Don’t Diss the Copper

It’s been a heck of a week in the Northeast US.  I recently got off the phone with several friends who are still without electricity and are scrambling to get additional fuel to run generators. Many people are trying to get back to work because at least the basic necessities of heat and electricity are available in offices, given many companies have robust backup systems in place.

In times such as these, we not only see the mettle of personality but also the preparedness of people and businesses.  Contingency planning is the key to successfully coping with unforeseen scenarios.

As many businesses looked to bring sites back up after the storm, it’s important to consider a couple of items.

1. Businesses need a reliable way to connect to their distributed network locations
2. If the access to the remote location is available but unsecure, you’ve got a problem.

Of the many people I spoke to without power, most had landline access.  This is important because we see that the simplicity of the twisted pair.  In the case of emergency copper will sometimes outshine the cutting edge technology that sits out of service.

Communication Devices, Inc. (CDI) produces a line of appliances that have the ability to securely stand up remote sites via POTS lines and the PSTN.  The Secure Out-of-Band Management equipment offers Strong Authentication and 256b Encryption without network access. When the network is available, CDI products take advantage of all that a network connection brings to the table.  Our devices can authenticate an RSA SecurID token without a network connection.  In addition to the equipment, CDI offers an OBM (management) platform that can provide device monitoring capabilities to ensure equipment is running, errors can be sent to Syslog or SNMP engines.
www.commdevices.com/solutions will provide more detail about products.