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State of INFOCOM August 2013

Greeting Marines,
Now that we have wrapped up IC and we are head into the second half of the year, some of us have started thinking about our plans for the upcoming holidays at the end of you year. I would suggest to take some of that time and plan on backing up your computer data. As an IT professional with over 20 years of experience, I get those panicked calls all the time with the person one the other end of the line either mad of frantic because their computer has crashed. They say “everything is on my computer”. Sometimes it a virus and sometimes it is a hardware failure. My first question is “Do you have a backup of your data?” and the majority of the time the answer is no. If your computer hard drive fails and that is the only place you have your important data, then 9 out of 10 times it is lost forever. If anyone has ever had this happen to them you know what I’m talking about. If you get a virus or have an issue with your computer and you take it into a repair shop they may or may not recover your data. Everyone needs to back up their important data, keep it in at least two places. A lot of people keep a backup on an external USB hard drive or a USB thumb drive. This is better than having nothing at all but when I say “keep the important data in more than one place” that can mean different locations as well. Ok let’s say you have your data backup to an USB hard drive attached to your computer, what happens if you have a fire or if your home is broken into and your computer is stolen? The two copies of the data didn’t really matter because they were in the same location and now both are gone. The new buzz word in the IT industry is “backup to the cloud” Basically these are companies that offer a service to back up your computer files to the “cloud” or internet servers. Most of these services are fairly inexpensive or free for home use and can give you an option for off-site back. The only drawback is you need a high-speed internet connection for this to work. Security is also a concern, look at how the company will encrypt and protect our data. Let me tell you this is a vast improvement in the old system of off-site backup, which was sending your backup tapes out to iron mountain in a lock box every day. This is something to really consider. Do some research and see if any of the several solution are right for you.
We are still having difficulties in filling key staff positions in INFOCOM. The G-3 Publications Officer and a Web Team staff. INFOCOM has several projects we will be under taking in the near future and these staff shortages will impact the time it will take to complete these projects. If you have any questions in regards to any INFOCOM staff positions please let me know.
We have added the new Special Operations Parachute Qualification Wings (SO-150, SO-13 old) to the SFMC QM site. I have also added the new Brigadier 4 diamond rank pins. There are available in the small and large sizes. Stop by the QM site and have a look.

And in closing here are the pingdom stats for August.
August
Uptime: 99.80%
Outages: 4
Downtime 1h 30m
Response time: 443 ms
Thank you,
BGEN Mark “Slayer” Anderson
Commanding Officer, Information Command (COINFOCOM)
STARFLEET Marine Corps]]>