Technology Landscape in Conglomerate Industries

Manufacturing plants may look like small cities composed of large warehouses with pipes, tanks, and towers, however, industrial sites, such as oil refineries, are some of the most technologically advanced spaces where engineers and scientists rely on electronic devices to turn crude oil into valuable fuels and chemical components to make millions of day-to-day consumer products. The assembly lines at factory worksites comprise a reliable system of heavy industrial equipment connected to computing devices that kick start and monitor every manufacturing process. Industrial PCs (IPCs) are installed factory-wide for engineers to manage the progress and status of workflow taking place at each workstation. The industry’s technological infrastructure further extends to the corporate level where companywide control centres are imperative to combine production with business operations. Technology has become a key player in helping conglomerate industries manufacture everyday essential products to meet the demands of the world.

It System-Backup Solutions Fall Short

The operational technology (OT) in large-scale industries are networked through central IPCs that are set up with Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) controller, a multiple-disk-drive storage technology, for data redundancy. RAID performs disk mirroring techniques to keep data availability on multiple physical drives as a form of system backup. Production plants employ IPC with RAID technology to protect and reinforce their OT systems for the purpose of preventing technical disruptions that may affect system operations. While IPC with RAID technology has contributed to business continuity plans, its technical diagnosis continues to lie in power cycling or system recovery services. Recent increase in ransomware attacks have also proven costly and detrimental to business operations1 . Ransomware effectively hijacks confidential data, freezes OT systems, and forces mission-critical industries to suspend system operations that can average 15 days of downtime. IBM X-Force IRIS2 estimates a staggering total cost of “$239 million per incident, on average” incurred on large multinational companies for ransomware negotiations, forensics, and revenue loss over downtime.2 Additionally, IPC with multiple storage disk drives requires larger physical storage space at industrial worksites. Though hardware replacements may also help resolve technical issues, removing the failing disk from the RAID array and replacing a new disk drive is time-consuming and expensive. The sheer colossal size of manufacturing plants also renders on-site OT repair ineffective and laborintensive. The time wasted on communicating and determining which local area devices need technical support jeopardizes the uptime of the entire industry’s technical flow.

Pain Relief with Allxon swiftDR Series

Allxon swiftDR Series addresses the market’s pain points by focusing on providing fast and secure disaster recovery (DR) solutions and remote device management services. Allxon swiftDR Series features two main DR solutions: Allxon swiftDR for Power Cycling and Allxon swiftDR for SSD Recovery. Allxon swiftDR Series is designed to maintain business continuity for missioncritical industries, such as those in oil, utility, renewable energy, textile etc., that need scalable and flexible smart technology in their factories.

1 Coveware. “Ransomware Payments Up 33% As Maze and Sodinokibi Proliferate in Q1 2020.” Coveware. 29 April 2020. 2 IBM. “X-Force Threat Intelligence Index.” IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS). February 2020.

Restart: Out-Of-Band Power Cycling

Allxon swiftDR for Power Cycling features Allxon Out-Of-Band (OOB) Power Cycling function, which is a powerful disaster recovery tool, that enables corporations to instantly resolve system unresponsive errors by remotely switching their computing devices off and back on. With Allxon swiftDR for Power Cycling, Allxon helps industries cut down on exponential costs previously expended on onsite administrative labor and technical support. On Allxon’s easy-to-navigate portal, corporations can detect system failures within seconds, and remotely shut down and restart system operations in just a click of a button. Allxon helps businesses save time and expenses on high operational costs.

Recover: System Backup

Allxon focuses on providing large-scale industries fast system-recovery solutions. Allxon swiftDR for SSD Recovery functions on Allxon Portal, an end-to-end encrypted cloud portal, to help corporations remotely conduct secure OT backup at edge. The solution can trigger OT backup to save systems to a restore point. In an event where technical operations have been disrupted, Allxon swiftDR for SSD Recovery helps large corporations minimize downtime by remotely performing systemrestore on Allxon Portal to roll back operations to an earlier date, thus restoring industrial assembly lines back to optimal level in seconds.

Revive: Partitioned Full Disk Backup

Allxon swiftDR for SSD Recovery prepares industries that run on technical operations for one of its most feared disasters. Ransomware has become a popular threat to missioncritical businesses; as do deadly viruses have its equal share in damaging system operations. As a disaster recovery solution, what sets Allxon apart from regular data storage and DR solutions is their exclusive firmware technology that enables full disk backup on the same physical Solid-state Drive (SSD). In an event where the main storage partition has been attacked by ransomware or other deadly viruses, Allxon © Allxon 2020. all rights reserved. Restart, Recover, and Revive with the Latest Disaster Recovery Solution swiftDR for SSD Recovery maintains business continuity by recovering OT systems back to an earlier restore point. Unlike regular storage technology that continues to backup and spread infected data throughout the company’s computing system, Allxon swiftDR for SSD Recovery can help corporations isolate and separate the infected partition for digital or ransomware forensics while corporations resume system operations. Allxon considers aspects that are beyond the technological field. Not only does Allxon swiftDR Series boast rapid disaster recovery solutions within seconds, its compact firmware technology design is also a space-saving application that helps large-scale industries make better use of physical space that was previously taken to multiple physical storage drives. Allxon swiftDR Series leads as a disaster recovery solution, helping major conglomerate firms optimize system operations. Allxon empowers industries with better risk management solutions to help industries excel and continue to serve market needs.