Setting the stage – The need for Business Continuity and the threat of Cyber Attacks
This year, I had the privilege of again attending Commvault SHIFT 2024, following an exceptional experience at last year’s event. Conferences like these are invaluable in an industry that evolves so rapidly, where staying relevant and informed is more critical than ever. With a plethora of topics and innovations emerging constantly, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of everything. That’s why choosing the right events to attend becomes essential—it’s about being strategic with time and energy to focus on professional development while managing my work and personal life. In a world where industry events seem endless, it’s important to filter through the noise and select those that provide real, actionable insights.
Commvault SHIFT 2024 delivered just that—an experience that was not only insightful but also a bit sobering. The keynote, delivered by Commvault CEO Sanjay, brought attention to an alarming statistic: 50% of organisations operating remotely have fallen victim to cyber-attacks. This revelation put into perspective just how high the stakes have become in the modern digital landscape. Cybersecurity is no longer just an IT issue; it’s a core business risk, and the weight of this challenge is resting squarely on the shoulders of CIOs and CISOs globally. What was once an emerging concern is now a full-scale battle, one that no organisation can afford to ignore.
This concern is further validated by IDC’s recent statistic in my part of the world that 59% of Asia-Pacific enterprises were targeted by ransomware attacks in 2023. The frequency and severity of these attacks are growing at an alarming rate, placing unprecedented pressure on organisations to fortify their defences. The evolving nature of these threats underscores why cybersecurity is at the top of the agenda for most businesses today.
These statistics alone paint a vivid picture of the relentless fight against cybercrime. Companies are not just dealing with routine breaches; they are battling sophisticated, evolving threats that could jeopardise their entire IT operations. This escalating cyber threat landscape perfectly frames the purpose and mission of companies like Commvault. Their innovative solutions, designed to protect and recover critical data, have become more important than ever, playing a pivotal role in this ongoing battle.
What struck me most was how it emphasised the need for a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to data protection and cybersecurity, With the rise of remote work and digital transformation, companies can no longer afford to be complacent. Organisations need to shift their mindset from simply protecting the perimeter to focusing on data resiliency and recovery as key components of their overall strategy.
Commvault’s ability to innovate and adapt in this climate is exactly what sets them apart. Their tools and strategies not only help mitigate the risks but also equip businesses with the agility to bounce back quickly when faced with inevitable cyber threats. The industry’s future will rely heavily on such technologies, and companies that fail to invest in this area may soon find themselves left behind.
Cybercriminals are smart and attack the heart
Most of us know the importance of Active Directory and everything that hangs off it, which is pretty much everything. And this is why Commvault highlights that out of 10 cyber-attacks, 9 of them are targeted at Active Directory. This is staggering!
There are multiple reasons as to why this is the case, it’s quite simple – Active Directory serves as the hub for an organisation’s IT environment, it manages user accounts, devices, and permissions across the network. By gaining access, attackers can elevate their privileges, create new accounts, or alter permissions to maintain control and move laterally within the environment. It also contains privileged accounts such as domain admins, which have unrestricted access across the network.
Compromising these accounts allows attackers to perform actions like installing malware, exfiltrating data, or shutting down services without detection. The result is widespread given the architecture of Active Directory and what it plugs into.
A shift or a complete Change? Continuous Business in 2024.
The concept of Business Continuity still exists in today’s world, but the shift as it can be interpreted and what I think struck me most was how it emphasised the need for a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to data protection and cybersecurity. This is the shift from Business Continuity (Reactive) to Continuous Business and while Business Continuity traditionally focuses on restoring operations after disruptions, Continuous Business emphasises proactive measures to prevent downtime altogether. This shift is driven by the need for seamless availability, faster response times, and stronger data resilience.
To Commvault, Continuous Business brings together 5 pillars – Security, Rebalance, Readiness and Recovery, this thought leadership approach, proactive thinking ability to provoke the thought that while cyber-attacks are high – the whole notion of “Continuous” almost diminishes the concern or dismisses them altogether knowing there is a platform like this that exists.
And Commvault’s ability to innovate and adapt in this climate is exactly what sets them apart. Their tools and strategies not only help mitigate the risks but also equip businesses with the agility to bounce back quickly when faced with inevitable cyber threats. The industry’s future will rely heavily on such technologies, and companies that fail to invest and not transform in this area may soon find themselves left behind. And Commvault is at the forefront of this transformation, providing cutting-edge solutions that ensure uninterrupted operations in an increasingly complex data environment.
Further Expansion and Integration into the Hyperscalers
SHIFT 2024 also saw a new list of enhancements for customers operating in the cloud:
Cleanroom Recovery: Commvault is expanding its Cleanroom Recovery solution to AWS, enabling organisations to recover and rebuild their cloud infrastructure in a secure, isolated environment. This dedicated recovery zone supports forensic analysis and regular testing of recovery plans, ensuring businesses are well-prepared for future cyber threats. I first wrote about the introduction of Cleanroom Recovery last year in this post so take a read.
Air Gap Protect: This feature provides an immutable, isolated backup of customer data within a secure Commvault tenant, ensuring critical data remains untouchable, even in the event of a widespread cyberattack.
Cyber Resilience for Amazon S3: Utilising Commvault’s acquisition of Clumio (Shout out to Poojan), this solution allows organisations to restore clean, malware-free versions of their data stored in Amazon S3 in the event of a ransomware attack. Nice and simple!
Additionally, Commvault has enhanced its cloud data protection capabilities for Google Workspace, safeguarding services like Gmail, Google Drive, and Shared Drives. As more businesses rely on cloud-based SaaS applications to serve their employees and customers, this offering ensures that critical business data remains protected, compliant, and recoverable in the event of data loss or a cyber incident.
Cloud Rewind
Now this is super cool, and super powerful for organisations. It’s like a magic wand that casts time machine capability to your IT environment – both infrastructure and applications.
In a nutshell, Commvault Cloud rewind is a cloud-native solution designed to restore not just data, but entire cloud environments. This includes applications and infrastructure. Leveraging Appranix technology (Commvault acquired Appranix earlier this year), Cloud Rewind enables organisations to effectively “rewind” to the last clean state before a cyber incident, automating the restoration of applications and infrastructure across cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure. This significantly reduces downtime, cutting recovery time objectives from days or weeks to just minutes.
Why is this important (and useful)? In today’s cybercrime ridden landscape (remember the statistic above), where enterprises operate numerous applications across multiple cloud environments, swiftly restoring full operational capacity is crucial for ensuring business continuity. Cloud Rewind tackles this challenge head on by automating intricate processes relating to recovery, minimising manual human intervention, and significantly shortening recovery time following an attack.
In closing
In amongst the expansion of product features to further integrate into hyperscaler’s like Google, Commvault delivered a well-thought-out and insightful event, prompting us to rethink how we approach business continuity to allow continuous business and again enlightening us on the ongoing battle against cyber-attacks and ransomware in today’s world.
As a personal takeaway, the whole event got me thinking that no organisation or vertical with an online presence is safe from these attacks (the research and statistics show that), and thankfully there are companies such as Commvault that are dedicated to safeguarding these organisations and making it easy in the process.
By allowing their platform to integrate seamlessly with cloud environments, providing flexibility and scalability, while ensuring that data is always accessible and recoverable. Commvault empowers businesses to thrive in a world where downtime is not an option, ensuring that data security and protection form the backbone of Continuous Business and the fight against cyber-attacks.
Commvault Shift is here!! And already the twitter-verse (can we still call it that?) is alive with announcements and new innovations announced at the Commvault SHIFT event in London yesterday!
Without jumping ahead and trying to learn too much before the virtual event, I’m excited to explore what Commvault Cloud Rewind has to offer. I’m eager to hear about their capabilities and how it’s shaping the future of cloud data management.
What excites me the most, though, is probably the opportunity to hear directly from Commvault’s CEO, Sanjay Mirchandani, as he introduces The BIG Shift in Chapter 1 of the event. His insights on the transformative changes in the industry and how Commvault is leading the charge will undoubtedly be eye-opening.
And just like that, Commvault Shift has returned once again. If you’ve followed my previous blog posts on Commvault SHIFT, you’ll know it’s a valuable industry event. I’m a strong advocate for attending such events to stay current and informed, especially with the rapid pace of technological advancements. Additionally, this learning opportunities will give your career a competitive advantage if you are a cloud practitioner in the field.
When reading up on the event, the first thing (and it took me back to my first ever SHIFT event) is just how much again Commvault has again positioned itself as a real Cyber Security player, I used to think of Commvault (and others) as just a “Backup company” but the whole genre of business continuity has been redefined and reimagined to be so much more than just backup. It’s now about cyber resilience, data management and disaster recovery which make up just some of the hallmarks of business continuity.
And Commvault Shift 2024 promises to deliver and showcase innovative advancements in these areas so I highly recommend registering (link below) and joining, theres a bunch of great speakers, topics and content lined up.
For me, I always find the keynotes as the highlight to set the scene for the event, this year Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani will again share their vision for the future of Business Continuity and Cyber resilience which is always inspiring to hear.
Heres what you need to know about the event
When is it?
Wednesday, 9 October | 1:00PM ET
Thursday, 10 October | 10:00AM CEST and 1:00PM AEST
You may remember that Commvault Shift 2023 happened back in November 2023, at the time – I attended (virtually) and one of the coolest features they announced (and also certainly one of the coolest features I have seen in the Backup and Recovery space) was something called Commvault® Cloud Cleanroom Recovery
In my blog post covering the event at the time, I highlighted some key insights: Alongside the staggering 30-billion-dollar impact of ransomware on businesses, which underscores the severe threat it poses to companies of all sizes, Commvault introduced a new feature called Cleanroom Recovery.
This feature streamlines the recovery process, reducing downtime, and enabling businesses to quickly restore normal operations after a ransomware attack. In the old days, to test a backup viability of being able to restore from it, companies had to have a dedicated backup environment for every single critical app, on every server, in every location separate from each other.
That’s a lot of investment to allocate to something that is not needed all the time, and most companies just can’t afford to fund this. The need for this feature was valid and so clear.
Recently Commvault has made some super awesome enhancements to the Cleanroom Recovery capability to allow customers to test their recovery plans across their entire IT estate.
How do they do this? First, they are announcing support for SaaS deployment, being that this removes the requirement to dedicate a platform to run the environment, this gives any customer the option to access its capabilities from anywhere on the internet making fast recovery testing super accessible. And as the Cleanroom Recovery service is now being hosted in Microsoft Azure, customers can run up a recovery test and only pay for the consumption of what they use and for however long they use it. No more dedicated on-standby environments saving thousands of dollars in capital expense and ongoing maintenance costs.
The need for recovery is critical, even more than backup!
A lot of technologists in this space say backup is important, but recovery is critical. Without proven and tested recoveries, then backups are more or less useless as they cant be relied on, and the worse possible time to find a backup dataset is unable to be recovered is during a disaster or severity one.
This forms the business needs for regular scheduled testing of recoveries, but how does one achieve this when production environment is in play, and attempting to test recoveries have the potential to cause a performance impact on the primary infrastructure? Testing in a live environment can disrupt normal operations, leading to productivity loss and customer dissatisfaction. By using an isolated environment, companies can conduct thorough recovery testing without impacting production systems and ultimately customer or user experiences.
The need for Cleanroom
That really where Commvault CleanRoom recovery comes in, removing the concern for not only production impact, but also ensuring the recovery process is tested in a safe way completely isolating your most precious data (production) away from harm. In fact, in an isolated environment, organisations can ensure that the testing does not create any risk by spreading any existing malware or other threats to live production systems. This effectively helps maintain the integrity and security of the primary environment while still conducting comprehensive tests (and validity of recovery) by making it merely impossible for contaminated data to make its way in.
Testing in isolation also provides an opportunity to analyse any potential threats or gaps in the environment without interference from active production systems. Again, this helps organisations understand the root cause of an attack (potentially before it happens to the production environment), how it occurred, and what damage was inflicted, allowing them to learn from the incident and proactively improve their security position and defences.
Embrace the breach!! – The value of Cleanroom for Recovery testing for reducing Business Impact
By creating a secure, isolated test environment, organisations can safely uncover vulnerabilities and weaknesses in their systems without risking exposure to real threats or causing performance hits. It cant be understated what the impact could be for these organisations who run the risk of testing their recovery capabilities without it.
In addition to Cleanroom Recovery feature improvements, there has been some notable graphical interface enhancements, heres a quick snapshot on three popular views.
Cleanroom Recovery Groups
A recovery group for CleanRoom is a logical container that groups together entities (such as virtual machines ) that need to be recovered together into the Commvault cleanroom environment, you can also set priority on which recovery groups needs to be restored first.
Restore Jobs
An extremely easy way to see if your recovery testing succeeds or not, and when start and end times occur indicating RTOs obligations
Finally, The Company Overview dashboard
Certainly the best dashboard and perhaps most important for quick and easy visibility into gauging the company’s backup and recovery health check.
A special event for Security Buffs – RSA Conference 2024
But wait, there’s more! – I am also excited to share that from this Monday 6th May, the highly anticipated RSA Conference 2024 | Save Your Spot (commvault.com) is happening at Moscone Center in San Francisco, USA. Although I can’t attend in person, there is a bunch of information online about the event –
With the theme “The Art of Possible,” There is a heap of distinguished speakers set to share their insights on the latest cybersecurity trends, challenges, and solutions. The roster of speakers includes Sundhar Annamalai, President of AT&T Cybersecurity, Christine Frye, Chief Privacy Officer at Bank of America, , and Jennifer Minella, Founder and Principal Advisor at Viszen Security.
The conference offers a comprehensive program of expert-led sessions, interactive workshops, and thought-provoking panels. With hundreds of sessions covering assorted topics—such as threat detection, data privacy, and emerging technologies—attendees will have a ton of opportunities to expand their knowledge and enhance their skills around all things cybersecurity and ransomware.
Commvault will be located at Booth #N-4308 (map can be found here), and should you want to see the Cloud Cleanroom Recovery in action! check out booth N-5778 in North Expo!
In closing
As Commvault Cleanroom technology advances, it provides customers with an increasingly robust platform to test their disaster recovery scenarios in a dedicated, isolated environment, separate from their live production systems.
This awesome SaaS solution offers a secure space where companies can experiment with various recovery processes without the risk of impacting their day-to-day production operations. With this level of security and flexibility, IT teams can simulate real-world recovery situations to uncover potential weaknesses in their backup and recovery plans. They can test their backup systems, validate recovery time objectives (and actually say with confidence that they can meet SLAs and RTOs), and ensure that their critical data can be restored efficiently when needed. The ability to conduct such comprehensive testing in a controlled isolated setting not only reduces risk but also boosts the organisation’s confidence in their backup systems overall.
It is going to be a great week for Cybersecurity buffs!!!
Concluding this multi-part blog series, I reflect on the paramount importance of the topics discussed and how they are shaping organisational priorities well into 2024 and beyond.
Let’s recap the key insights from each part:
In Part One, we explored the evolving landscape of data protection strategies in 2024, witnessing a significant shift towards proactive measures prioritising prevention over reaction to threats. BDRSuite has an important role in mitigating these by offering real-time monitoring, rapid recovery, and innovative features like Instant Boot VM for seamless system restoration.
Part Two delved into the rise of ransomware attacks, emphasizing the critical need for robust mitigation strategies. BDRSuite comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solutions, including immutable backups, provide essential defence mechanisms against these evolving threats.
Continuing the discussion in Part Three, we examined the importance of embracing cloud-native data protection with BDRSuite. Its seamless integration with major cloud platforms ensures scalability, cost-effectiveness, and enhanced disaster recovery preparedness, while also offering robust security and compliance features.
Finally, in Part Four, we addressed the crucial aspect of compliance and governance in data protection. BDRSuite advanced encryption techniques, granular access controls, and automated compliance reporting facilitate adherence to stringent regulations, minimizing the risk of fines and reputational damage.
Looking Ahead and Part Five (this post)
BDRSuite stands ready to transform the data protection landscape by embracing innovative technologies and anticipating forthcoming challenges.
In this concluding segment, we delve into how BDRSuite will evolve to shield organisations from emerging cyber threats and regulatory intricacies.
Enhanced Recovery Capabilities for Swift Response:
BDRSuite granular recovery capabilities serve as a cornerstone for organisations confronting the complex landscape of ransomware threats, compliance mandates, and multi-cloud environments. Here’s how granular recovery empowers organisations in these critical domains:
Combatting Ransomware:
Granular recovery enables swift restoration of individual files, applications, or data sets post-ransomware attacks. This targeted approach minimises downtime and financial losses by isolating and recovering only affected data, avoiding cumbersome full system restores.
Compliance Assurance:
Granular recovery facilitates adherence to GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS regulations by offering precise control over data recovery. Organisations can efficiently retrieve specific records for audits or comply with legal requests, showcasing compliance effectiveness.
Advanced Threat Detection and Mitigation:
BDRSuite roadmap includes integrating AI and machine learning to enhance threat detection. By proactively identifying anomalies and potential breaches, empowering pre-emptive action and comprehensive protection against evolving cyber threats.
Immutable Data Protection:
BDRSuite implements immutable data modification to ensure data integrity amidst rising cyber threats. Utilising blockchain’s tamper-proof ledger, BDRSuite creates verifiable backup transaction records, offering indisputable audit trails for compliance and regulatory purposes.
Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Data Protection:
BDRSuite expands support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, ensuring comprehensive data protection across diverse landscapes. Seamless integration with industry-leading providers like Wasabi, AWS, and Azure offers tailored solutions, leveraging their storage services for backup and disaster recovery needs.
In Closing:
BDRSuite‘s forward-thinking approach guarantees organisations can navigate future challenges with confidence. By embracing innovation, collaboration, and predictive analysis, BDRSuite empowers organisations to safeguard their data assets with resilience and certainty.
Yesterday, VMware unveiled the recipients of this year’s esteemed vExpert 2024 title, an accolade established in 2009 to honour individuals for their significant contributions to the global virtualisation and cloud community.
This year there is 1524 vExperts across 77 countries that were award, 308 from my region (APJ).
As a returning vExpert (had a hiatus I guess), this is my 12th time receiving the award, every time I still feel deeply humbled and honoured to be acknowledged alongside esteemed evangelists in this field, adding an extra layer of significance to this recognition.
A new minor version release has been introduced by BDRSuite! Version 7.0.1 goes GA, you can read the official blog here or continue reading to learn my thoughts.
Certainly the biggest enhancement in my eyes, and given the context of my previous posts on ransomware – storing backups in immutable format onto Amazon S3 and other S3 compatible solution providers such as Wasabi.
Immutable Storage Backups
This integration significantly enhances the security of organisation’s backups, providing robust protection against the growing threats of ransomware and malware attacks.
By implementing immutability, BDRSuite ensures that their backup data remains unalterable and impervious to unauthorised modifications or deletions.
This proactive defense mechanism not only safeguards critical data from malicious tampering or altering but also mitigates the risk of accidental data alterations, thus bolstering the reliability and integrity of the organisation’s backup infrastructure.
Leaps and bounds in Linux Data Protection
Similiarly, the new Linux Hardened Repositories feature in BDRSuite offer a robust solution for organisation’s enabling immutability in Linux storage environments. By activating this feature, an organisation’s backup data becomes impervious to alteration once stored, enhancing the overall security and integrity of their data. This additional layer of protection significantly bolsters defenses against ransomware attacks, ensuring the safety of the organisations most critical information.
Again, in the linux space the KVM Full VM Recovery feature in BDRSuite provides comprehensive support for recovering entire virtual machines hosted on KVM hypervisors.
This capability maximizes efficiency in disaster recovery scenarios by allowing seamless restoration of virtualised environments to previous states. With KVM Full VM Recovery, the recovery process is simplified, enabling quick and effortless recovery of KVM-based infrastructure environments which is just awesome.
This enhances resilience and promotes business continuity by minimising downtime and ensuring the uninterrupted operation of virtualised environments.
Other notable enhancements in v7.0.1 GA:
Servers & Endpoints Management:
Users can now benefit from enhanced monitoring capabilities with the introduction of search and filters on the Data Source page. This allows for efficient tracking of Protection Status, Agent Status, and Version Details.
Protected Entities Management:
The update includes the ability to export the host list as a CSV file, along with new options for searching and sorting the list of protected entities. This streamlines management and facilitates better organization of protected resources.
SharePoint Online Backup:
Automatic backup for newly added sites is now enabled through the ‘All Sites’ Filter, simplifying the backup process and ensuring comprehensive coverage.
SharePoint Sites Restore:
Users now have the option to locally download backed-up Files & Folders from SharePoint Sites, providing greater flexibility in data restoration.
User Mailbox & OneDrive Restore:
Enhanced restore options allow users to include or exclude deleted items, providing finer control over data restoration processes.
Retention Reports for AWS and Azure Backup:
Users can now generate retention reports for backups stored in AWS and Azure, facilitating better management of backup data retention policies.
File-Level Recovery:
Improved functionality allows for search-based recovery of files or folders, enhancing the precision and efficiency of file-level recovery operations.
These enhancements collectively enhance the usability, efficiency, and flexibility of BDRSuite, empowering users with enhanced data protection and management capabilities.
For detailed information on BDRSuite v7.0.1, please head to the official Release Notes
Compliance weighs on many organisation’s and CIO\CISOs minds, With stringent regulations like GDPR, , Essential 8, PCI-dss, ISO-27001, and HIPAA, non-compliance can lead to hefty fines and reputational damage. Moreover, as we seen a massive shift towards cloud environments, this alone introduces additional complexities in safeguarding sensitive information.
To make things alittle easier to navigate, there are solutions like BDRSuite that offer a comprehensive approach to address these challenges effectively in the data protection space, As you might of read in my previous posts on this plaform. BDRSuite is designed to streamline compliance and governance tasks in cloud environments.
In this fourth installment of a multi-blog series, I will cover how BDRSuite can take the compliance headaches away from organisations, by employing a easy set of robust security and governance feature set.
Lets dive in:
Data Encryption and Access Controls:
BDRSuite employs advanced encryption techniques to secure data both in transit and at rest. – in fact When encryption is activated, every backup data block undergoes encryption using the AES-256 bit encryption algorithm, ensuring secure transmission and storage. You have the option to employ either a system-generated encryption key or a custom encryption key for encrypting the backup data.
It also provides granular access controls, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access sensitive information. By implementing these measures, organizations can maintain compliance with data protection regulations.
Automated Compliance Reporting:
BDRSuite automates the process of generating compliance reports, saving time and effort for IT teams. These reports provide a detailed overview of data protection measures, facilitating audits and ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements.
Server Information Report: This report furnishes details regarding the backup server machine, encompassing machine name and operating system specifications.
Client Information Report: Offering insights into client machine specifics, including machine name, OS details, and versions of VMBackup/Network Backup builds.
Backup Status Report: Providing a comprehensive overview of historical backup statuses across all backup servers, indicating successful backups, as well as deleted and restored backup status.
VM Level Reports: These reports are tailored for individual VMs, detailing their availability status. They offer a lucid and exhaustive depiction of configured VM statuses for each backup job executed.
Continuous Monitoring and Alerts:
The platform offers continuous monitoring and alerting of cloud environments, detecting any suspicious activities or unauthorised access attempts. Real-time alerts enable prompt response to potential security threats through email notifications, minimisng the risk of data breaches and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards.
Data Retention Policies:
BDRSuite allows organisations to define and enforce data retention policies based on regulatory guidelines.
This ensures that data is retained for the required duration and disposed of securely when no longer needed, reducing compliance risks.
In Closing:
With the proliferation of cloud environments, ensuring the security and integrity of sensitive information has become increasingly complex. However, solutions like BDRSuite offer a comprehensive toolkit to navigate these challenges effectively.
By leveraging it’s robust features such as data encryption, access controls, automated compliance reporting, continuous monitoring, and data retention policies, organisations can proactively safeguard their data assets in the cloud while maintaining compliance with regulatory standards. This not only mitigates the risk of costly fines and reputational damage but also fosters trust among customers and stakeholders.
Ultimately, by embracing BDRSuite’s holistic approach to compliance and governance in data protection, organisations can not only mitigate risks but also unlock opportunities for innovation and growth. They can confidently harness the power of the cloud to drive agility, scalability and efficiency while ensuring that data remains safe, secure, and compliant with the ever-evolving regulatory landscape.
Part 3 of our series delves into the groundbreaking features of BDRSuite and spotlights its remarkable capabilities in delivering robust data protection while seamlessly integrating with major cloud platforms like Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
BDRSuite’s cloud-native data protection empowers customers to effortlessly scale their storage and computing resources in tandem with evolving business requirements. Whether confronted with expanding data volumes or a growing number of virtual machines, the integration with cloud platforms ensures seamless scalability and flexibility.
By leveraging cloud services such as Azure Blob Storage, Amazon S3, and Google Cloud Storage, BDRSuite provides cost-effective storage solutions. This approach optimises costs by harnessing scalable and efficient cloud storage, eliminating the need for substantial upfront investments in physical infrastructure.
Disaster Recovery Readiness across the Globe:
Cloud integration enhances disaster recovery preparedness by leveraging the infrastructure of Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. This enables customers to establish geographically dispersed backup locations, ensuring data redundancy and swift recovery in the face of a disaster, thereby minimising downtime and data loss. BDRSuite ensures that customers stay at the forefront of innovation by enabling them to leverage the latest technologies offered by cloud platforms. This includes advanced features for data management, security, and compliance, providing businesses with a competitive edge and future-proofing their data protection strategies. Cloud-based solutions enable global accessibility to data, allowing BDRSuite users to securely access and manage backup data from anywhere in the world. This feature is particularly valuable for organisations with distributed teams or those operating in a global business environment.
As you may have read in an earlier post of mine, BDRSuite’s scheduling feature
The integration with cloud platforms streamlines backup and recovery processes, allowing for automated workflows within BDRSuite. This, combined with the cloud’s infrastructure, enables customers to schedule regular backups, monitor data integrity, and automate recovery operations, reducing manual intervention and ensuring a reliable data protection strategy.
Compliance and Security Assurance:
Utilising cloud services for data protection with BDRSuite means inheriting the robust security and compliance features that Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud has to offer. This includes encryption, access controls, and regular security audits, providing assurance regarding data integrity and regulatory adherence.
Cloud Integration with Azure:
BDRSuite compatibility with Microsoft Azure transforms data protection processes for organisations leveraging Azure’s cloud services. The integration ensures a smooth and efficient backup and recovery process, allowing businesses to safeguard their critical data seamlessly. By leveraging Azure Blob Storage, this affords organisations a cost-effective and scalable solution for storing backup data while also ensuring businesses can scale their storage needs according to requirements, optimising costs without compromising data integrity.
For organisations already running virtual machines in Azure, BDRSuite extends its capabilities to these Azure VMs, enabling users to perform backup and recovery operations directly within the Azure ecosystem, ensuring streamlined protection for virtualised workloads on the Azure platform.Cloud integration with AWS:
For organisations invested in AWS, BDRSuiteBackup & Recovery for Amazon Web Services seamlessly integrates, enhancing data protection capabilities within the AWS environment. BDRSuite utilises Amazon S3 for cloud storage, ensuring durability, availability, and scalable performance. This integration allows businesses to harness the benefits of AWS storage infrastructure while ensuring data remains accessible and protected.
BDRSuite extends its support to AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (or EC2 as most people know it), enabling efficient backup and recovery of EC2 instances and providing comprehensive protection for virtual servers running on AWS.
Google Cloud Integration:
BDRSuite seamlessly integrates with Google Cloud, offering a powerful data protection solution within the Google Cloud Platform. BDRSuite integrates with Google Cloud Storage, providing a reliable and scalable option for storing backup data, allowing organisations to leverage Google Cloud’s storage infrastructure for efficient data protection. BDRSuite extends support to Google Cloud Compute Engine, enabling users to perform backup and recovery operations for virtual machines within the GCP environment, enhancing overall data protection capabilities.
In closing:
BDRSuite’s robust integration with Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud establishes it as a leading solution for cloud-native data protection. Businesses can confidently embrace the cloud, assured that their critical data is secure, accessible, and efficiently backed up with BDRSuite‘s feature-rich platform in addition to unlocking a world of new possibilities in the technological realm.
The seamless collaboration between BDRSuite and leading cloud providers ensures not only the security and accessibility of critical data but also a pathway to future-proofing data protection strategies.
In recent years, the rise of ransomware attacks has become a pressing concern for individuals and organisations alike. In this blog post, we will delve into the escalating threat of ransomware and explore mitigation strategies, with a special focus on the role of BDRSuite in safeguarding against these malicious attacks against your data.
Setting the scene
Ransomware has become increasingly sophisticated and pervasive. These attacks can cripple businesses, halt critical operations, and lead to data breaches if left unchecked. The motivation for attackers is often financial gain, and they exploit vulnerabilities in systems to gain unauthorised access.
In a prior post, I discussed the substantial impact of ransomware, which imposes significant financial burdens on organisations of various scales, ranging from thousands to millions of dollars. The average payout for companies with less than $10 million (USD) in revenue stands at $690,996 (USD), while those with higher earnings experience an average payout of $2,464,339 (USD). Despite organisations acknowledging the risks and consequences and subsequently bolstering their internal defences, cybercriminals have adapted their tactics, leading to extensive disruptions and financial setbacks.
To combat the rising tide of ransomware, businesses must adopt robust mitigation strategies.
One key component of an effective defence is a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution. BDRSuite is an advanced tool designed to protect against data loss and ensure business continuity in the face of ransomware threats.
The real impact of Ransomware
The real impact of ransomware on these entities extends far beyond immediate financial losses, unravelling the fabric of operational integrity and eroding trust.
Firstly, the financial toll cannot be overstated. Ransomware attacks often demand exorbitant sums for the release of critical data, bringing businesses to their knees with extortionate demands. Beyond the ransom itself, there are the costs associated with downtime, system restoration, and potential legal ramifications.
Equally damaging is the erosion of trust, both internally and externally. Stakeholders, including customers, investors, and employees, may lose confidence in an organization’s ability to safeguard sensitive information. The reputational damage can be irreparable, impacting long-term relationships and brand loyalty.
Operational disruption is another critical facet of the impact. Ransomware can paralyze core functions, leading to productivity losses and delayed service delivery. In some cases, the downtime can have cascading effects on supply chains, causing a ripple of disruptions throughout the industry. Organisations must prioritize robust cybersecurity measures and proactive strategies, recognizing that the impact of ransomware extends well beyond the immediate financial burden. The true cost encompasses damaged reputations, fractured trust, and a long road to recovery for large organizations grappling with the aftermath of these malicious attacks.
Recover as quickly as possible after Ransomware hits
BDRSuite offers real-time backup capabilities, allowing organisations to create secure copies of critical data at regular intervals. In the event of a ransomware attack, these backups serve as a lifeline, enabling quick restoration of systems to a point before the compromise occurred.
With the ability to automate backup processes, BDRSuite reduces the risk of human error and ensures that data is consistently and reliably protected.
If you are unfortunate enough to be impacted by a ransomware attack, the most important thing is the restoration of service and data, with BDRSuite’sInstant Boot VM feature, this facilitates the immediate recovery of your virtual machine in the event of a failure, requiring only a matter of seconds. Subsequently, you can choose to perform an Instant Boot Live Migration, a process involving the permanent transfer of virtual/physical machine backup data from the instant boot environment to the production environment.
3-2-1 Protection with Remote Backup copies
BDRSuite supports a host of cloud-based options (check out my earlier post on this here), so you have the option to duplicate your backup data and store it in various offsite locations such as a secondary disk, cloud storage (encompassing AWS S3, Azure, Google Cloud, Wasabi etc), or tape to ensure you align to the 3-2-1 Backup strategy. This strategy guarantees the secure storage of your data in diverse locations, enhancing protection against potential data loss resulting from disasters or hardware failures.
Storing backups offsite facilitates safe and easy data recovery whenever your source data may be affected.
Moreover, BDRSuite incorporates advanced features such as immutable backups. Which are resistant to modification or deletion, providing an additional layer of defence against ransomware attempts to compromise backup data.
In closing
Mitigation strategies should include a reliable data protection and recovery solution like BDRSuite, which not only facilitates data backup with best practices embedded but also integrates features that fortify the defence against ransomware attacks such as immutable backups.
As businesses continue to face evolving cyber threats such as ransomware and smarter actors, adopting such comprehensive solutions becomes paramount in safeguarding sensitive information and ensuring operational resilience.
My next post will build on the 3-2-1 strategy and drill specifically into Embracing Cloud-native Data Protection with BDRSuite
As you might have read in my introduction post to this series, the importance of data protection has reached new heights, and as we step into 2024, a pivotal shift in strategies is discernible. The trend of the year revolves around a proactive stance, and organisations are acknowledging the need for a comprehensive approach that amalgamates robust cybersecurity measures with innovative data recovery strategies.
Proactive Measures Taking Centre Stage
The evolution of data protection in 2024 is marked by a departure from reactive approaches to a proactive mindset. Instead of merely responding to threats, organisations are now actively implementing measures to prevent data breaches and unauthorised access. This change in thinking underscores the importance of pre-emptive actions in the face of an ever-expanding threat landscape.
The Triumvirate of Cybersecurity, Encryption, and Access Controls
In this era, where data is a cornerstone of business operations, the integration of cybersecurity measures with encryption and access controls is imperative. The evolution of data protection in 2024 mandates a comprehensive defence mechanism. Encryption acts as a robust shield, rendering data unreadable to unauthorised entities. Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security, ensuring that only authenticated users gain access. Simultaneously, secure access controls monitor and manage permissions, mitigating the risk of internal threats.
Ransomware attacks level up and target the big fish
If you remember my post about how to safeguard your business against ransomware, one of the key takeaways from that was highlighting and emphasizing the rise of ransomware, In a survey across of 3,000 IT cybersecurity leaders in organisations across 14 countries in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific (commissioned by Sophos) entitled 2023 State of Ransomware, it was found that 56% of organisations with revenue of $10-$50 million (USD) experienced a ransomware attack compared to 72% of victims with annual revenue of $5 billion (USD) or more.
Among organisations with less than $10 million in revenue, 36% paid the ransom at an average payout of $690,996 (USD). Meanwhile, the heaviest earners (Over $5 billion USD) paid out 55% of the time, at an average payout of $2,464,339 (USD)
BDRSuite: Pioneering the Next Wave of Data Protection
Amidst these transformative trends, BDRSuite emerges as a frontrunner in providing innovative solutions. The platform aligns seamlessly with the proactive data protection approach, offering a suite of features designed to safeguard sensitive information.
Real-Time Monitoring and Rapid Recovery
BDRSuite‘s real-time monitoring capabilities empower organisations by providing insights into potential threats as they emerge. With this foresight, proactive measures can be taken to thwart attacks before they escalate.
Furthermore, BDRSuite‘s rapid recovery features ensure that in the unfortunate event of a data breach or loss, organisations can swiftly restore their systems to normalcy, minimising downtime and mitigating potential damages.
Instant Boot VM
Covered in one of my earlier blog posts, BDRSuite’s Instant Boot VM empowers organisations to launch a virtual machine directly and nearly instantaneously from their most recent backup dataset ensuring that critical applications and services are back online within minutes. This tool empowers organizations to maintain peak availability even in the face of unforeseen challenges, providing a reliable safety net for critical virtual machines and the data they service out.
AI-Driven Threat Detection to reduce downtime (Coming soon)
In the face of evolving cyber threats, BDRSuite plans to incorporate A.I under the hood to enhance its threat detection capabilities. The platform utilises advanced algorithms to identify and neutralise potential risks, offering an additional layer of defence against emerging threats by using smart analytics to continuously assess data patterns, enabling swift detection of anomalies or suspicious activities. Automated response mechanisms kick in seamlessly, preventing data breaches and minimising downtime.
Granular Recovery Options
BDRSuite recognises the importance of data granularity. In the event of a security incident, organisations can use BDRSuite to selectively recover specific files or data sets, avoiding the need for extensive restoration processes and minimising the impact on operations. Check out more on file level recovery here
In Closing
The evolution of data protection in 2024 demands a proactive and multifaceted approach, and BDRSuite emerges as a true ally in this transformative landscape against some pretty significant risks. By integrating advanced features and capabilities such as Instant Boot VM, granular recovery capabilities and their mission to include AI underneath the hood to proactively predict and remove threats before they do any harm means that as an overall data protection suite (as this isn’t just about backup in 2024) BDRSuite empowers organisations to not only protect their data but also to navigate the challenges of the digital realm with confidence and resilience.
In my next post, we will take the Ransomware discussion even further with how to mitigate the risk to your organisation.
Stay tuned for Part 2: Rise of Ransomware Mitigation Strategies
Welcome to 2024! and as we enter this year, the landscape of data protection is undergoing significant transformations. One of the key trends is the heightened focus on proactive measures to safeguard sensitive information. Organisations are now embracing an integrated approach, blending cybersecurity with data recovery strategies. Encryption, multi-factor authentication, and secure access controls are becoming paramount in this data protection evolution.
With so much to cover, I plan to break it up into five parts by providing a “BDRSuite Outlook on Data Protection in 2024″, covering the evolution of Data Protection, Ransomware mitigation, Embracing Cloud-Native Data Protection, and Governance and Compliance.
I will then conclude with a consolidated view to stay on top of all these considerations with BDRSuite in part 5
As a sneak peek, I have provided a small synopsis of each part to give you a taste of what is to come.
Stay tuned!
Part 1: Technology Trends: The evolution of data protection in 2024
In 2024, data protection undergoes a pivotal shift towards a proactive stance, departing from reactive approaches. The focus is on a comprehensive defence, integrating cybersecurity, encryption, and access controls. In addition to integrating cybersecurity with data protection, the focus is also on having the right encryption policies in place to protect data from unauthorised access, while multi-factor authentication and access controls provide additional layers of security against both external and internal threats.
Part 2: The Rise of Ransomware and some Mitigation Strategies against it
Ransomware attacks have reached unprecedented levels, making them a major concern for businesses globally. In 2024, organisations are prioritising robust backup and disaster recovery solutions to counteract the growing threat of ransomware.
BDRSuite emerges as a game-changer in this scenario, offering comprehensive backup solutions that ensure swift recovery without succumbing to extortion demands.
Part 3: Embracing Cloud-native Data Protection with BDRSuite
In 2024, the unmistakable trend is the adoption of cloud-native data protection solutions.
Discover how organisations can effortlessly blend their data protection strategies with cloud platforms, ensuring the security and accessibility of their data in a dynamic and distributed landscape. BDRSuite stands out in this domain, excelling by providing a versatile, scalable, and effective backup and recovery solution specifically designed for cloud environments.
Part 4: Compliance and Governance in Data Protection
Data privacy regulations continue to evolve, and compliance is non-negotiable these days, putting organisations on edge and uneasy on how to meet compliance requirements. BDRSuite addresses this concern by incorporating robust compliance and governance features. The platform ensures that organisations can adhere to the latest data protection regulations effortlessly, reducing the risk of legal consequences and reputational damage.
Part 5: BDRSuite’s Role in Shaping the Future of Data Protection
BDRSuite aligns seamlessly with the emerging trends of 2024. Its innovative features, such as real-time data monitoring, automated backups, and AI-driven threat detection, make it an invaluable asset in the fight against evolving cyber threats.
The platform’s ability to provide granular recovery options ensures that organisations can swiftly restore critical data, minimising downtime, and potential losses.
In the tech industry, we often pose the question, “What keeps you up at night?” This inquiry is commonly used in sales to uncover the primary challenges that occupy a prospect’s thoughts during the day and linger in their minds as they attempt to unwind and sleep. Just like any other professional, backup administrators looking after VMware environments find themselves grappling with unprecedented challenges that can disturb their night’s sleep.
Safeguarding organisational data is a pivotal responsibility that demands robust solutions that are guaranteed to work when you need it most.
For backup administrators, some of the main concerns revolve around data loss, system downtime, and compliance issues.
In this blog, I will delve into these three significant worries and elucidate how BDRSuite for VMware offers a solution to ensure a restful night’s sleep for VMware backup administrators by addressing those concerns.
Data Loss Nightmares
The fear of data loss is a silent but potent threat that haunts backup administrators. Whether due to hardware failures, accidental deletions, or cyberattacks, the consequences of losing critical data can be catastrophic.
BDRSuite steps into this concern with robust automated and regular backup options that capture data at regular (usually tied to the RPO) intervals so that administrators can breathe easy, knowing that their organisation’s data is not only securely stored but also easily recoverable in the event of unforeseen incidents.
Dread of Downtime:
System downtime is the bane of any business, causing disruptions, financial losses, and damage to reputation. Backup administrators are tasked with minimising downtime during backup processes and disasters – to ultimately get their virtual environment back online as quickly as possible.
One of the most impressive features that BDRSuite introduces advanced technologies such as incremental backups (or full synthetic backups as. you might have read in my previous post), real-time replication, and instant recovery capabilities. These features significantly reduce downtime by ensuring that the most recent data is readily available, minimising the impact on business operations during restoration processes.
Compliance Concerns:
As data protection regulations become more stringent, backup administrators are increasingly burdened with ensuring compliance. Violations can result in severe financial penalties and damage to an organisation’s reputation.
BDRSuite for VMware includes features such as encryption, audit trails, and role-based access controls, providing administrators with the tools needed to meet compliance requirements.
With robust security measures in place, BDRSuite helps those administrators keep their organisations stay on the right side of data protection laws and industry regulations
In Closing:
Backup administrators face a myriad of challenges that can disturb their peaceful nights. BDRSuite emerges as a beacon of reassurance, soothing their top concerns of data loss, downtime, and compliance with its robust features and comprehensive approach to backup and recovery.
BDRSuite for VMware not only alleviates the top concerns of backup administrators but also empowers them to proactively manage their data infrastructure (and sleep soundly).
Dear Cloud-Land Sponsors, Subscribers, and Readers,
As we wrap up another year, I want to extend my sincere thanks for your continued support. As I look ahead to the new year, I wish you in the spirit of cloud computing, security and all the things in between:
One of the most powerful features that any modern-day backup solution must have is that of being able to create a Full Synthetic Backup, this is by far one of the biggest determiners as to whether or not aggressive sub-15-minute RPO’s and RTO’s can be met. BDRSuite is one solution that includes this powerful feature. But before we get into what it can do for your business, let’s answer the question “What is it?”
What is a Full Synthetic Backup?
A Full Synthetic Backup starts with a full backup initially, capturing the entire dataset. Subsequent backups then store only the changes or modifications made to the data since the last backup.
However, instead of requiring the presence of the original full backup and all subsequent incremental backups for restoration, a Full Synthetic Backup independently creates a synthesised full backup by merging the original full backup with the incremental changes. This synthetic backup is a standalone, complete representation of the data at a specific point in time.
So instead of repeatedly copying all data during each backup, BDRSuite intelligently synthesises a comprehensive backup by merging the full backup with subsequent incremental backups.
This not only optimises storage efficiency but also ensures that the backup process is completed swiftly, minimising the risk of data loss.
Use Cases
So, what scenarios does a Full Synthetic Backup really add value?
Large Datasets: If your organisation deals with substantial datasets that traditionally require significant time and storage for backups, BDRSuite‘s Full Synthetic Backup feature is a game-changer. It efficiently handles large volumes of data without compromising on speed or storage space.
Frequent Backups: In environments where regular backups are crucial, the speed and efficiency of this feature shine. Whether you’re dealing with constant updates, transactional data, or rapidly changing information, this approach ensures that your backups are up-to-date without straining your resources.
Optimising Resources: For those looking to optimise storage resources (and subsequent costs) and reduce the burden on network bandwidth, Using a Full Synthetic Backup to protect your data will strike a balance between resource optimisation and data resilience.
In closing:
The innovative technology behind Full Synthetic Backups has emerged as a transformative solution for numerous organisations looking to save on storage costs and increase backup speeds.
Its effectiveness, rapidity, and resource optimisation render it an attractive option for any business committed to securing its vital data in the swiftly evolving digital landscape of today.
For those seeking a reliable built-in backup solution, BDRSuite unquestionably stands out as a top choice with its exemplary implementation of this feature.
Cybercriminals are smart and attack the heart
To Commvault, Continuous Business brings together 5 pillars – Security, Rebalance, Readiness and Recovery, this thought leadership approach, proactive thinking ability to provoke the thought that while cyber-attacks are high – the whole notion of “Continuous” almost diminishes the concern or dismisses them altogether knowing there is a platform like this that exists. 
Ransomware attacks level up and target the big fish
Welcome to 2024!!
