Archive for the 'Layered Technologies' Category

E-Pay Innovator Drives Mobile Commerce in Developing Countries

Published on May 23, 2013 in Events, Industry Events, Layered Technologies, LT News, PCI Compliance, Strategic Partners and Technology Bits. 0 Comments
Posted by Steve Chu

It was a pleasure to serve as a judge for the e-Pay Innovation award at the recent ETA Expo in New Orleans, LA. The winner of the $10,000 award was Trak for developing technology aimed at moving Brazil’s population from a paper payment system to a more efficient electronic format.

The ETA Technology Committee oversaw the event, which was part of the 2013 Annual Event and Expo in New Orleans. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding for the winner of the e-Pay Innovation Award and offered scholarships for several startup companies to exhibit in the Payments Next Zone section of the Expo.

The focus of the event was to find startup companies that have a unique payment solution to offer to the unserved and underserved populations of developing countries. The Gates Foundation has a core belief that the developing populations around the world can rise out of poverty much faster if they have access to technology. Electronic payment technology can quickly replace ancient barter systems and rapidly increase commerce, especially in countries where the masses are just now gaining access to mobile phones.

The winning Trak system presents a unique electronic method for processing Beleto transactions in Brazil. Beleto is an old way of presenting paper invoices to the end-use customer who then physically presents payment at the merchant’s bank. The Trak Beleto incorporates a smartphone app that stores customer- and merchant-account information and provides a faster, more streamlined way of completing transactions. Trak is using the Beleto offering in Brazil as a proof of concept to bring to other countries that have no advanced method of conducting transactions beyond old fashioned bartering systems.

The ETA Technology Committee will continue working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to discover innovative payment solutions that can be brought to the unserved and underserved populations around the world. The next event will be at the ETA Strategic Leadership Forum which will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona in October. I would welcome the opportunity to continue serving as a judge on this distinguished panel. It was an honor to meet the legends, entrepreneurs and visionaries in the payment industry who have developed unique and beneficial offerings. And I look forward to watching the evolution of these great ideas as they come to fruition and become available to the masses.

About the Author: As Regional Sales Manager for Layered Tech, Steve Chu (@stevendkchu) brings over 9 years of experience to the Payment and PCI Compliant Hosting industry. His background prior to Layered Tech was with HMS/Micros Systems, which provides a point-of-sale solution for the hospitality industry, and also with global IT consulting firm, Sogeti Capgemini.

Up and to the Right: Layered Tech advances in Gartner Magic Quadrant

Published on May 15, 2013 in Cloud Computing, Compliant Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, FISMA Compliance, HIPAA Compliance, Hosting Industry, Industry Expert, Layered Technologies and PCI Compliance. 0 Comments
Posted by Kevin Van Mondfrans

Gartner recently published the 2013 edition of the Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting which included Layered Tech. Since our first inclusion in 2010, Layered Tech has significantly increased our ranking and position with respect to completeness of vision and ability to execute. We have consistently moved up and to the right.

To be considered for the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting, providers must deliver on-demand, enterprise-class managed hosting services, have a presence in multiple North American metropolitan areas, and be among the top 15 North American providers by market share. Gartner’s quadrant-based categories rate providers by “vision” – the ability to anticipate and meet customer needs – and by service-delivery excellence, based on customers’ experiences.

I have worked closely with Gartner over the past few years to help them gain deeper insight to our business, our clients, the workloads we serve and our significant differentiators. I have introduced Gartner to many of our staff and clients, to help them understand our unique abilities. As a result, the latest Gartner ratings show rapid ascension for Layered Tech along both the vision scale and the service-execution scale.

Simplifying Complexity and Reducing Risk

As one of the more focused and intimate managed hosting service providers in the Magic Quadrant, Layered Tech is recognized for its ability to manage complex hosting needs with stringent security and compliance requirements, as demonstrated with our strong SLA and compliance guarantee. Managing complex web applications and helping to achieve and maintain security or compliance objectives is a key focus of the Layered Tech business. Our ability to help clients reduce the risk to security threats and to completely achieve compliance with respect to the IT controls is a significant differentiator.

Gartner also recognized our strength and commitment to automate service delivery and change within the ITIL-based change-management framework. This is core to our ability to deliver a high quality of service to our clients. The Layered Tech automated workflow introduces check points to mitigate change risks, automates operations and improves communications.

Compliance Expertise Recognized

Last year’s Gartner report noted that Layered Tech is one of the only providers capable of delivering comprehensive PCI and HIPAA-compliant hosting services for the electronic payment and healthcare markets. This year’s report cites Layered Tech’s expansion into the federal government FISMA compliance market as a new company strength. I would add that we also perform extremely well with SaaS/ISVs, eCommerce and Media.

We think Gartner has done a great job of highlighting some critical strengths and key target markets for Layered Tech. We will continue to drive upward momentum as we work to find new ways to serve customers and anticipate their cloud hosting and compliance needs.

About the Author: As Vice President of Product Management at Layered Tech, Kevin Van Mondfrans (@VANMONDFRANS | +Kevin Van Mondfrans) is responsible for driving the Layered Tech portfolio of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and managed service offerings. With more than 20 years of experience product development and marketing, Kevin has been delivering innovative computing, storage, cloud and service offering with companies such as HP, Dell, and Savvis.

Tips to Guard Against Hacks and Attacks

Published on April 29, 2013 in Events, Industry Events, Industry Expert, Layered Technologies, Security, Security News and Uncategorized. 0 Comments
Posted by Jeff Reich

I attended the 2013 InnoTech San Antonio Technology Innovation Conference & Expo on April 17th. InnoTech is the region’s largest business-to-business technology event.

This conference has grown to the point of needing to move to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

Along with the tracks offered in Mobility, Women in Tech, Infrastructure, Big Data with Analytics and IT Leadership, I participated in the Cyber Security Symposium. I moderated a panel of experts on Security – It’s All About Perspective. The panel had representation from corporate leaders, consultants and higher education. The panel members were Mark Krisak, Director of Information Security, HEB; Chip Meadows, Sr. Security Analyst, UTSA; Joe Oranday, Vice President, Enterprise Information Security, Frost; Steve Werby, President and Senior Information Security Consultant, Befriend.

We had a lively discussion with the audience of around 100 people. Even though we discussed technology and some of the newer techniques to deal with hacks and attacks, the takeaway from the gathered experience on the panel was to focus on the basics. When the panelists were asked what the one best thing was that an organization can do to protect itself, the answers were:

Keep your patches current
Focus on user security awareness training
Deliver metrics on your program to track progress and get support
Work with your users

These solutions are not new and do not require deep technical knowledge. I think we can all learn a lot from these experts.

I will be presenting a session on Hacktivism at the 2013 ETA Annual Meeting & Expo on April 30th through May 2nd in New Orleans, LA. I hope to see you there.

About the Author: As Chief Risk Officer at Layered Tech, Jeff Reich (@LayeredTechCRO, +Jeff Reich) drives the company’s security and compliance services and guides risk mitigation efforts for clients. With more than 30 years of experience, Reich is a well-known risk management and security expert in the industry. He holds CRISC, CISSP and CHS-III certifications and is an ISSA Distinguished Fellow.

Data Protection – Not Always a Slam Dunk

Published on April 4, 2013 in Layered Technologies and Security. 0 Comments
Posted by Kevin Van Mondfrans

It’s March Madness time, one of my favorite times of year. Maybe it’s playing college basketball brackets with friends and co-workers that has me thinking of infrastructure strategy in basketball terms. But anyway, it occurs to me that while backup and recovery isn’t sexy, it is critical — and not always a slam dunk.

In fact, dealing with backup windows, complex file systems, data encryption and compliance issues, and planning the solution to meet recovery point and recovery time objectives — well, doing all that is anything but a layup. In fact managing this area continually can really take you out of the game and away from what drives your business.

The ideal data protection backup and recovery service is something that’s worth defining. Here are the capabilities I think every business or enterprise should look for:

Backup service that is quick and reliable with minimal impact to client applications
Rapid recovery of files and entire systems, locally or to systems in an alternate datacenter, to minimize downtime or disruption
Secure transfer and storage of the backup data with strong encryption
Above all, real confidence in the people and platform protecting your data in the event of human error, malicious attack, system failures, or natural disaster

We recently refreshed our backup and recovery platform to offer faster backups, quicker recoveries, and options for offsite storage and recovery in a secure and compliant framework. Our objective is to make backup and recovery something you don’t think much about (unless you actually don’t have backups in place).

Peace of mind is a good thing. It’s also true that backup and recovery service of this caliber is vital in many cases:

When you need a scalable, usage-based model without any need to procure or manage a dedicated system, or provision excess capacity. For an expanding company it means that your system can grow as much as you need, cost-effectively.
To accommodate both file and system restores so you can recover from a variety of potential issues including system error, human error, malicious attack, or outage.
To accommodate clustered systems so you can back up your most complex environments with ease.
When you need to be prepared for both local and off-site recovery. We help you defend all your zones: you can make a quick file recovery to the local system, recover files and systems to off-site resources, or in a rare event like Hurricane Sandy, you can recover to an alternate site.
For quick cold-site recovery. Clients can replicate their backup data to another Layered Tech data center so they have the option to recover either to standby systems or to on-demand cloud resources. The Layered Tech eBusiness Cloud Data Center Service and eBusiness Data Protect Service give you a low-cost way to be disaster tolerant.
When you must provide an environment that is secure and aligned to compliance requirements. In such a situation, another copy of sensitive data may not be a good idea unless you know your data is secure! Our strong data encryption, robust access controls, and change management let you ensure that your data is secure and managed for compliance.

Here’s a data protection game plan: One, backup and recovery is not sexy but it is essential. Two, when selecting your service provider you need to choose one that provides the recovery scenarios (speed of recovery, recovery location, retention, security) your business requires. Three, the best offense is a strong defense.

We have your defense covered so you can get back to playing offense and driving your business without worrying if your data is protected.

Image Credit: Creative Commons

2012 Reflection and 2013 Road Ahead

Published on December 27, 2012 in Layered Technologies. Closed
Posted by Brad Hokamp

With the holiday season upon us and another year coming to a close, we wish to express appreciation to our clients, partners and shareholders for their continued support of Layered Tech.

We had many accomplishments in 2012, all with the objective of setting the standard for what clients should expect from their PCI-, HIPAA- and FISMA-compliant managed service provider. Our extraordinary team of security and compliance experts worked day and night to understand the goals of our clients and solve their business challenges.

2012 Highlights:

In February of 2012, we became the first cloud provider to offer a ‘Compliance Guarantee.’ This ensures all Layered Tech compliance services, including PCI and HIPAA, are guaranteed to pass 100 percent of every audit or assessment.
In August of 2012, Layered Tech acquired NEW WORLD APPS, Inc, which specializes in secure private cloud solutions for federal, state and local governments. Our expertise in the PCI- and HIPAA-compliant cloud hosting markets along with NEW WORLD APPS’ federal FISMA hosting experience made this a perfect combination, resulting in a compelling platform to achieve rapid growth.
In September of 2012, we launched the Layered Tech Cloud Data Center, a next-generation cloud platform that combines complete management, security and compliance capabilities with self-service functionality, creating a more agile and secure cloud. This allows enterprises to run their critical workloads in a cloud environment to accommodate complex security needs and meet PCI-DSS and HIPAA compliance requirements.
In November of 2012, Layered Tech and Microsoft announced the availability of Microsoft Dynamics Government Cloud business solutions, a FISMA-compliant cloud application platform on which federal agencies can build and deploy mission-critical solutions for their constituents. (see related article: Update on FISMA Compliant Cloud Offering for Microsoft)

We see 2013 as a new year full of opportunities as we continue to lead the way for compliant and secure hosting services. Layered Tech very much appreciates the continued support of our valued partners and look forward to a successful year ahead.

Have a happy, healthy and secure holiday season!

About the Author: As President of Layered Tech, Brad Hokamp (@bradhokamp) brings over 26 years experience working in the IT and networking industry to his role. His responsibilities include leading our sales and marketing efforts, as well as product management, customer service and business development initiatives.