When a robust, secure link is needed for your data
Despite recent developments in cloud computing of late, it’s clear for many enterprises that not everything can be run over a public, unstructured network of networks. For some applications, you still need a private point-to-point connection that is robust, secure, and mighty fast. In this article, learn more about point-to-point connectivity.
A Point-To-Point Private Connection For The Most Important Tasks
Table of contents
Direct From Point A To Point B
A Secure Pipe For Data
Building A Good Foundation
Why Super Direct Service?
Resilience For Unexpected Situations
Speeds, Protocols, and Interconnection
Direct From Point A To Point B
Business resiliency is a key determinant of a business’ long-term prospects in today’s uncertain climate. So is cybersecurity, given the growing menace of online threats that could derail an enterprise’s transformation efforts.
Despite recent developments in cloud computing of late, it’s clear for many enterprises that not everything can be run over a public, unstructured network of networks.
For some applications, you still need a private point-to-point connection that is robust, secure, and mighty fast.
Think of mission-critical tasks that require sensitive data to be transported securely from a data center to a head office, without going through a public network.
Governments, trading firms, and many large enterprises often require a private, point-to-point network that has encryption built in to protect the data against the growing threat of cyber attacks.
In a report in June 2020, the Cyber Security Agency (CSA) of Singapore highlighted the rise of cyber threats targeted at various local industries, such as e-commerce, banking, and finance. Malicious activities included website defacements, phishing incidents, and malware infections, reported the Business Times.
A Secure Pipe For Data
For many enterprises, there could also be tasks that require a large amount of data or high velocity of transactions to be sent across a private network that requires a high-bandwidth link, which is simply not available with other options.
One example is the backing up of sensitive data from a primary data center to a remote location for disaster recovery or business continuity. Enterprises in the healthcare, financial, or government sectors often require this.
Yet another use case is today’s work-from-home arrangements. With a private link, enterprises can set up a single trunk connection that hooks up their headquarters to their data center or cloud service to cater to the growing traffic from users connecting to their office apps from home.
The data traffic is only going to trend up further in the years ahead, as digitalization efforts are being accelerated to cope with the disruption of the 2020 pandemic.
As an indicator of the so-called “new normal” to be expected with this unprecedented event, The Straits Times reported in April 2020 that Internet traffic in Singapore had spiked by as much as 60 per cent2.
To address such sharp increases in resource demands, CIOs and other IT leaders have a few ways to respond. One is to scale up through trusted third parties while abstracting one’s infrastructure functions even as a business grows.
However, this is not possible for every enterprise, especially those with regulatory requirements for data protection, for example. An alternative is to buy basic foundational components from a trusted partner and build on them.
Building A Good Foundation
When it comes to telecom infrastructure, a private point-to-point connection is one obvious way forward. With an able in-house team, an enterprise can purchase such a connection to build and run their own apps, security, and other software layers.
This can be used in several scenarios, where performance and security are paramount. From delivering a secure workspace for staff to enabling mission-critical apps, this point-to-point link will provide robustness and performance that are hard to beat.
What are the key features that a CIO should look out for in such point-to-point connectivity? Here are four important ones:
- Robust performance: How much guaranteed bandwidth and low latency can it deliver between two sites, say, to support hundreds of staff?
- Built-in security: How is the end-to-end encryption delivered across the connection?
- Ease of deployment: How easy is it for your staff to build your other network layers and apps on top of the link?
- Connections to other nodes: Does the point-to-point link include a way to easily interconnect two data centers without hassle?
Why Super Direct Service?
Picking a service provider is never easy. The decision goes beyond the specs on a Powerpoint and rests more on the real-world performance and reliability that a service provider can offer.
Backed by a self-built private fiber network that connects businesses throughout Singapore, StarHub has been delivering robust and secure connectivity to enterprises for years.
Super Direct Service (SDS) is StarHub’s fully managed, point-to-point connectivity service that delivers a private link between locations for enterprises to carry out core and backup operations in Singapore.
Capable of ultra-high bandwidth of up to 100Gbps, it guarantees gigabit speeds for enterprise customers seeking the best connectivity option for their mission-critical tasks.
These could range from the backup of sensitive data to connections for remote workers to securely access corporate apps on a data center, for example.
For these mission-critical tasks, resiliency is a key concern. StarHub SDS is designed with full redundancy and auto-fiber reroute paths to provide maximum network uptime availability.
It is useful to note that full restoration of the network can be done with the SDS premium service, which offers fiber protection for better security.
Resilience For Unexpected Situations
StarHub’s SDS premium service also delivers fiber path diversity, which means that enterprises reduce the risk of downtime arising from the occasional damage to fiber cables or telecom exchanges.
Other important factors are flexibility, support, and performance. Increasingly, large enterprises are seeking a link provided by StarHub’s SDS because they can customize how they use the high-bandwidth link for their apps and services.
They are backed by technical support that is always ready. Fully available 24×7, SDS comes with support that is just minutes away from StarHub’s Singapore-based Network Management Team and Service Level Assurances. Around-the-clock support team makes this possible.
Speeds, Protocols, and Interconnection
One crucial success factor for many enterprises is the flexibility of a connection that they can deploy for multiple uses over time, to respond quickly to both planned and unplanned changes.
In choosing a robust connectivity solution, they have to ensure that they can connect to emerging technology standards while ensuring that the foundation of their entire network is secure through encryption.
StarHub’s SDS delivers various speeds, depending on the requirements of customers and the networking protocol that they are utilizing.
They can choose from 1Gbps, 2.5Gbps, 10Gbps, or 100Gbps bandwidth on the StarHub network built on Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology. It supports multiple protocols including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and SONET, so there is wide compatibility with the systems deployed by customers.
At the same time, they can opt for Layer 1 encryption and maximum network traffic security should they wish to have the best protection at the physical level.
This means enterprises can transmit information securely through the encrypted network with the highest performance at a competitive price.
Source: StarHub
