Video: Dallas Cowboys Protect Data With Online Fortress

[Boyzmamacita]

[youtube]0YtgIs-1Jww[/youtube]

The Cowboys website is the most visited NFL site. I only go there for multimedia at this point.

 

[STAR GAZER]

Very interesting thanks for posting that.

 

[Cowboy Brian]

interesting

 

[Reality]

:laugh2:

I love how the media makes it seem like it's a secret government agency facility with extensive and unique security and redundancy. There are hundreds of hosting companies, data centers, etc. with the same type of infrastructure in place. All data centers have multiple layers of security and power redundancy in place or they don't keep their clients.

Let's see how "redundant" they are if that hosting facility takes a direct hit from a tornado. If they really wanted to prove how secure and redundant they are, they would have multiple data centers located throughout the US that would serve users based on geographical location and would act as a true live backup solution should one of their data centers experience outages or damage.

The funny part about this is you never hear about hackers/criminals breaking into data centers or hosting facilities yet that's the "vault" that protects the Cowboys site. The internet offers hackers/criminals a direct line into their servers bypassing all that security

-Reality

 

[Bob Sacamano]

If they really wanted to prove how secure and redundant they are, they would have multiple data centers located throughout the US that would serve users based on geographical location and would act as a true live backup solution should one of their data centers experience outages or damage.

:explode:

-Reality

 

[theogt]

Holy cripes is this a slow offseason or what?

 

[big dog cowboy]

Good to know. I'll sleep better tonight now.

 

[Cowboy Brian]

Good to know. I'll sleep better tonight now.

I surely will.

 

[windjc]

A newstory like this is just more likely to get their website hacked.

They couldn't stop real hackers if those hackers wanted to get in.

If someone can hack Google, then they sure as hell can hack dc.com.

 

[Cowboy Brian]

A newstory like this is just more likely to get their website hacked.

They couldn't stop real hackers if those hackers wanted to get in.

If someone can hack Google, then they sure as hell can hack dc.com.

well the hacks yesterday on youtube really weren't hacks lol from what i've heard it was just someone discovering a glitch in the comment system.

 

[Big D]

:laugh2:

I love how the media makes it seem like it's a secret government agency facility with extensive and unique security and redundancy. There are hundreds of hosting companies, data centers, etc. with the same type of infrastructure in place. All data centers have multiple layers of security and power redundancy in place or they don't keep their clients.

Let's see how "redundant" they are if that hosting facility takes a direct hit from a tornado. If they really wanted to prove how secure and redundant they are, they would have multiple data centers located throughout the US that would serve users based on geographical location and would act as a true live backup solution should one of their data centers experience outages or damage.

The funny part about this is you never hear about hackers/criminals breaking into data centers or hosting facilities yet that's the "vault" that protects the Cowboys site. The internet offers hackers/criminals a direct line into their servers bypassing all that security

-Reality

Well said. Big metal doors to the server room that'll keep the hackers out! :laugh2:

 

[fan62]

I worked for AT&T for over 30 years and not once did I see a hacker take down their nationwide network. Saw a few attacks but they were usually automatically dealt with. I worked pure IT security for seven years. Did a lot of work but mostly boring because we found the weakness before the system went online. I never did so much stat work as I did in security, because abnormal stats pointed to possible intrusions in most cases.
In some cases there were computers analyzing data on the main system and then there were 2 more mainframe computers that were analyzing the data from the second computer.

 

[Longboysfan]

:laugh2:

I love how the media makes it seem like it's a secret government agency facility with extensive and unique security and redundancy. There are hundreds of hosting companies, data centers, etc. with the same type of infrastructure in place. All data centers have multiple layers of security and power redundancy in place or they don't keep their clients.

Let's see how "redundant" they are if that hosting facility takes a direct hit from a tornado. If they really wanted to prove how secure and redundant they are, they would have multiple data centers located throughout the US that would serve users based on geographical location and would act as a true live backup solution should one of their data centers experience outages or damage.

The funny part about this is you never hear about hackers/criminals breaking into data centers or hosting facilities yet that's the "vault" that protects the Cowboys site. The internet offers hackers/criminals a direct line into their servers bypassing all that security

-Reality

Well they should have a backup site located somewhere in the US.
All large places have that.
So Neosphire has two sited one backs up the other - Dallas and Atlanta.
Simple.

 

[Boyzmamacita]

Very interesting thanks for posting that.

You're welcome.

 

[Reality]

Well they should have a backup site located somewhere in the US.
All large places have that.
So Neosphire has two sited one backs up the other - Dallas and Atlanta.
Simple.

I doubt very seriously they have a distributed live server cluster for DallasCowboys.com running concurrently in two or more data centers. Just because they have multiple data centers (almost every single major hosting company has them) doesn't mean they are "backups" as you put it. I own two cars but if one breaks down while I am on a trip, the other doesn't provide me any immediate benefit.

The TV interview focused completely on "the vault" that protects the Cowboys website, which is quite laughable. Neospire of course focused on marketing the "we have redundancy" angle but they also point out their redundancy is only inside that Dallas data center in the form of 6-day generators and their state of the art security system includes multiple security doors and closed caption video, both of which became popular in the 1980s. Leading edge, they are .. *rollseyes*

-Reality

 

[Longboysfan]

I doubt very seriously they have a distributed live server cluster for DallasCowboys.com running concurrently in two or more data centers. Just because they have multiple data centers (almost every single major hosting company has them) doesn't mean they are "backups" as you put it. I own two cars but if one breaks down while I am on a trip, the other doesn't provide me any immediate benefit.

The TV interview focused completely on "the vault" that protects the Cowboys website, which is quite laughable. Neospire of course focused on marketing the "we have redundancy" angle but they also point out their redundancy is only inside that Dallas data center in the form of 6-day generators and their state of the art security system includes multiple security doors and closed caption video, both of which became popular in the 1980s. Leading edge, they are .. *rollseyes*

-Reality

The Cowboys must have it in their contract. They backup all data to the other site along with software.

Primary site goes down - they move the host to the other site.
This is not a car where you have to walk home to get the other - dual redundancy. Flip a switch if it's not automated.

With the 4 million hits a month... that is a lot of bandwidth and money passing into the Cowboys - care to give it up????

The 6 day generator is they have enough gas - diesel in most cases to stay on-line in case power outage. And they would have a contract in place to get a refill when needed.

As for actual security = standard data center practice.
Usually the 4 levels to get to the servers and few have access to that area.

 

[Hagman]

Does anyone else think that the latest edition of the Cowboys website is awful? I have the hardest time going there now and finding roster information, or just about anything else besides buying merchandise. It's nice to have all this security info protecting information, but it would be nice to have more useful info on the website itself.

 

[adbutcher]

Good to know. I'll sleep better tonight now.

:laugh2:

 

[Boyzmamacita]

Does anyone else think that the latest edition of the Cowboys website is awful? I have the hardest time going there now and finding roster information, or just about anything else besides buying merchandise. It's nice to have all this security info protecting information, but it would be nice to have more useful info on the website itself.

I don't like the appearance or navigation. I have the multimedia page in my Favorites, so I hardly ever go to the home page. If it's getting 4 million hits a month, then there are plenty of people who like the site, but I liked the old site better (and it wasn't that great then).

 

[Reality]

The Cowboys must have it in their contract. They backup all data to the other site along with software.

Primary site goes down - they move the host to the other site.

Moving a site from one data center to another data center requires IP address changes and you obviously are not familiar with intricacies and issues with DNS propagation. Most DNS servers have a TTL setting of 24-48 hours which means every ISP, user, etc. will cache the IP address associated with domain names for up to 24 to 48 hours. However, the only problem with that is that a lot of major ISPs do not follow TTL and choose their own caching period which can be several days longer.

This is why upgrading the CZ servers (which are stored in one of several data centers with our host) to new servers means new IP addresses which means that for 24-48 hours a lot of of users will not be able to access the site no matter what I or the hosting company do to prevent this. That is why the last time we upgraded, I set up additional URLs to point to the new servers so that users could access them. The difference is that I had the benefit of knowing what was going to happen so I was able to tell the users about it days before it happen so they could be prepared.

I can guarantee you that if the Neospire datacenter takes a direct hit from a tornado or worse, DC.com will be offline at minimum 48 hours. As for the generators, they are not infallible either. One hosting company I used for years was one of the largest in the country with state of the art technology, backups and security. The electric company was installing new high capacity power lines in their area for a new large office complex being built and proceeded to not only sever the connection but also take out a large number of the hosting company's generators. During Katrina, generators were everywhere and being sold off flat bed trucks who were shipping them in non-stop. However, gas was scarce due to gas stations having no power so a lot of people had generators that were not even usable.

With the 4 million hits a month... that is a lot of bandwidth and money passing into the Cowboys - care to give it up????

I have run sites with more than 2 million hits in a day and more than 4 million unique users in a month. While it is a lot of traffic, I would hope they are not Neospire's largest client.

As for actual security = standard data center practice.
Usually the 4 levels to get to the servers and few have access to that area.

Someone wanting to break into the dallascowboys.com website would not go to a data center to do it no matter how detailed or limited the security in place. They would do it online.

-Reality