SolarWinds Backup for Office 365 delivers cloud-first data protection for Office 365 Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint

SolarWinds, provider of IT management software, launches SolarWinds Backup for Office 365, designed to extend data protection services by helping ensure the retention and recoverability of Office 365 data.

Backup for Office 365 backs up and helps restore Exchange, OneDrive and SharePoint data, managed from the same web-based dashboard used to protect servers, workstations, and critical business documents. The need for effective and affordable tools to help MSPs reduce the potential impact of malicious external attacks or internal user error is growing. 

Related data retention, recoverability, and the ability to demonstrate regulatory compliance is becoming even more critical, as more businesses continue to adopt SaaS applications and shift resources to the cloud.

With Backup for Office 365, users are able to save administrative time by managing Office 365 backups alongside server and workstation backups, keep recoverable copies of Exchange data for seven years, and archive OneDrive and SharePoint data for one year. Backup storage in SolarWinds’ private cloud is included, with more than 30 data centers worldwide to help meet data locality requirements.

Users can often unwittingly (or purposely) delete important emails, or OneDrive or SharePoint files. If this happens, SolarWinds Backup offers the ability to search for, and recover what is needed. If employees leave and the company does not want to continue paying a subscription fee to store their email and shared documents, then the SolarWinds Backup for Office 365 offers an additional way to retain and access this data. If the enterprise must comply under regulations with data-retention requirements, SolarWinds Backup is designed to help retain and archive critical data.

With SolarWinds Backup for Office 365, users can manage Office 365 Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint backups from a single web-based dashboard. They can also view and manage backup status across customers, and several devices and data types. SolarWinds Backup also helps strike the right balance between automation and control. Users can manually select which accounts and mailboxes they want to protect, or automatically add newly created Office 365 accounts to the backup schedule.

“Backup for Office 365 has assisted us in making our clients feel more secure and comfortable with cloud solutions because they’ve regained control over their data backups,” said Kelvin Tegelaar​, CTO, Lime Networks. “This solution is easy to manage, is super-efficient, and gives our customers an extra layer of protection and continuity.”

“If you’re relying on storage to do the job of backup, you’re putting your data at risk. Anything from an overzealous email cleanup to a deliberate ransomware attack can leave you scrambling if your data isn’t safely backed up. Microsoft is focused on the availability of active email and data, but potential gaps exist around the recoverability of accidentally deleted or overwritten data that are only solved by an effective backup product,” said Mav Turner, group vice president of products, SolarWinds MSP. “Backup for Office 365 is designed for peace of mind; you retain control over the retention and recoverability of your customers’ data in Office 365 and can be ready to help them in their time of need. Your backups will run seamlessly in the background, and the only difference you’ll notice will be increased trust that your data is safe, no matter what.”

Asigra’s latest program defends public/non-profit organizations against cyber-attacks targeting backup data

Asigra announced a new program focused on defending the backup repositories and data of Canadian public and non-profit organizations against cyber-attacks. The purpose of the program is to ensure the recovery of data that otherwise may have become compromised as a result of malicious malware or ransomware Attack-Loops that prevent the recovery of mission-critical data and often put large volumes of personally identifiable information (PII) at risk.

Cyber-attacks on public/non-profit organizations have put citizen data at risk like never before as new variants of ransomware and other attacks continue to infiltrate and expose sensitive data to unknown and possibly criminal entities.

In a recent attack covered by the Toronto Star, medical test provider LifeLabs agreed to pay the ransom of attackers in order to retrieve millions of customer records. In a statement, the organization said, “The personal information of over 15 million customers was compromised, mostly in British Columbia and Ontario, including name, address, email, login, passwords, date of birth, health card number and lab test results.”

Like many organizations dealing with a cyber-attack, the last resort for recovery relies on a functioning disaster recovery or backup solution in place. Unfortunately, hackers have now designed ransomware and other malware to seek out secondary storage systems (aka: disaster recovery and backup data) in order to compromise a clean retrieval of the information. 

As a result, these organizations no longer have a way to reinstate their data, and therefore are faced with either relinquishing or paying a ransom which can be exceptionally high for public and non-profit entities.

As a Canadian company, Asigra is planning to help protect these organizations by partially donating a large percentage of its cybersecurity-enabled backup technology to Canada’s extensive list of public and non-profit organizations. Those establishments in the country that can issue a tax-deductible receipt may contact Asigra to receive the company's complete anti-ransomware/backup software suite with the cost covered in large part by a donation-in-kind.

Asigra’s cloud-based data recovery platform is unique in the industry for converging data protection and cybersecurity for effective malware/ransomware detection and prevention that ensures safe, secure and reliable data recovery. 

The advanced software includes initial zero-day Attack-Loop preventative technology using bi-directional cyber-threat detection, zero-day exploit protection, variable repository naming, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for a full defensive suite against aggressive ransomware and other cyber-threats targeting backup data. This is complemented by FIPS 140-2 certification and military-grade data encryption to ensure enterprise-grade data security, making user data unreadable without the proper encryption key.

“The majority of cybersecurity analysts today agree that cyber-attacks are evolving from the perspective of what they target, how they impact organizations and the changing methods of attack,” said David Farajun, CEO, Asigra. “For the past year, we have seen an increasing number of cyberthreats begin to target the number one method of data recovery – the backup repository. As a specialist in this area, we have developed a very effective solution to fight against this and now offer the technology to public and non-profit organizations we share our data with.”

Cohesity and HPE assist TEC Eurolab to maximize data security and resiliency, improve customer service

Cohesity announced Tuesday that TEC Eurolab has doubled its productivity and increased its revenues, after deploying a disruptive data management solution provided by Cohesity and HPE.

TEC Eurolab has seen major cost and efficiency benefits by using the joint Cohesity-HPE solution to enable intelligent file share services and enhance data security and resiliency. The solution, delivered by local systems integrator NETMIND, is now helping the company effectively serve customers across a multitude of sectors including aerospace and defense, automotive and motor racing, manufacturing, and biomedical industries.

The Cohesity-HPE joint solution for TEC Eurolab offers zero data loss and improved security, compliance and data integrity; 50 percent reduction in data retrieval time compared to previous solution; 100 percent improved production output across the Tomographic Center; 30 percent operating expense savings in reduced personnel time spent on data management; 20 percent capital expenses savings due to reduced burden on workstations; and offers quick and easy file search and recovery across multiple workstations with a single UI.

Founded in 1990, TEC Eurolab is a private corporation based in the province of Modena, Italy. TEC Eurolab is a prominent center of technical expertise and laboratory testing with the mission of improving the reliability of chemical, mechanical, and structural properties of products for its global customers, and providing specialised support and knowledge of materials, processes, and industry standards.

“The center can now double the number of analyses it performs each week and is able to deliver results to our customers faster with no performance bottlenecks,” said Marco Moscatti, board member and production director, TEC Eurolab.

Industrial tomography scanners deal with large, high-resolution 3D images, resulting in the center’s data growth of 50 percent per year. However, it has been challenged by legacy technology that couldn’t keep up with the increasing data volumes. The existing environment failed to efficiently and reliably process massive volumes of data.

The Tomographic Center used numerous workstations for file acquisition, 3D reconstruction and analysis. These workstations were processing many copies of the same data separately, slowing down operations and causing data loss, legal risks, and missed service level agreements. 

TEC Eurolab had a number of requirements, including a secure, central data store to ensure data integrity and predictable recovery, efficient file sharing, secure and reliable target storage for backup, non-disruptive scalability, and a seamless integration with its existing HPE environment.

Outstanding performance results from a pilot test driven by the software-defined data center specialist NETMIND led TEC Eurolab to choose Cohesity DataPlatform software on certified HPE Apollo r2200 Gen 10 servers as their preferred file share and scale-out target storage for backups.

With the new solution in place, data from all three types of workstations is written to the Cohesity cluster that acts as a central repository for acquisition, 3D reconstruction, and analysis data. All data resides on a Cohesity file share, powered by Cohesity SmartFiles —  intelligent file services built into the Cohesity DataPlatform — resulting in more efficient file sharing and faster recovery, all from a central management user interface (UI).

Additionally, with robust security and data resiliency provided by Cohesity DataPlatform, TEC Eurolab greatly reduced the risk of data being lost or compromised, and enhanced its ability to meet regulatory compliance.

“We have reduced staff operational time by 30 percent and significantly improved data resiliency with Cohesity. Best of all, we have doubled our production capacity and are able to meet customer SLAs without compromising security and compliance, which contributed in part to an increase in Tomographic Center revenues. We are now looking to further maximize these benefits across the organization by expanding Cohesity to other use cases such as integrated backup, recovery, and analytics,” said Moscatti.

“With the Cohesity-HPE joint solution, TEC Eurolab is getting the best of both worlds,” said Giovanni Golinelli, pre-sales manager and systems and storage architect, NETMIND. “They are now able to adhere to their customers’ strict security needs and industry regulatory requirements. They have an enterprise-grade solution that combines the security-first approach of Cohesity software with built-in silicon-level firmware protection, encryption, and breach detection of HPE Apollo Gen 10 servers.”

TEC Eurolab is already considering Cohesity for additional use cases across the organization. In the next phase of deployment, TEC Eurolab is considering Cohesity for integrated backup and recovery of all data across the organization as well as using Cohesity MarketPlace apps for anti-virus, in-place analytics, and vulnerability assessment. 

The combination of self-monitoring infrastructure with HPE InfoSight for servers and unified visibility from Cohesity Helios, global SaaS-based management for data and applications, will allow the company to gain predictive insights from their data and further optimize operations.

“We see a lot of potential at TEC Eurolab for further expansion of the joint solution from Cohesity and HPE. TEC Eurolab has already realized tremendous efficiency in their operations by using Cohesity for file shares and as a scale-out backup target and will elevate it to the next level by using Cohesity for integrated backup and recovery,” adds Giovanni Golinelli, Pre-Sales Manager, Systems and Storage Architect at NETMIND. “Future native integration of Cohesity with HPE primary storage portfolio including HPE Nimble Storage and HPE SimpliVity will help accelerate this and make Cohesity their data management platform of choice.”

Onyx CenterSource improves alliance with Flexential adding more cloud and disaster recovery as a service

Flexential, provider of data center colocation and hybrid IT solutions, announced Monday its expanded cloud and data recovery partnership with Onyx CenterSource, vendor of B2B payments and business intelligence solutions to the hospitality industry.

Onyx CenterSource began its relationship with Flexential in early 2018, with a combination of colocation and cloud services. That partnership has nearly doubled in the past 18 months, as Flexential's team of experts offered a consultative approach to design the IT Infrastructure strategy to grow and support Onyx CenterSource's entire global footprint, using the Flexential Cloud Solutions. 

The strategy includes infrastructure in Flexential's data centers, single- and multi-tenant clouds, and multiple connections to hyperscalers, to scale and protect the transactional data of Onyx CenterSource's customers which include more than 150,000 hotel properties and 200,000 travel booking providers worldwide. 

Onyx CenterSource's U.S. business also uses the Flexential Amsterdam cloud region for its European services. As Onyx CenterSource evolves its technology platform strategy, its focus is on consistency and performance at each of its global locations.

HPE advances HPE SimpliVity to deliver an AI-driven experience, modernizes data protection and enhances usability

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced on Monday advancements to its HPE SimpliVity, its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform, ushering in a new generation of HCI powered with artificial intelligence to simplify virtual machine (VM) management and free IT staff to focus on innovation. 

Building upon its software-defined architecture, HPE SimpliVity is enhancing its customer experience with HPE InfoSight, one-click cluster upgrades, and the integration of HPE StoreOnce.

HPE SimpliVity has always gone beyond standard HCI consolidation. In early days, one could argue that IT architectures were “hardware confined.” Most systems incorporated only a very basic consolidation of servers, storage and hypervisor in each node. Software-defined technology and traditional hyperconvergence soon overtook the original architecture, allowing for tremendous IT productivity and efficiency gains over the previous infrastructure. 

Software-defined infrastructure removed the IT silos and replaced wasteful, manual processes and over-provisioning with efficient, fluid pools of virtual compute and storage. Throughout that evolution, HPE SimpliVity provided data centers with game-changing HCI features, from built-in backup, rapid recovery, inline deduplication and compression, to a HyperGuarantee that guarantees simplicity, efficiency and power of the platform.

HPE SimpliVity makes it simple for any VM administrator to deploy, manage, scale, and upgrade their infrastructure. As the industry’s most efficient all-in-one system, HPE SimpliVity eliminates more infrastructure and management silos than its competitors. HPE SimpliVity intelligently self-manages efficiency, performance, and resiliency without the need for manual tuning or configuration tradeoffs. 

The first release of HPE InfoSight for HPE SimpliVity, enables customers to gain predictive resource planning that takes the guesswork out of managing capacity. HPE InfoSight provides HPE SimpliVity customers global visibility and analytics into detailed system, performance, and capacity utilization insights, along with support automation with automatic alerts and signature detection into complex problems.

One-click cluster upgrades for HPE SimpliVity enable a seamless full-stack software upgrade that simplifies and removes risk. Customers now have the ability to upgrade firmware, hypervisor, and HPE SimpliVity software across the nodes in a HPE SimpliVity cluster in one click, delivering confidence to simply, and non-disruptively perform upgrades across sites.

HPE SimpliVity is hyper-efficient, uniquely combining compute, storage, and networking with built-in backup and recovery, delivering consolidation and cost savings. HPE SimpliVity has improved data efficiency with 90 percent storage capacity savings across primary VMs and backups. These savings are guaranteed with the HPE SimpliVity HyperGuarantee. 

Only HPE SimpliVity deduplicates compresses, and optimizes data inline, globally, enabling customers to save on expensive capacity resources, and enabling VM mobility.

Modernized data protection with HPE StoreOnce integration. As HPE SimpliVity is accelerating into more enterprises, customers are looking to continually improve their data protection strategy. HPE is integrating with HPE StoreOnce for HPE SimpliVity, enabling enhanced protection and data mobility across HPE storage. 

HPE StoreOnce integration with HPE SimpliVity enables an app-aware data protection solution with rapid recovery and policy-based automation for simple management and cost-effectiveness. This solution complements the HPE SimpliVity built-in backup and recovery capability for long-term retention and compliance.

HPE SimpliVity customers gain space-optimized, intelligent HCI for multi-site deployments, enabling VMs to benefit from performance, efficiency and resiliency in the smallest possible footprint. For edge sites, zero administration is enabled by centralized, unified management across all sites, empowering customers to manage workloads across distributed sites where staff resources are scarce. 

For superior business continuity, customers can rapidly failover virtually any number of edge sites in the event of disaster, using single click edge-to-core VM mobility and recovery. Orchestration is fast and efficient, enabling all edge workloads to be recovered quickly, minimizing business downtime.

Guardonix USB3.0 Writeblocker assists forensic examiners to capture lost evidence from damaged/degraded data storage devices

A new device from DeepSpar Data Recovery Systems is making it possible for digital forensic examiners to capture lost evidence from malfunctioning hard drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs), and other data storage devices.

To perform forensic analysis, storage devices are commonly connected to a forensic workstation through the USB interface. A writeblocker is required to ensure that evidence is not altered during analysis. 

A unique advantage of Guardonix is that in addition to writeblocking, it also stabilizes the USB connection – if a storage device is malfunctioning and intermittently goes offline, Guardonix hardware handles the issue, allowing data acquisition to succeed.