Question

Use a search engine to search for companies that provide disaster recovery solutions, that are cloud based, and select two of these solutions. The more thorough the information provided on the company Web site, the easier your research will be. For each of your selections, find answers to at least three of the following questions:

1. What are the key features?

2. Where would the company store your data? In other words, in what geographic areas are their servers located?

3. What kind of encryption does the company use?

4. Which standards are the services compliant with: HIPAA? PCI? SOX?

5. Who audits the company and their disaster recovery services?

The two of my companies are: 1). Microsoft Azure and 2). Carbonite Cloud Backup

Answer 1

1. What are the key features?

1. Microsoft Azure:
   • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The main features of the platform are as follows:
     • It is very useful in building websites with the help of technologies like ASP.NET, PHP or Node.JS.
     • It can be easily deployed and also run along in the Windows server or Linux Virtual machine
     • It can be easily used for caching and the SQL databases also work securely with it.
     • It provides us with services like CDN, Virtual network, Mobile services, Big Data Analytics, Media services, Cloud services, etc.
2. Carbonite Cloud Backup:
   • ​​​​​​​The main features of the platform are as follows:
     • One of the most important and awesome features is the unlimited cloud storage feature.
     • The remote sharing and accessing also add up to a certain level of uses.
     • It consists of some unique features like mirror image backup, video backup, Hard drive backup, Automatically cloud backup, etc.
     • It also deals with the Recovery and can be carried along with an awesome recovery called Courier Recovery.
     • It is very simple to install and also provides us with an unlimited protection plan which ensures the security of the cloud services they provide.

Hence, these are the features of the above two technologies.

Where would the company store your data? In other words, in what geographic areas are their servers located?

1. Microsoft Azure:
   • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​They make use of many data centers and the location of the data where it is to be stored is very much predictive to where your organization or company resides on the global map.
   • Suppose if your company is from the U.S in this case they have multiple data centers to where they can store the data like:
     • Boydton
     • Cheyenne
     • Chicago
     • Des Moines
     • Quincy
     • San Antonio
   • Hence, these are the places where your data can get saved exactly and now cloud services provide an excellent feature to know where your data actually resides.
2. Carbonite Cloud Backup
   • ​​​​​​​The organization is not as huge as Microsoft and hence, there are not much of the data centers options for this provider.
   • They provide the back up mostly in the Canada region.

Hence, this is how the backup is done in terms of geographical locations.

Which standards are the services compliant with HIPAA? PCI? SOX?​​​​​​​

1. Microsoft Azure:
   • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Yes, Microsoft Azure has many standards through which the services provided are compliant with. Some of them are as follows:
     • CJIS
     • FERPA
     • FISMA
     • GDPR
     • GLBA
     • HIPAA
     • ISO/IEC 27001
     • NERC CIP
     • PCI DSS
     • SOX
2. Carbonite Cloud Backup:
   • ​​​​​​​Yes, Carbonite cloud backup is also provided services with some regulatory compliance like:
     • HIPAA
     • GLBA
     • FERPA
     • GDPR
     • PIPEDA

Hence, these are the ways in which the services provided by them are compliant.