and assume the gold image IT uses to configure every new or recycled laptop is accurate. One CIO was adamant they had nine software agents on every endpoint, but Absolute’s Resilience platform found 16, saving the enterprise from potential security gaps. The gold image is an enterprise IT team was using had inadvertently captured only a subset of the total number of software endpoints active on their networks. Absolute’s Resilience offering and Persistence technology enabled the CIO to discover gaps in endpoint security the team didn’t know existed before.

Louis: How can we restrict the geolocations of every endpoint?

Steven: This is an area that’s innovating quickly in response to the needs enterprises have to track and manage assets across countries and regions. IP tracking alone isn’t as effective as the newer techniques, including GPS tracking, Wi-Fi triangulation, with both integrated into the Google Maps API. Enterprises whose business relies on Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is especially interested in and adopting these technologies today. Apria Healthcare is currently using geofencing for endpoint security and asset management. They have laptops in use today across Indonesia, the Philippines and India. Given the confidential nature of the data on those devices and compliance with local government data protection laws, each laptop needs to stay in the country they’re assigned to. Geofencing gives Apria the power to freeze any device that gets outside of its region within seconds, averting costly fines and potential breaches.

Louis: How can our IT team immediately validate an endpoint for vulnerabilities in software and hardware?

Steven: The quickest way is to design in audit-ready compliance as a core part of any endpoint resilience initiative. Endpoint resilience to the BIOS level makes it possible to audit devices and find vulnerabilities in real-time, enabling self-healing of mission-critical security applications regardless of complexity. The goal of immediately validating endpoints for current security posture needs to be a core part of any automated endpoint hygiene strategy. It’s possible to do this across platforms while being OS-agnostic yet still accessible to over 500M endpoint devices, deployed across Microsoft Windows, macOS via a Mac Agent and Chrome platforms.

Conclusion

Knowing if their autonomous endpoint security and enterprise-wide cybersecurity strategies are working or not is what keeps CIOs up the most at night. One CISO confided to me that 70% of the attempted breaches to his organization are happening in areas he and his team already knew were vulnerable to attack. Bad actors are getting very good at finding the weakest links of an enterprises’ cyber defenses fast. They’re able to look at the configuration of endpoints, see which software agents are installed, research known conflicts and exploit them to gain access to corporate networks. All this is happening 24/7 to enterprises today. Needing greater resilient, persistent connections to every device, CISOs are looking at how they can achieve greater resilience on every endpoint. Capitalizing on an undeletable tether to track the location of the device, ensure the device and the apps on that device have self-healing capabilities and gain valuable asset management data  – these are a few of the many benefits they’re after.

Answers To Today’s Toughest Endpoint Security Questions In The Enterprise is copyrighted by Louis Columbus. If you are reading this outside your feed reader or email, you are likely witnessing illegal content theft.

Enterprise Irregulars is sponsored by Salesforce and Zoho.

Industry 4.0 is the progressive step in a manufacturing company’s digital transformation maturity curve, focusing on combining information technology and operational technology to modernize the value chain in new ways. 

IIoT is one of the leading Industry 4.0 technologies that are fueling business growth for manufacturers. In simple terms, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a framework that connects numerous industrial machines together with the help of sensors, devices, software, and the internet.  Industrial machines that are connected together through the internet include robots, sensors, cranes, compressors, and more.

For our manufacturing customers, IIoT enables remote connectivity, monitoring, and predictive maintenance of their machines on the shop floor. Cloud, connected devices, sensors, artificial intelligence, big data, cyber-security, and additive manufacturing, are a few subcomponents of their IIoT strategy. With the help of interconnected systems, sensors, and devices, their manufacturing workforce can access the machines from their office, assess their performance, and view insights as well as log files remotely – anytime, anywhere.  

Any variation or deviance from the set parameters can be identified by smart machines and communicated to those responsible for operating it. Also, intelligent sensors help automate the decision-making process on the shop floor. 

When you install a new smart machine, it should
be compatible with the existing setup and machines from the OEMs. Also,
strong connectivity between the devices enables data
sharing, establishes predictive maintenance, and minimizes security
risks.  

Industrial machinery often requires frequent maintenance.
The good news is that with IoT-enabled ERP
systems, manufacturers can preemptively know
and predict when the operational failure of the
industrial machine is imminent using sensors and cloud-based
analytics.  

Big players in manufacturing such as Boeing, Bosch, Airbus,
etc. rely on IIoT for various reasons. Airbus has launched an
initiative: Factory of the Future that focuses on wearable technology
and integrated sensors which are designed for safety and reduced
errors. Bosch launched a track and trace program that automates factory
operations, tracks the workers, and guides assembly operations.   

Cloud is an omnipotent component
of IIoT-enabled ERP 

The major objective of cloud ERP and IIoT is
increasing organizational efficiency. We already know that IIoT is a
framework of smart machines with embedded sensors and
network connectivity. Cloud allows this framework
to collect, send, and receive data without any
manual intervention.

Cloud ERP and IIoT run parallel with each other. While IIoT generates a massive amount of data, cloud ERP creates a pathway for it to travel and reach its destination. Whether it is about tracking the data generated from machines or about knowing how many products have been procured and dispatched, cloud ERP lets you see everything from a single platform. In simple words, IIoT generates crucial data for the organization, and cloud ERP streamlines and protects it. A Gartner research says that IoT’s rapidly evolving technologies have ushered in innovative disruptions at a staggering pace, in five key areas:  

Sensing — IoT endpoints 

Communicating — IoT communications 

Securing — IoT security 

Understanding — IoT data and
analytics 

Acting — IoT artificial intelligence
(AI) 

Source: Gartner  

Integrating ERP with IIoT leads to
data availability in real-time. Integrating ERP software
with IIoT transforms the supply chain drastically. How?
When IIoT devices talks to your ERP applications, it promotes
visibility at a detailed SKU level. For example, when you know that components
you require for production are to be shipped internationally, ERP allows
you to track the time of arrival as products are tagged and you
get constant information of its whereabouts. ERP
and IIoT applications work together to transform the way information
is being received by us. It lets you monitor equipment
and the production line 24/7.  

Cloud is the gateway to modern
manufacturing. It allows manufacturers to access information about the
functioning of products after they have been shipped to the customers.
Manufacturers can monitor the product’s behavior, its maintenance, wear
and tear, and solve any problem that occurred in the product remotely.  

How does Cloud ERP
Enable IIoT in Manufacturing 

Cloud ERP lays the foundation
for collaboration, automation, and increased efficiency in a manufacturing environment.
When you tie cloud ERP with smart industrial
devices, it lets you see a holistic view of the shop floor and access data
from anywhere and through any internet-enabled device. 

IIoT primarily covers
all industry sectors where industrial machines are used. It becomes
easier for manufacturers to check the parameters, maintenance schedule,
assembly process, and optimize different parts on the shop floor.  

Cloud ERP brings every chunk of
information in a single system. With integrated IIoT, manufacturers can more
fully view accounting details, production completion status,
inventory levels, customer input, defect (if any), shipment schedule, and
minor details of everything happening on the shop floor. 

The post It’s Time to Find a Way Forward With Industry 4.0 appeared first on ERP News.

Every business owner knows that having a steady flow of website traffic is key to being successful online. The more visitors you have, the more opportunities you have to introduce your offering to prospects, build relationships, and sell your products or services. That’s what makes a drop in traffic so terrifying, as that ultimately results in a drop in sales and revenue.

Whether it’s a recent website redesign, a technical issue, or a recent Google algorithm update, there are many possible reasons why traffic to your website has been declining. So, in this post, we’ll share five reasons that caused it and what you can do about it.

1.   You’ve been ignoring your broken pages and links

All sites have broken pages but if yours happen all too often, that’s a problem you need to fix right away. Why? Because broken pages can damage your reputation, decrease your rankings, and cause your organic traffic to drop. Here’s how:

Broken pages affect user experience

They drive visitors away thinking your website doesn’t work.

Imagine a person visiting your website for the first time lands on a page that looks like this:

This is their first impression of your business and it’s not a good one. The chances are that person will immediately leave your site and go to a competitor’s website that works. The fact that visitors leave so quickly after entering your site also causes your bounce rate to increase.

Broken pages can affect your rankings

Bounce rate is one of the factors that Google takes into account when ranking websites in the search engine results.  A high bounce rate usually means that the website is either irrelevant to visitors’ search query or that it doesn’t provide the quality information that visitors are looking for. So if your site has a high bounce rate, Google is less likely to show your site at the top of the search engine results, which means fewer visitors for you.

How to fix broken pages

 If you want to get your website traffic back on track, you need to tackle this issue right away. Fortunately, there are lots of tools you can use to find broken links, including the Google Search Console. This is a great tool for finding pages on your site that return errors. You can find a list with the broken pages on your site in Crawl-> Crawl Errors -> Not Found. Read this post on why broken links can hurt your website to learn more about broken links, and the tools you can use to find and fix them quickly.

2.   Your pages take too long to load

If your website takes more than three seconds to load, you risk losing 40% of your visitors who are unlikely to revisit your site and give it a second chance. Not only that, but your rankings can drop too because page speed is a Google ranking factor.

How to speed up loading time

The first step you need to take is to check your site’s speed and see how well you’re doing. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is free and the easiest tool you can use to see where you stand and what you can do to address the speed issues on your site.

Simply enter the URL of a page on your site to check its speed:

Scroll down to the “Opportunities” section for some quick fixes and suggestions to help speed up your website on both desktop and mobile. Read this post to learn more about ways to get your website up to speed.

3.   Your non-secure website is scaring away visitors

Cybersecurity has become critical, which is why browsers like Google Chrome now alert users when visiting a site that uses HTTP (not secure) versus HTTPS (secure).

So, if your site is labelled as “not secure”, the chances are most people will immediately leave for fear it’s not safe for them to stick around. HTTPS vs HTTP is also another thing that Google takes into account when ranking sites. So, if your site uses HTTP instead of HTTPS, you’re likely to see a drop in website traffic.

How to secure your site with HTTPS

 Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Purchase a SSL certificate. Check out our available SSL certificates and choose the one that best suits your needs.
2. Activate your SSL certificate with your web host.
3. Install the SSL certificate on your domain.

Learn more about what makes a website secure to ensure people feel safe when visiting your site and buying from you.

4.   Your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy is outdated

As a small business owner, you likely wear many hats and work on everything from website design to content to SEO to promotion. It’s hard to find the time to learn about new tactics to properly optimise a site for visibility in the search engines.

Unfortunately, if you’re on a budget and can’t afford to stay updated or hire someone to work on your SEO for you, you might find yourself losing traffic because you’re using a strategy that’s not been updated in a while.

How to fix it

Just like people change, so do their search habits. For example, years ago people used specific keywords to find your site. These keywords might have changed over the years so you’ll need to revise your content and keyword strategy to reflect these changes and make your website content relevant to search engines and users again.

Here are some things you can do to build your website traffic back up:

• Perform a SEO and keyword audit to see what’s still relevant and what needs to be updated.
• Review your content and update it where necessary to include those alternative keywords.

Try our Search Engine Optimiser tool to perform a complete SEO audit of your website and find opportunities to improve and boost your website traffic. Use the tool to perform an in-depth website audit and check your website for dozens of key factors that affect your rankings, including Meta tags, broken links and duplicate content. You’ll also get keyword suggestions that you can use to optimise your content and attract more visitors to your site.

5.   You’re no longer creating great content

High-quality, useful content that provides insights, answers, and advice has always been one of the most effective ways to attract visitors to your site. So if, for some reason, you’ve stopped creating content, it’s not surprising that your traffic dropped.

How to fix it

Creating great content takes time. So it’s understandable if you’ve focused your efforts on other things and created less content than usual. But if your website traffic has been affected, it may be time to add this to your priority list. High quality, useful, entertaining content in different formats can help you to stay at the top of the search engine results, get a steady flow of traffic, and keep your brand, products, and services top of mind.

Read these posts to learn more about the types of content you can create to get more traffic to your site:

Wrapping up

These are some of the most common reasons a site loses traffic or sees a dip in rankings. Hopefully, the tips and advice in this post will make a difference to your traffic. You should also try to keep informed as much as possible about the latest updates and best practices to increase your online visibility and grow your business.

The post Five reasons why your website traffic is dropping (and ways to fix it) appeared first on Better business online: Tips, insight and advice.

Does your business operate in the Healthcare Industry? Are you unsure if you meet HIPAA compliance checklist requirements, or even if HIPAA applies to you?

For many businesses that operate in the health and wellness space, HIPAA compliance isn’t just a part of everyday life.

It is a requirement for remaining in good legal and ethical standing.

Businesses in the medical arena that eschew HIPAA requirements are not long for this world as the federal government has laid plain: ignoring complete HIPAA compliance is not acceptable and will be met with severely punitive measures.

Today, we will cover what HIPAA is, who must adhere to HIPAA, HIPAA requirements, as well as cover a full HIPAA Compliance checklist, making it easier to stay compliant in 2020 and beyond.

What is HIPAA?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act guarantees patients security and protection for their personal health information, also known as “PHI.”

Furthermore, patients preserve the right to choose who has access to their medical records and information. By default, HIPAA creates protections and security around certain health information for every patient in the healthcare system.

Before HIPAA, there were very few protections afforded to the privacy and security of individuals’ health information.

Complicating matters was that HIPAA became law during the most technologically transformational period the nation has ever experienced.

As the internet matured and patient charts gave way to electronic medical records in offices across the country, new regulations around personal privacy were essential to helping the digitization of medicine succeed.

HIPAA was created with the movement of employees between one employer and another in mind.

It’s right there in the name: portability.

That is to say that the need of employees to safely and securely move their health information from one healthcare or insurance provider to another was, and remains, the primary stated goal of HIPAA.”

However, to meet this aim, the requirements for HIPAA compliance provide significant protection of private health information even when an individual is not changing jobs, health care provider, or health insurance provider.

And while HIPAA became law in 1996, it was not until ten years later in 2006 that the Enforcement Rule went into effect. The Enforcement Rule finally granted the Department of Health and Human Services the power to investigate HIPAA complaints and issue fines.

Generally speaking, HIPAA states that healthcare providers and those with access to PHI:

1. Ensure confidentiality
2. Identify and protect against reasonably anticipated threats
3. Protect against reasonably anticipated impermissible use or disclosure
4. Ensure compliance by their workforce

Who Must Adhere to HIPAA?

Physicians and their staff are not the only ones that must adhere to HIPAA privacy protections. Health insurance providers and health care clearinghouses that process nonstandard health information into standard formats must also adhere to HIPAA Compliance.

By and large, any organization that accesses, collects, or processes personal information, including health information and personally identifiable information, must protect that data as a provision of HIPAA.

Largely excluded from HIPAA compliance requirements are industries and organizations like life insurance providers, workers compensation carriers, and law enforcement agencies.

If you are unsure whether or not your organization is subject to HIPAA compliance, the Department of Health and Human Services provides comprehensive detail around who is, and who isn’t, covered.

HIPAA Responsibilities with Digital Records

For the better part of 20 years, medical practices and health practitioners have increasingly adopted digital tools to keep their businesses running.

From electronic medical records to data storage tools, the adoption of digitalization in the medical field has brought with it a new lens through which to view HIPAA guidelines and compliance.

Whereas patient privacy is a shared interest for healthcare providers, the increased quantity of threat vectors for digital records create great complications not just in securing information, but also in ensuring staff members are trained to protect that information at all times.

Storing data requires various levels of encryption, proper firewalling and network protection, and threat detection alerting that notifies of a data breach.

Additionally, part of HIPAA is staff compliance. That means that for all of the technology in place to protect patient data, of equal importance is the way that team members treat the data and systems to ensure privacy is maintained.

Examples of HIPAA Violations

Simply keeping physical patient records under lock and key is no longer enough. Keep a lookout for situations that can be viewed as a HIPAA violation, such as:

• Leaving a desktop workstation with access to an EMR system unlocked while going to the break room for a cup of coffee
• Allowing guests to access the same Wi-Fi network that is also connected to a digital archive of patient records

Situations like these are easily avoided when staff adhere to protocols, keeping patient data isolated and secure at all times.

The Official 7-Step HIPAA Compliance Checklist

Thankfully, ensuring that your organization remains HIPAA compliant is a straightforward matter.

Straightforward doesn’t necessarily mean easy, but at least areas of confusion or complication have greatly been mitigated.

The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services has released a guide entitled “The Seven Fundamental Elements of an Effective Compliance Program.”

These fundamentals can, and should, serve as a HIPAA compliance checklist for making your organization compliant.

1. Implementing Written Policies, Procedures, and Standards of Conduct

For starters, HIPAA compliance must be outlined and documented. From allowable employee behaviors, to what to do in the event of a data breach, HIPAA requires documentation around practices or business activities that fall under the purview of the law.

2. Designating a Compliance Officer and Compliance Committee

It is critical that individuals within a HIPAA compliant organization be named and held responsible for HIPAA compliance.

3. Conducting Effective Training and Education

HIPAA compliance requires that team members protect PHI. To do so in a way that meets the HIPAA standard, it is crucial that HIPAA compliance training be provided to staff. Ignorance is not a valid defense in the event of a HIPAA violation.

Application to Web Hosting: For your hosting provider to support your HIPAA initiatives, it is important that their support and technology staff are also trained on HIPAA requirements. It is prudent to confirm that your hosting provider does indeed have an understanding of HIPAA requirements and how to best serve you.

4. Developing Effective Lines of Communication

Health practitioners and their teams must have clear channels of communication not just for training and in the event of a data breach, but also as part of the day to day operation of handling private information. From the handling of medical records to the discussion of patient care, communication is critical across all levels and in all departments.

5. Conducting Internal Monitoring and Auditing

As with many policies and procedures, regular verification and reporting are essential to maintaining HIPAA compliance. As part of HIPAA is protecting against reasonably anticipated threats to private health information, it is crucial that HIPAA-compliant businesses test their environment regularly for potential weak spots or areas of vulnerability.

6. Enforcing Standards Through Well-Publicized Disciplinary Guidelines

Team members across the organization must understand the possible legal ramifications of HIPAA violations not just to the business, but to the individual as well. The seriousness of HIPAA is hard to overstate, and it is incumbent upon business owners and operators to ensure staff members know what is at stake.

Application to Web Hosting: Your hosting provider shares responsibility in making sure your infrastructure is HIPAA compliant. Their engineers and support staff should be aware of the penalties of non-compliance.

7. Responding Promptly to Detected Offenses and Undertaking Corrective Action

Protecting PHI is certainly the goal of every HIPAA organization. However, it would be silly to behave as if mishandling or unauthorized access to private data never happens. In the event of an intrusion or error, HIPAA regulations mandate that immediate corrective action be taken.

Application to Web Hosting: Your hosting provider should not only communicate any potential intrusions or points of concern as it relates to your HIPAA needs, they should also be prepared to provide you Corrective Action Reports in the event of an incident.

Understanding How Infrastructure Plays a Role in HIPAA Compliance

Unauthorized access to workstations, accidental viewing of the wrong patient record, or leaving the Wi-Fi network unlocked during routine maintenance are all examples of potential violations. However, not all potential areas of vulnerability are so easily identified. When it comes to your technology infrastructure, every component in the stack must meet HIPAA standards if your organization is to be truly compliant.

That means that your servers must be HIPAA Compliant, including where you store data and the applications you use to access and modify it.”

Network switches and routers must be properly secured to the standards dictated by HIPAA. Many hosting providers provide a level of security to their infrastructure as a benefit to your purchase. But very few hosting providers actually provide security and protection that can survive the scrutiny of a complete HIPAA compliance checklist review.

For example, does your hosting provider have a defined policy on communicating data breaches to you? Does that policy actually meet HIPAA standards?

The Right HIPAA Compliance Solution for Your Organization

Whether you’re in the midst of a digital transformation or are just starting to investigate digitizing your medical organization, having the right partner at your side is critical.

Not only is it important that your IT service and infrastructure providers understand the importance of HIPAA in your business, it is also critical that their own policies, procedures, and guidelines align with the HIPAA requirements to which your business is bound.

Our team at Liquid Web possesses both the expertise and the experience necessary to keep your HIPAA compliant business on track and out of regulatory trouble. From small, single doctor clinics to large hospital networks operating across many states, our expertise at the cross-section of infrastructure and HIPAA compliance is unmatched in the industry.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Most Helpful Humans in Hosting can help deliver your HIPAA-compliant infrastructure both now and as your business grows, contact us here. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss not just how to get compliant but also how to ensure ongoing compliance so you can focus on patient care and other business priorities.

Is Your Business Unsure How to Achieve or Maintain HIPAA-Compliance? Download our HIPAA Guide for Small Businesses.

The post Understanding HIPAA in the Age of Digital Transformation appeared first on Liquid Web.

There are many instances when client wants to give multiple copies of the invoices to their customers, where they must segregate multiple copies into original and duplicate. So we have given option on the report for those client where at the header part Original and Duplicate check boxes are given. So if the specific invoice is printing for the first time then Original checkbox should be ticked and if it is printing for more than once then the checkbox for duplicate should be ticked.

To achieve this working in Crystal report please refer the below steps:

Step 1:-
Create subreport using below SQL query and add that subreport into main report.
For example, your report code is ZSINVOICE i.e. for Sales Invoice Report. Add our subreport in this main report.

Refer below screenshot for SQL Query snippet:-

New Stuff: https://www.greytrix.com/blogs/sagex3/2020/07/01/how-to-solve-if-new-field-added-in-inquiry-screen-and-still-not-visible-after-global-validation-of-window/

Where variable “NUMDEB” holds the Invoice Number and variable “FOLDER” holds the name of the Sage X3 folder in which you are working.

Step 2:-
Insert 2 ticked and 2 unticked check box images in report headers like below screenshot:-

Step 3:-
Add suppress condition for both of the header sections using Section Expert.

Below is the Condition for ‘Report header a’ section :-
{Command.COUNT}=1

Below is the Condition for ‘Report header b’ section :-
{Command.COUNT}<>1

Whenever user tries to print the Sales Invoice report from Sage X3, it will show checkbox ticked based on the counter.

Refer below screenshot of the sample output.

In this way anyone can identify whether the invoice copy is original or duplicate by looking at checkbox.