Kaspersky shockingly finds that ransomware is now targeting back-up data

Kaspersky researchers identified on Thursday a new type of ransomware attack, Network Attached Storage (NAS), which is actively growing in popularity. Targeting NAS poses new risks for back-up data usually stored on devices. With NAS largely perceived as a secure technology, users often remain unprepared for the possibility of infection, putting their data at higher risk.

Encryption ransomware is a malware that applies advanced encryption methods so files cannot be decrypted without a unique key. This leaves the infected device owner stuck with a locked device and a demand to pay a ransom in order to regain access to files. 

While users are typically infected with ransomware via email or exploit-kits planted on websites, the new type of attacks on NAS devices use a different vector. Ransomware operators scan ranges of IP addresses looking for NAS devices accessible via the web. 

Although only web interfaces protected with authentication are accessible, a number of devices have integrated software with vulnerabilities in it. This allows attackers to install a Trojan using exploits, which will then encrypt all data on the devices connected to the NAS.

During the third quarter this year, Kaspersky products detected and repelled encryption ransomware attacks on 229,643 Kaspersky products users, which is 11 percent less than during the same period last year. Although the total number of affected users slightly decreased, the report shows that the number of new encryption ransomware modifications grew from 5,195 in the third quarter of last year to 13,138 in the third quarter this year marking 153 percent growth. This development signals cybercriminal interest in this type of malware as means of enrichment.

At the same time, the infamous WannaCry Trojan family retained first place among the most popular Trojans with over a fifth of attacked users having been targeted with malware identified as belonging to this group. 

The top three most popular verdicts that account for almost half of users attacked by cryptors were Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Wanna (20.96 percent users attacked), Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Phny (20.01 percent) and Trojan-Ransom.Win32.GandCrypt (8.58 percent).

Infortrend optimizes data center footprint with high density 4U 60-bay storage

Infortrend Technology Inc. has introduced the 4U 60-bay unified storage system to address rapid data growth and limited datacenter space challenges. The 4U 60-bay EonStor GS Gen2 features advanced performance, and its high density enclosure can accommodate up to 896 drives in one system, delivering 10PB+ massive capacity for data-intensive applications.

EonStor GS 3000/4000 Gen2 is the latest generation of Infortrend’s high availability enterprise unified storage which integrates NAS/SAN/Cloud gateway into one system. 

Compared with the previous solutions, GS Gen2 NAS performance is improved by 60 percent, reaching up to 9,900/5,500 MB/s read/write throughput. It also supports 900K IOPS performance. Other enhancements include double memory capacity, four onboard 10GbE ports for high-speed I/O connections, and comprehensive form factors.

The EonStor GS 3000/2000 series are comprehensive enterprise solutions with exceptional SAN and NAS transmission performance to meet the storage needs of SMBs to large enterprises. Besides various form factors, they also offer up to 4 sets of modular host boards to fulfill the requirements of numerous applications or architecture transformation to allow more deployment flexibility. 

Furthermore, the system also comes with high expandability of more than 8PB storage capacity to easily meet the needs of future data growth. As such, its outstanding performance, flexibility, and high expandability can run critical applications for SAN and NAS on the market. The GS 3000 is perfect for the performance-conscious, while the GS 2000 is ideal for the budget—conscious as it can meet all general storage needs.

With the support of Intel’s advanced CPU platform, and the newly-released 4U 60-bay form factor, GS Gen2 is designed to empower customers to overcome the issues of rapid data volume growth in terms of storage performance and capacity, while optimizing datacenter space utilization.   

The EonStor GS 5000/4000 series forms the backbone of our high performance solution for enterprises with its powerful performance, flexibility, and high expandability to efficiently boost overall productivity. They can handle large amounts of I/O and file transfers even under high workloads, and are especially ideal for hybrid environments that adopt SAN, NAS, and cloud integration. 

The GS 5000 is perfect for those who want performance, capacity, and a high port count, while the GS 4000 is ideal for the budget-conscious as it can easily meet all general storage needs.

“Infortrend releases the 4U 60-bay GS Gen2 series to prepare businesses for the enormous data management requirements,” said Thomas Kao, senior director of product planning. “This new solution is especially future-proof for data-intensive applications, such as media & entertainment, surveillance, and HPC (high performance computing).”

PAC Storage enhances data storage performance with scale-out NAS, latest controllers, and 32Gb FC / 25GbE connectivity

PAC Storage (PAC) has announced three latest enhancements to their existing line of hardware: scale-out NAS systems, next generation controllers, and 32Gb FC and 25GbE host boards. Each enhancement dramatically accelerates system performance, providing tremendous benefits to a variety of industries and applications including database, analytics, virtualization, motion media, file sharing, cloud data integration, data science and AI.

The all-new Scale-Out NAS systems product line supports 100+ Gbps performance and scaling to more than 100 PB capacity. These solutions allow capacity and performance to be increased by horizontally adding another node (array) to the system.

PAC Storage is an enterprise data storage hardware solution. Since 2005, PAC SAN solutions have been data center cornerstones nationwide for primary, secondary, backup, and disaster recovery. In 2017, PAC introduced PS storage solutions which offer SAN and NAS, and include cloud gateway options. Offering the ideal price point, PAC feature-rich solutions are renowned for no single point of failure and scalability to petabytes of on-premise storage.

These scale-out NAS systems are joined by new Next Generation Controllers featuring up to twelve cores of the latest Intel CPU technology. Improvements also include doubling the controller cache to 512GBs, enabling PAC controllers to now boost performance by up to 80 percent, fulfilling the demanding requirements of today’s intensive enterprise data environments. 

Both PAC Storage PS and PAC All Flash product lines will feature the next generation controllers with all flash designed to deliver optimal SSD performance and response times of less than 0.35 milliseconds, as well as up to 900K IOPS and 10,000/5,500 MB/s read/write speed.

PAC Scale-Out NAS supports adding more nodes achieving more performance and capacity via a clustered system with up to 100 plus GBps read/write speed and more then a 100PBs of storage for the needs of future data growth.   

PAC also supports auto-balancing function that supports distribution of data across all nodes in the system. When a large number of users access data simultaneously, the system share the workload through parallel processing, solving the problem of a single node performance limitation and improving the access e­­fficiently.  

To prevent critical data loss and ensure continuous storage services PACs Scale-Out system is designed with the support of multi-layer data protection on hard drives, notes, and cluster levels. If any of the elements fails, neither the data will be lost nor the performance will be affected.  

If a single node failure is detected, PAC initiates self-healing function to recover the data from the faulty node. On a cluster level, users can use the Rsync feature for remote backup of the cluster file to remote cluster or remote NAS.   

Rounding out the new PAC Storage enhancements are 32Gb FC and 25GbE host boards which enable enterprise customers to migrate to the new networking standards for data access acceleration. The 32Gb FC and 25GbE host connectivity more than double system bandwidth via a single lane, making the storage infrastructure more scalable and flexible. 

"With this solution, we’ve truly hit it out of the park,” said PAC CEO Rick Crane. “The new scale-ut version of NAS is an outstanding and innovative alternative for our Isilon customers looking for a scale-out environment that’s simple to administer and easy on their budget. Even better, they can take advantage of the Next Generation technology in this product, as well as in our existing portfolio of SAN/NAS."

Cohesity debuts new offerings to protect cloud databases and enhance data archiving

Cohesity announced that it will showcase new integrations at AWS re:Invent 2019 in Las Vegas that extend its enterprise-class backup and data protection to database as a service and platform as a service offerings on AWS, making it easier for customers to protect valuable cloud workloads without adding to their cloud footprint. 

In addition, Cohesity will showcase new enhancements for archiving data to AWS, making it even more cost-effective to build hybrid cloud environments.

Cohesity’s new integrations with AWS include Cohesity Cloud Snapshot Manager for Amazon RDS and Amazon EC2 with its new lightweight solution that protects Amazon database and virtual machine workloads remotely from on-premises environments. Cohesity also extended enterprise-class backup capabilities for SAP HANA in-memory databases that run on AWS.

The Cohesity CloudArchive Direct capability allows customers to archive file data from Networked Attached Storage (NAS) devices directly to cloud reducing primary storage footprint and costs. 

Cohesity is also adding support for Glacier Deep Archive, the lowest cost cloud storage class from AWS, enabling customers to further reduce their long term cloud storage costs.

Veritas and NetApp deliver data protection of unstructured data for customers

Veritas Technologies announced an expansion of its partnership with NetApp that will help the largest enterprises protect their data more quickly and at scale on NetApp network-attached storage (NAS) devices.  

Veritas NetBackup leveraged NetApp SnapDiff APIs in 2012 to accelerate backup of primary NAS data to on-premises and cloud targets. By integrating with NetApp SnapDiff on secondary NAS, customers can meet stringent recovery time objectives (RTOs) on their premises and speed up data transfer to the cloud for long-term retention. 

This integration further strengthens the value to joint customers, adding faster unstructured data protection to capabilities such as business resiliency for applications connected to NetApp storage, and deep file analytics for NetApp NAS data.

The continued partnership between Veritas and NetApp offers customers numerous benefits, including business resiliency through integration of tier 1 applications and storage into high-availability and disaster recovery solutions; ability to protect file data on the premises and in the cloud across physical and virtual deployments; insights and deep file analytics through cataloging to better understand what data sits where, and how many copies are maintained; reduced TCO by tiering backup data to the cloud for long-term retention; and the ability to continuously meet stringent SLAs even as unstructured data increases.

Nasuni announces latest release of its file services platform for modernizing NAS infrastructure

Nasuni Corp. announced Wednesday latest release of its file services platform for modernizing network attached storage (NAS) infrastructure. Nasuni’s new version gives enterprises access to artificial intelligence (AI) and search analytics for unstructured data, as well as powerful cloud migration capabilities. Companies gain a springboard for agile, intelligent migrations and cloud-first approaches, as well multi-cloud flexibility. 

Unstructured data has exploded, while globalization and agility pressures have made traditional NAS infrastructures inadequate. Businesses should no longer build file server silos, which can be costly, complex and unable to keep up with prevailing demands. 

Powered by file system, Nasuni delivers a file services platform built for the cloud that combines performance of local file servers with the scalability and durability of cloud storage, at roughly half the cost of traditional file infrastructures. 

The Nasuni Analytics Connector allows customers to turn unstructured data into big data. A consolidated cloud-based file system enables customers to export a temporary second copy of their file data to use with analytics software, AI, machine learning and other data recognition tools such as AWS Rekognition and Macie. This new release also features support for leading search software, including SharePoint Search, Acronis FilesConnect, Cloudtenna, Search Blox, Graymeta, and NeoFinder.

Customers can start their journey from traditional on-premises NAS to the cloud with the Nasuni AWS Cloud Migration Services and Nasuni Azure Cloud Migration Services. Nasuni’s services for AWS now include both Amazon Snowball and the Nasuni Cloud Migrator for AWS. Nasuni’s services for Azure now include Microsoft’s Data Box and Nasuni’s Cloud Migrator for Azure. These new services enable customers to seamlessly move data to Amazon S3 or Microsoft Azure storage faster and with less effort than a self-driven cloud migration, enabling a successful cloud-first strategy.

In addition to support for AWS and Azure, new support for Google Cloud Storage extends Nasuni’s public cloud storage capabilities to all three major public cloud providers, enabling customers to implement multi-cloud strategies based on their specific business or application requirements. This new release now supports more private cloud storage solutions, including NetApp StorageGRID, Nutanix Objects, IBM COS, Hitachi Vantara HCP, and Scality RING.

Users can migrate NAS silos to the cloud storage of their choice for on-demand capacity expansion, built-in backup, instant disaster recovery, and multi-site file sharing. They also gain sophisticated data insights and accelerate their cloud storage strategies with Nasuni’s ability to scale and foster collaboration across distributed workforces.

Nasuni enables enterprises to seamlessly navigate their entire journey from NAS consolidation to workforce productivity. The Nasuni platform is trusted by many of the largest organizations in retail, consumer goods, creative services, oil and gas, architecture, engineering, construction and manufacturing. The company is experiencing record growth, with a 250 percent increase in data under management over the last 24 months. 

Nasuni is now deployed in more than 7,000 locations in 70 countries. Nasuni’s growth reflects its customers’ needs to simplify how critical file data is stored and protected, while empowering users to share and collaborate on files across multiple sites and geographies with maximum performance and reliability.

Nasuni’s new enhancements will be available by the end of the year. The Nasuni platform comes in three editions -- Essentials, Advanced and Premium.

Western Digital updates its data storage offerings for NAS environments

Western Digital introduced Thursday an array of purpose-built storage solutions for small businesses and home offices leveraging NAS environments. The solutions include the initial WD Red SSDs, which enhance performance and caching abilities in a hybrid NAS environment, as well as a 14TB capacity for the WD Red and WD Red Pro HDDs.

With the increase in virtualization, 10GbE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) and higher connectivity speeds are becoming an essential feature set in modern NAS systems. To help minimize a performance bottleneck, SSD speeds are crucial.

To fully support the requirements of these environments, storage device durability, speed and capacity remain heavily in demand. Building on the proven reliability of Western Digital’s WD Red product portfolio, the solutions are built to transform pain points to profits for the end user. When utilized as a caching solution in a NAS system, the WD Red SA500 SSD helps to boost performance while the new higher capacity WD Red and WD Red Pro HDDs offer more storage space in the same NAS device.