Ransomware represents one of the primary threats every size organization currently faces. The latest surveys reveal the percentage of businesses experiencing ransomware attacks may be higher than anyone initially thought. These statistics suggest it is only matter of when, not if, an organization experiences a ransomware attack.
Storage and security represent two technologies that have circled each for nearly two decades with negligible success in coming together. That may have finally changed this week. StorMagic’s acquisition of KeyNexus represents the coming together of two technologies that finally makes sense for everyone involved.
Organizations everywhere currently must grapple with how to best prepare for and respond to the corona virus. Many must currently make decisions on the fly and formulate responses with only partial or information. Thankfully, when it comes to dealing with another threat they face, ransomware, they have better information and answers. Already, many backup solutions offer a two-pronged response to ransomware.
Ask anyone how to defeat ransomware and software from cyber security providers may first come to mind. These include Avast, Bitdefender, Malwarebytes, Sophos, and others. Mention using backup software to defeat ransomware and people may look at you like you have lost your mind. Crazy or not, backup software now incorporates features that serve as a secondary perimeter to defend against ransomware attacks.
Everyone attending VMworld last week no doubt saw the slogan “Make Your Mark” predominantly displayed everywhere. Whether it was in the Moscone Center, the San Francisco airport or the highways and byways leading to downtown San Francisco, VMware sought to make an impression on attendees. Having now left VMworld 2019, perhaps the most indelible mark that VMware left on me and other attendees was its intentions to make Kubernetes a center piece in its future offerings.
Malware – and specifically ransomware – tends to regularly make headlines with some business somewhere in the world reporting having its data encrypted by it. Due to this routine occurrence, companies need to acknowledge that their standard first line defenses such as cybersecurity and backup software no longer completely suffice to detect malware. To augment these defenses, companies need to take new steps to shore up these traditional defenses which, for many, will start with creating a secondary perimeter around their backup stores to detect the presence of malware.
Yesterday I broke away from my normal routine of analyzing enterprise data protection and data storage technologies to take a closer look at enterprise security. To do so, I stopped by the Omaha Tech Security Conference held at the local Hilton Omaha conference center and visited some of the vendors’ booths to learn more about their respective technologies. In so doing, it quickly became evident from my conversations with a number of security providers that they recognize their need to introduce Big Data analytics into their products to convert the data, events, and incidents that they record and log into meaningful analysis that organizations can consume and act upon.
VMware and its suite of products have largely been designed by geeks, for geeks, with VMware pulling no punches about this claim. VMware’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, is himself a self-professed geek which is made evident a couple of times in his VMworld keynote. But where he personally and VMware corporately have made big steps forward in the last few years is stripping out the technical mumbo-jumbo that can so easily beset VMware’s product suite and better translating its value proposition into “business speak.” This change in focus and language was put on full display during Gelsinger’s portion of the opening keynotes that kicked off the VMworld 2015 conference.
The closer any new solution comes to being non-disruptively introduced into existing organizational backup infrastructures, the greater the odds that the solution will succeed and be adopted more broadly. By Dell including FIPS 140-2 compliant 256-bit AES encryption and VTL features as part of its 3.2 OS release for its existing and new DR series of backup appliances at no charge, organizations have new options to introduce the DR Series appliances without disrupting their existing backup processes.
Backup software has traditionally been one of the “stickiest” products in organizations of all sizes in art because it has been so painful to deploy and maintain that, once installed and sort of working, no organization wanted to subject itself to that process again. But in recent years as backup has become easier to install and maintain, swapping it out for another or consolidating multiple backup software solutions down to single one becomes much more plausible. This puts new impetus on backup software providers to introduce new features into their products to keep them relevant and “sticky” in their customer environments longer term.
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