Dell Service Automates Recovery in Event of Cyberattack
Dell Technologies today unveiled a set of Dell APEX Cyber Recovery Services through which it promises to simplify organizations’ recovery from cyberattacks.
Announced at the Dell Technologies World conference, the service is an extension of Dell’s portfolio of managed services for managing on-premises and cloud computing environments. Through this service, Dell manages the day-to-day cyber recovery vault operations and assists with data recovery. The service is delivered via a set of standardized configurations that connect to nearly 2,000 isolated vault solutions deployed around the globe, now including an isolated Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Microsoft Azure vault.
Dell is also extending an existing alliance with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to add a CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for AWS offering that employs adaptive analytics and machine learning algorithm to speed data recovery. This offering, for example, monitors files and databases to determine first if a cyberattack has occurred and then identify the last known uncorrupted copy of data to speed recovery.
Caitlin Gordon, vice president of product marketing for Dell Technologies, said the goal is to automate data protection and management across an extended enterprise. In many cases, demand for Dell APEX Cyber Recovery Services is being driven not just by cybersecurity teams but also by DevOps teams that want to automate data protection within the context of an automated workflow that occurs whenever a cyberattack is detected.
Combining cybersecurity and data protection is not a new idea, but with the rise of ransomware it has taken on greater urgency. The longer it takes for an organization to recover from a ransomware attack the greater the cost. The issue today is the volume of ransomware attacks requires organizations to automate not just backup but also recovery. As a managed service provided by Dell, Gordon said the goal is to eliminate much of the friction that can complicate data recovery.
It’s not clear to what degree organizations are shifting away from managing backup and recovery themselves in favor of relying on an external service. However, in many organizations, backup and recovery is managed by an IT operations team that isn’t always aligned with cybersecurity teams. Dell is making a case for a data protection service that not only aligns more closely but also ensures backups are tested. It’s not uncommon for organizations today to try and recover data only to discover that their data was corrupted during the backup process.
Regardless of who manages data protection, there is more emphasis on the rate of recovery than ever. Businesses are more dependent on data, so every minute that data is unavailable creates a level of disruption that can easily cost more than any service. Of course, IT organizations will want to hold external service providers to a service level agreement that specifies recovery times that will probably be far shorter than their own internal IT team could attain. In fact, there are more than likely a few hundred other tasks that internal IT teams would prefer to handle rather than waiting on data to download.
