Backup as a Service (BaaS) blog topics, including Cloud to Cloud Backup, Veeam Backup and Recovery Services, Veeam Cloud Connect, IBM System i Backup and Recovery, Data Archiving, and more.
Listen to our fireside chat interview with Anthony Spiteri, Senior Global Technologist at Veeam Software®, and Steven Rodin, CEO at Storagepipe as they discuss data protection trends impacting businesses, service providers, and platform vendors. Learn how Veeam Cloud Service Provider Storagepipe is rising above the challenges with a focus on customer-centric responsiveness and automation and providing innovative backup and disaster recovery service offerings tailored to customers’ specific requirements.
Get Anthony and Steven’s hard-earned insights around future-looking business risks and opportunities that are developing out of the disruptive shift from office-based workforces to flexible remote work-from-anywhere models, and what that means for IT professionals and the data workloads that they protect.
Key Data Protection Trends
“THEY NEEDED A PARTNER THAT COULD TAKE ACTION QUICKLY, THAT COULD RESPOND TO THEIR NEEDS, COULD TURN AROUND COMPLEX SOLUTIONS RAPIDLY.”
– STEVEN RODIN, VEEAM CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDER STORAGEPIPE
Steven commented that with the almost overnight shift to remote work, everyone had to quickly adjust; the Storagepipe team and their customers alike. “There were more people wanting to make decisions more rapidly. Organizations needed to make important IT decisions even during the pandemic, and they needed a partner that could take action quickly, that could respond to their needs, and could turn around complex solutions rapidly. So that was what we were focusing on, not just that we had the right solution but that we were delivering it quickly and effectively, even from a team working remotely.”
“THE TIME IS JUST RIGHT FOR BUSINESSES TO MOVE INTO THEIR TRANSFORMATIONAL JOURNEY.”
– ANTHONY SPITERI, VEEAM SOFTWARE
When asked what the important trends he’s seen come out of the pandemic, Anthony shared, “I think when you think about where we’ve come from over the past 10 years, with the move from on-premises service, virtualization, modern data platforms, software as a service, infrastructure as a service, just general cloud adoption, it’s been almost this Goldilocks situation where the time is just right for businesses to move more into their transformational journey.” What was his second big data protection trend? Watch the video to find out!
Many businesses with on-premises workloads are migrating some systems to the cloud and often end up with hybrid cloud environments in need of unified protection. Discover how Veeam managed services are developed and supported by Storagepipe’s in-house technical team of certified Veeam Architects and Engineers, who work closely with Veeam as new and enhanced functionalities continue to be added to the data protection platform.
For example, over the past 18 months Storagepipe has seen several services boom in popularity as businesses and organizations accelerate their digital transition to cloud-based data protection. “We’ve seen some tremendous momentum behind our Office 365, Microsoft 365 backup solution. That’s been a really big driver, from one of Veeam’s key products,” shared Steven. “Customers at first were looking to do that themselves and looking to do that on-prem, but we saw more customers moving to outsource that, moving to a managed service especially when they were out of the office.”
“WE’VE TAKEN THE TIME DURING THE PANDEMIC TO INVEST IN OUR PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES, AND THAT’S BEEN BOOMING.”
– STEVEN RODIN, VEEAM CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDER STORAGEPIPE
When discussing data protection trends, the conversation often naturally turns to how to safeguard workloads living in the public cloud, or in a hybrid cloud model. “We’ve taken the time during the pandemic to invest in our public cloud services, and that’s been booming,” Steven shares. “We’ve seen the Azure and the AWS backup solutions that we’ve launched as a managed cloud service during the pandemic, really grow in the last year since launching with Veeam’s Backup for Azure and Backup for AWS.”
Listen to the interview below for more details on the latest data archiving, cloud backup, and disaster recovery capabilities from Veeam and Storagepipe, and where Anthony and Steven see the data protection industry going next.
Veeam and Storagepipe Data Protection Trends Fireside Chat
Storagepipe Managed Services for Veeam Software
Storagepipe offers Veeam Backup and Replication in an as-a-Service model — including hardware, software, and offsite storage — for complete data protection. Our experienced and dedicated team of data storage and recovery experts including certified Veeam Architects and Engineers provides proven solutions for your business.
Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) has been a critical provider of Indigenous peoples’ programming for over 20 years in Canada and is the world’s first Indigenous broadcaster. APTN is an important source of news, entertainment, and educational programming celebrating Indigenous peoples’ cultures, sharing their journeys, and honoring the wisdom of their elders. The network broadcasts more than 50 hours of programming each week in 23 languages and in multiple time zones across Canada, servicing more than 10 million households.
Key programs include Nation to Nation, which follows the effect of politics on Indigenous peoples, and inFocus, a live interactive call-in show covering top news stories that impact their way of life, health, or employment.
APTN utilizes a variety of IT systems that are critical to enabling everything from cross-platform scheduling with Avatega, to enterprise resource planning with Microsoft Dynamics supporting APTN’s financial management and marketing departments. Microsoft SQL Server underpins both systems. These systems need to stay online to serve the community that depends on them. In the past, APTN was experiencing challenges with their backup and disaster recovery services from Backup Exec, putting their programming and operations continuity at risk.
APTN made the critical decision to look for alternative solutions and services to ensure that they can restore systems quickly and get programming back on the air. When APTN’s IT Manager Steve Ens identified that their key data protection metrics such as Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) were going unmet, he quickly recognized the opportunity to improve their resiliency in the event of a data disaster with on-premise Veeam Backup and Replication.
Choosing the best cloud-based Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
After several years of successful data protection utilizing on-premise Veeam Backup and Replication, Mr. Ens decided to explore options to extend that same data protection into the cloud and improve their cybersecurity posture to safeguard against unexpected downtime and the escalating threats of malware, ransomware, and the ever-present risk of user error.
Veeam Platinum Cloud and Service Provider Storagepipe stepped in to assist Mr. Ens in evaluating their needs and matched them with the best mix of cloud-based data protection solutions and services for their systems, budget, and future growth servicing the aboriginal and global communities.
“Working with Storagepipe has been a great experience. They were very responsive to my questions and concerns before we agreed to do business as well as when I had technical questions after implementation. Storagepipe seems to have all their ducks in a row when it comes to a being preferred partner of Veeam which is my backup and recovery software vendor of choice. Either they know all the ins and outs, or they can get answers very quickly,” said Steve Ens, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) IT Manager.
After Storagepipe conducted an in-depth discovery process with APTN, it was determined that APTN faced the following challenges:
Since ransomware is a constant threat for every business and organization, they wanted to explore options around cloud-enabled data protection and disaster recovery
While many of their systems were backed up with on-premise Veeam Backup and Replication, they still needed to protect their cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 data against disaster; Microsoft’s Shared Responsibility Model states that while they are responsible for ensuring systems continuity, customers are responsible for data protection and continuity
They had 15 TB of data across 36 Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs) on-premises to a local server and were looking for a way to replicate that data to an off-premises disaster recovery site
Knowledgeable, reliable, and responsive managed cloud-based backup and disaster recovery services and technical support are critical in ensuring their programming can continue uninterrupted
Based on these findings, the Storagepipe team recommended:
Veeam Cloud Connect to extend Veeam Backup and Replication to the cloud for complete system, application and data protection
Veeam Insider Protection (available exclusively through Veeam Cloud Connect)
Customer Success! APTN ensures uninterrupted cultural programming for audiences near and far
This means that in addition to backing up and replicating APTN’s VMs on-premises, Veeam also sends backup and replica copies to Storagepipe’s secure, managed private cloud through Veeam Cloud Connect. The Veeam Cloud Connect solution enables Veeam infrastructure in the cloud with just a few clicks, and with the Veeam Insider Protection functionality strengthens APTN’s ransomware protection by fulfilling the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule (3 different copies of data on 2 different media with 1 copy offsite and 1 copy that is air-gapped, immutable or offline with 0 backup recovery errors).
“Storagepipe’s Account Executive has been very attentive to our needs and I would recommend Storagepipe to any of my IT colleagues as the ‘insurance policy’ for their business,” shares Mr. Ens.
With these new managed cloud-based backup and disaster recovery services from Storagepipe, Veeam Software ® protects all IT systems supporting programming and business operations so that APTN can continue its invaluable work of celebrating Indigenous peoples and helping the world to understand their significance and value.
What is Veeam Backup? What is Veeam Replication? Which solution is best for your business and why? Let’s find out!
Veeam Backup & Replication is the foundation of the Veeam Platform, providing backup, recovery and replication for your critical workloads including VMware, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Windows, Linux, enterprise apps and much more.
But why do you even need backup and replication, you might ask. Here’s why…
The Achilles heel of information technology has always been the non-physical nature of data records. Electrons can disappear in startlingly large quantities in less than the blink of an eye. This can happen with a simple user error, by clicking on the wrong menu item for instance, or through sophisticated attacks such as ransomware, which encrypts your data, effectively scrambling it beyond recognition or usability — unless you pay to have it de-encrypted. Then there are natural disasters, like fires, floods, tornadoes, etc. Although, these latter threats are arguably more dangerous to physical files than they are to electronic data given the relative ease with which electronic data can be protected. That is why even before the modern information age, keeping backups of critical data has always been essential.
A backup is a copy of a set of data or a full system that is made at a specific time and stored away, either on the business premises, at an offsite location or in the cloud — or some mix of the three. A backup is time bound. Even seconds after it is made, a backup will no longer represent the existing live data set, which is continuously changing. For many kinds of data, this isn’t a problem. Sometimes it is even an advantage. For instance, in the case of a ransomware attack where the entire data store has been compromised, having a clean backup of your data and systems taken from a point in time before the infection is the only way to recover from the attack.
A Veeam Backup makes a point in time archive of all the files, settings, snapshots, binaries, and configuration files that make up a virtual machine (VM) or system. This archive is stored in a single file (*.VBK) that is often compressed and deduplicated to save disk space. Completed backup files give the business a point in time from which to recover any and all files that are associated with a system or application. If backups are completed with regular frequency, they can be very effective at preventing data loss entirely and at recovering data in the event of accidental or purposeful deletion. Backup provides a very strong RPO (Recovery Point Objective) solution. Veeam also provides Veeam Cloud Connect , which enables the capability to make backup copies offsite to a Cloud Connect Service Provider to ensure offsite and ransomware protection for backups.
Replication makes a copy of a running virtual machine and then synchronizes updates from that running VM at regular intervals so that the replica is ready to run with the most current information should the need arise for a failover. The content of a replica changes with each new synchronization. Failover can take place very rapidly and often results in little to no downtime for the business and a very low RTO (Recovery Time Objective).
In today’s virtual environments, where critical services such as e-commerce and supply chain are being provided to customers, or where automated manufacturing and smart processes generally rely on instantaneous access to changing data, the live nature of the data is critical. In case of a failure to a primary system, it is essential to have a failover to a redundant system that can immediately restore the service. In this case, more than the data is replicated. The virtual machines, as well as the underlying network have to be replicated so that services accessing a given IP address will continue seamlessly. Again, the replication may be on the enterprise premises, in a physically distant alternate location or in the cloud – or some mix of the three.
What are the differences? Backup vs. Replication
Now that we have discussed the importance and the process of replicating and backing up your essential business systems and data, let’s talk about the differences between the two. When it comes to backup and replication , the most frequently asked question is – do you need one of these solutions, or do you need both?
The two terms, Backup and Replication, are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t the same thing. Sometimes they are presented as alternative ways to protect your systems, as if you must choose one or the other. The thoroughness of the replication solution sometimes makes enterprises believe incorrectly that they can dispense with backups, since there is always one or more replications of the live data store at any time. However, this misses the point that data that is corrupted or lost is also replicated in the failover system. If an employee hits the wrong key or a ransomware attack encrypts data in the primary system, it will be replicated through the redundant systems based on the replication frequency. Because of the trend towards Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and low recovery point objectives (RPO) for frequently replicated systems, it is also essential to have historical backups with longer RPOs.
So, for most businesses Backup and Replication are both essential and you should employ them together to ensure that you have a full data protection and disaster recovery plan. What mix of replication and backup your business needs will depend on the nature of your data and the role it plays in your business. The required availability of systems and the budget you have for disaster recovery will also play a role in these decisions. More critical and frequently changing systems will be stronger candidates to add replication, but will also add cost to the solution. Options for failover may also exist to balance costs including both “Warm” and “Hot” (high availability) Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). A good DRaaS provider will be able to provide a cost-effective solution to meet your managed disaster recovery requirements while ensuring that both replication and backup processes are provided to balance availability with data protection.
Partner with Storagepipe for Veeam Backup, Recovery and Replication Services.
As businesses pursue digital transformation strategies that integrate data across their internal silos for end-to-end data-driven processes, they will have to consider replication for either partial or full failover scenarios, as well as complementary backup services . As your DRaaS partner, Storagepipe works with you to determine what mix of backup and replication makes the most sense for your business operations. We will help you to analyze the role that your data plays in your business and help assess the cost of data loss vs. the cost of the disaster recovery effort. And, if your business needs it, we will design an appropriately scaled DRaaS solution to ensure that your essential services are restored and up and running before your customers have even noticed.
About Storagepipe
Storagepipe is a trusted global provider of comprehensive cloud, data protection and security services.
Since 2001, Storagepipe has provided these robust and secure Managed Cloud and Disaster Recovery solutions from a scalable multi-tenant infrastructure, supported by our first-class in-house technical team. Storagepipe delivers highly flexible and responsive solutions with outstanding value and service, using state-of-the-art technology to offer ultimate protection and peace of mind.
We are driven to be your trusted partner and to ensure that we deliver a Storagepipe Experience that meets your business requirements with the reliability, scalability and support that your business demands.
Partners Providing Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery for VMware
Steven Rodin, CEO at Storagepipe sat down with Ray Gonsalves, Sales Leader at VMware Cloud for an episode of VMware Cloud Conversations to discuss how our partnership continues to benefit our customers with cost-effective Backup and Disaster Recovery for VMware. Ray Gonsalves helps companies to navigate the transition from on-premise to cloud-based solutions, to best meet their evolving requirements.
Expanded Data Protection with Managed Cloud Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Services
Storagepipe has been providing organizations with reliable backup and DR since 2001, and has recently expanded on this expertise with our Cloud Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, and Managed IT Services offerings to provide a comprehensive, single-vendor data protection experience for our customers.
Storagepipe and VMware Cloud Conversations Video
Listen to our interview with VMware’s Ray Gonsalves for our insights on how organizations can protect their data with trending technologies such as virtual machines, automation, expanding a cloud-first approach to enable High Availability and Disaster Recovery, and accelerating moves to offsite storage to better support cloud capabilities like geo-diversity and remote work.
Storagepipe and VMware
Storagepipe is a VMware Cloud Verified partner, providing our customers with the complete value of VMware Cloud Infrastructure: compatibility, choice and control over security, policies and costs.
Steven Rodin serves as Storagepipe’s President & CEO, and is responsible for planning the company’s growth and determining its strategic direction. Steven has over 20 years of experience in leading and managing high performing teams, growing sales, creating innovative technical solutions, developing new products, deal execution and professional services.
After lagging behind other sectors for decades, many asset-intensive industries are set to undergo a long overdue digital transformation. Billed as “Industry 4.0”, the shift is being driven by the adoption of big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT) and the cloud. The use of data to transform almost every aspect of industrial processes holds huge promise for increasing productivity, safety and efficiency. But it also creates a huge risk around the loss of data and will require these businesses to think very differently about industry data Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) services.
Evolving Data Protection Across Industries
While the computer revolution initially transformed sectors as diverse as finance, entertainment, advertising and e-commerce, there are many others that remained relatively unchanged. Industries such as manufacturing, mining, logistics, energy, and transportation rely heavily on physical assets rather than digital processes. They have typically adopted information technologies (IT) only for administration and communications, while their basic operations remained undigitized.
As progress has marched forward, these industries are now beginning to join the digital transformation movement. Two of the biggest shifts leading to the adoption of digital operations technology (OT) are IoT and AI/machine learning. IoT sensors are enabling many physical processes to finally be digitally measured. Heavy machinery performance, physical asset movements and environmental conditions can now be carefully monitored using IoT sensors, which generate data streams continuously throughout the day.
AI machine learning analytics are then used to process this enormous amount of data to isolate patterns and draw insights on everything from when to plan maintenance, to optimizing end-to-end workflows and sensing environmental hazards. The digital data and machine learning insights can then enable the automation of extremely complex processes. Using digital twins technology, it is possible to model most physical processes using machine learning to continuously tweak operations, improve safety and find better ways to do things.
Machine learning typically relies on access to very large amounts of historical data in order to create algorithms that model the physical process. Whereas typically, logged data of this kind has traditionally been very low in terms of priority, it now becomes much more important, and thus may need to be given different priority in your backup and recovery plans. The AI machine learning programs must continuously go through the data source searching for patterns, even as new data is added. Models are continuously in a state of development and evaluation. They are constantly rebuilt as new data is added, and the model is refined. This closed loop repeats continuously.
This puts much greater emphasis on efficient and secure data storage strategies, including data backup (BaaS) and disaster recovery (DRaaS) to ensure that your systems have access to the right data at the right time. Especially at the beginning of the process during the training of the AI, it is difficult to determine what kinds of data need to be stored, since often the most relevant insights can be drawn from the sort of data that a human operator would simply disregard. As the AI model matures, certain workloads will become more important and will move from long-term, slower storage to very fast storage. AI “training processes” can access terabytes of storage per hour, putting extreme pressure on storage throughput.
Specialized Industry Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
For many businesses this hyper reliance on data is new territory, and it is important for them to engage a company that can provide expertise on how best to manage, protect and recover their data. One very good option is to choose a partner that provides Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). This offers a practical solution for companies of all sizes, and especially those with limited IT personnel resources and capital to handle unpredictable disaster and emergency events. Leveraging specialized DR services enables businesses to focus their OT teams on core business needs while providing stand-by supportive resources when they need a helping hand the most.
It is important to plan carefully for what gets recovered and in what order because the AI data stores can be so large. This requires careful analysis of the criticality of your operations and systems, and the necessary order in which data needs to be recovered. Working closely with your DRaaS provider, you can create playbooks for exactly how to respond to different disaster scenarios, test them and then train your personnel to follow them.
A good DRaaS partner will also have extensive experience in helping companies recover from many different kinds of disasters including cybersecurity events, which are a new kind of threat for an asset-intensive industry as IoT introduces new avenues for attack along with enhanced connectivity.
As we embrace autonomous technologies built around IoT, AI and machine-learning, we are unleashing tremendous productive potential — all based on data. We are also setting ourselves up for serious difficulties if the data is lost. A good DRaaS partner can help you to navigate and survive events of this nature and ensure that your business thrives in its new data-driven model and is not crippled by the loss of it.
Your Industry Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Heroes
Storagepipe is a trusted global DRaaS provider of comprehensive Cloud, Data Protection and Cybersecurity services and can help to provide guidance as you work through your SMB or enterprise DR planning process.
Since 2001, Storagepipe has provided these robust and secure Managed Cloud and Disaster Recovery solutions from a scalable multi-tenant infrastructure, supported by our first-class in-house technical team. Storagepipe delivers highly flexible and responsive solutions with outstanding value and service, using state-of-the-art technology to offer ultimate protection and peace of mind. Storagepipe is an accredited Microsoft Office Level 1 backup and DRaaS provider.
We are driven to be your trusted industry data backup and DR partner and to ensure that we deliver a Storagepipe Experience that meets your business requirements with the reliability, scalability and support that your business demands.
Contact us today to discover your options around data loss prevention solutions and rapid ransomware recovery with services such as Cloud to Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365and Storagepipe DR services. Regardless of internal user error, ransomware attacks, or when a disaster strikes, ensure your business continuity by meeting your operational demands while protecting and recovering your most valuable asset – your data.
Storagepipe is excited to announce the launch of our new website, designed with our customers in mind. You spoke, and we listened! Visitors to our website now enjoy an expanded service portfolio, with new information around our Backup, Disaster Recovery, Cloud Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, and Managed IT Services. We’ve also expanded our solutions information to give your business all of the services in one place, based on your industry.
The new site also provides faster page load times for desktop and mobile devices, more ways for you to contact us, webinar and event announcements, and a helpful Knowledge Center where you can access all of our Backup and DR insights that we publish, free!
These updates are just the start. Our values center around providing world-class customer experiences, which requires us to get to know our customers’ needs. We want to provide you with responsive and useful information, so as visitors to our website please reach out and say hi to our Backup and Disaster Recovery Heroes. We will listen to your feedback and add to our services and the information on our website to better enable your decision-making processes.
Since 2001, Storagepipe has provided robust and secure Managed Cloud and Disaster Recovery solutions from a scalable multi-tenant infrastructure, supported by our first-class in-house technical team.
Storagepipe delivers highly flexible and responsive Cloud and Disaster Recovery services and solutions with outstanding skills and value, using state-of-the-art technology to offer ultimate protection and peace of mind.
We are driven to be your trusted partner and to ensure that we deliver a Storagepipe Experience that meets your business requirements with the reliability, scalability and support that your business demands.
Storagepipe awarded 2020 Veeam Impact Partner Award for Veeam Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) Growth Partner of the Year.
(TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA) – March 03, 2021: Storagepipe proudly announces that it has been selected as the 2020 Veeam Impact Partner Award – Veeam Cloud Service Provider Growth Partner of the Year, North America by Veeam® Software, the leader in Backup solutions that enable Cloud Data Management™.
These sixth annual awards recognize North American Veeam ProPartners and Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) partners who have not only demonstrated success in providing Veeam solutions to their customers, but who have also provided first-class support, expert knowledge, continued product education, and a true Veeam strategy incorporated into their business.
The Veeam VCSP Growth Partner of the Year, North America award recognizes Storagepipe for demonstrating the most progress, growth, and dedication toward Veeam business, and selling Veeam-cloud-based solutions. Storagepipe’s exceptional growth across North America around its strategic pillars of Cloud Services, Disaster Recovery, Cybersecurity and Managed Services has positioned it for this award.
Storagepipe is dedicated to continuing to build on this success through innovation and delivering world-class customer experiences into 2021 and beyond.
“We are excited to recognize and honor Storagepipe as the Veeam Impact Partner Award – VCSP Growth Partner of the Year, North America,” said Matt Kalmenson, vice president of Americas Cloud at Veeam. “2020 brought many challenges, but the dedication and perseverance of our partners made it one of the most successful for Veeam, and we recognize that. Storagepipe’s investment in building and delivering Veeam-powered solutions and services is an invaluable part of Act II for Veeam – our evolution into hybrid Cloud and containers. Storagepipe is a model partner who has developed a collaborative relationship with us and leverages the Veeam program for mutual business opportunities. We congratulate Storagepipe on this award and look forward to more collaborative success and even greater profitability in 2021.”
“The Storagepipe team is extremely excited to have once again been recognized by Veeam as one of North America’s leading Veeam Platinum Cloud Service Providers”, said Steven Rodin, CEO of Storagepipe. “We are rapidly growing our Veeam services and are honoured with this award as recognition of our focus on delivering a Storagepipe Experience that centers on our customers’ success and delivering exceptional and responsive services in backup, disaster recovery and cloud services. We are continuing to strengthen our market leading position as a premier Veeam Platinum Cloud Service Provider, by building deep technical expertise and expanding the breadth of our service offerings for small business and enterprise customers in cloud and disaster recovery services across North America.”
Storagepipe’s successful collaboration with Veeam has enabled multiple cloud services and made them stand out in the market, including Veeam Cloud Connect, Veeam Managed Appliances for VMWare and Hyper-V, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, and Veeam Replication for Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). A world-class in-house technical team and rapid and reliable services provides a Storagepipe Experience that is responsive and trusted by customers across North America. Cloud and DR Services are offered with exceptional service, security and compliance, along with flexible pricing to address changing business needs. Storagepipe has Veeam support for both VMWare and Hyper-V along with extensive Veeam certifications, and we are looking forward to showing customers all of the incredible new features recently released as part of the new Veeam Availability Suite v11.
Recognition of Storagepipe’s growth and collaboration with Veeam based on the VCSP Growth Partner of the Year, North America award will help fuel expansion across Canada and the United States as they build on existing and develop new relationships. Storagepipe’s Platinum Veeam Cloud & Service Provider partnership and its vCloud Verified status in the VMware Cloud Provider Program offer immense future opportunities to drive customer benefits. Our team delivers a customer-centric Storagepipe Experience and are truly Your Backup and Disaster Recovery Heroes.
“Storagepipe’s award was only possible thanks to the incredible relationships we have with with Veeam leadership and team members in both Canada and the United States. We look forward to continuing to grow and collaborate with Veeam’s dedicated and collaborative team in the years to come,” says Rodin.
You’ve embraced remote working – are you still secure?
The trend towards remote working has been growing for several decades, but recently due to world events, many businesses have had to adopt supporting technologies and processes quickly and under pressure. The remote working trend has also dovetailed with the move to the cloud and software-as-a-service applications like Office 365. Cloud services are a great help in implementing remote working and in helping teams to collaborate even when not working in the same location. Cloud-enabled services and applications are often misunderstood, however, when it comes to security measures. Along with their SaaS services, businesses also need to consider using cloud-based security and disaster recovery services in parallel from a trusted DRaaS provider.
SaaS and Cloud providers like Microsoft, Salesforce, Google and others promise to secure the infrastructure that hosts the cloud application. But these SaaS providers are not responsible for covering all of the possible data and security issues that can arise, so customer support for backup, replication, and recovery services needs to be considered.
While the cloud provider takes care of the infrastructure, data and access remain the customer’s responsibility. The access risks compound as workers increasingly work remotely and communicate through email, which is the number one vector for malware.
Secure access to the cloud for remote workers today is usually ensured by either using an SDP or split-tunnel VPN. In either case, the security of remote access relies on user authentication. It is important not to make the mistake of relying on the employees to set up and manage their passwords. Individuals are notorious for setting easy-to-remember but also easy-to-guess passwords. Set up strict corporate password policies and enforce them. Also enforce regular intervals for employees to update their passwords.
Even with these stricter password policies in place, businesses would also be wise to employ multi-factor authentication (MFA). There are a number of ways for bad actors to manipulate or trick your employees into unintentionally revealing their passwords making it a good idea to have a second authentication method as a further roadblock. Traditionally, MFA was done using tokens, but it has become much simpler today to use the employee’s smartphone to send a code that they then enter into the SaaS login credential screen. There are a number of good choices for MFA available such as Google Authenticator, or options recommended by Microsoft. Need help determining which MFA solution is the best fit for you? Ask our Microsoft 365 experts today!
Even MFA access through SDP or a VPN will not always guarantee security for your most precious data; internal employees can also act maliciously. Therefore, it is a good idea to design your internal data access policies to ensure that each end user only has access to the applications and data that they need to do their jobs.
Segmenting your data collections is another good policy to adopt for additional Cybersecurity and data protection. Having all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. Using various software-defined networking techniques such as SDPs or SD-WAN, you can literally define the connection between the user’s device and a specific server. They can be completely restricted to this network slice. Finally, think carefully about which workers get remote access; not everyone needs it all the time.
One main vector for security breaches is via email “spear phishing” attacks, which attempt to induce people to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers by posing as reputable companies.
Phishing is a common technique for extracting passwords from employees with some IT professionals reporting 1000+ phishing attempts hitting their email inboxes a month. Other malicious email campaigns include sending attachments with embedded trojan code, or links pointing to compromised websites that auto-download malware onto users’ systems.
All employees are at risk of making a split-second poor decision and exposing their computer to these attacks. Threat actors are adept at choosing topics that people are eager to learn more about, often playing off trending fears and anxieties to lessen people’s natural caution and common sense. As a sign of the times, many organizations are reporting increased email phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many messages claiming to offer breaking news or free tests. Once the pandemic has finally abated, threat actors will move on to the next anxiety-provoking topic.
While Microsoft and other email SaaS providers often try to help to filter unwanted senders’ messages by verifying the IP address to guard against phishing, oftentimes their off-the-shelf attempts lack comprehensive protections and may lag behind in updating against the latest threats. IT professionals should look to enhance their email security by looking for Managed Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus solutions that offer services for scanning both inbound and outbound emails to eliminate spam and known attacks, and Managed IT Services for analytical reporting, Cybersecurity and on-demand expertise from a trusted DRaaS provider.
While it is critical to stay on top of the latest security threats and trends, it is also the case that malicious actors are constantly innovating new attack strategies. Barely a week goes by that some new kind of threat is launched and discovered. From denial of service to trojan horses and ransomware, you can never rule out the possibility that your business will be the next headline victim and cautionary tale.
How does a DRaaS Provider enhance Microsoft 365 data protection and cybersecurity?
That is one of the most important, but not the only, reason to have a comprehensive backup and rapid disaster recovery service. Another reason is that employees unintentionally delete data all the time. In fact, they are the most common source of data loss. Even IT professionals can make configuration mistakes that can open data to being hacked or even lost. So, a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery option is essential for restoring your data.
This is where cloud services expand their usefulness from a means to collaborate efficiently, to storing and protecting your critical and everyday business data. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) has become increasingly important in an era of escalating natural disasters, cyber-attacks targeting critical public institutions and businesses, and sophisticated social engineering campaigns bombarding your business day and night.
The good news is, as the importance of DRaaS has risen, the affordability has too. Many savvy organizations are leveraging the flexibility and rapid responsiveness inherent in cloud-enabled backup and recovery. After all, one of the many reasons that you adopted a cloud model was to get away from the capital costs and ongoing operating expenses associated with running and maintaining your own internal data infrastructure. Now that there are a range of cost-effective disaster recovery services available, businesses are finding that DRaaS makes good common sense.
In addition to helping you to recover from a disaster, an experienced DRaaS provider can also proactively help you to prevent data disasters from occurring in the first place, and enable your business to work securely no matter where your end users are located. As a third-party specializing in helping businesses to recover from various disasters, they are best placed to anticipate what your business might face in the future. They can help you to design your security approach, as well as prioritize your data resources, segmenting them and working with you to create a plan for ensuring that the most critical data is restored as quickly as possible to keep you up and running.
The possibility of remote working and cloud-based services have been a godsend for many businesses, allowing them to remain operational in these difficult times. It is unlikely that the workplace will return to what it was and remote work is probably the new normal or highly significant for many businesses going forward. Your DRaaS provider can make sure that you do it securely and ensure that you can also recover gracefully if anything does go wrong.
Storagepipe is a trusted global DRaaS provider of comprehensive Cloud, Data Protection and Cybersecurity services and can help to provide guidance as you work through your SMB or enterprise DR planning process.
Since 2001, Storagepipe has provided these robust and secure Managed Cloud and Disaster Recovery solutions from a scalable multi-tenant infrastructure, supported by our first-class in-house technical team. Storagepipe delivers highly flexible and responsive solutions with outstanding value and service, using state-of-the-art technology to offer ultimate protection and peace of mind. Storagepipe is an accredited Microsoft Office Level 1 backup and DRaaS provider.
We are driven to be your trusted partner and to ensure that we deliver a Storagepipe Experience that meets your business requirements with the reliability, scalability and support that your business demands.
Contact us today to discover your options around partnering with us to provide your customers with data loss prevention solutions and rapid ransomware recovery with services such as Cloud to Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365, email archiving, and Storagepipe DR services. Regardless of internal user error, ransomware attacks, or when a health disaster strikes, ensure your business continuity by meeting your operational demands while protecting and recovering your most valuable asset – your data.
You may already be managing backup services for some of your clients, but haven’t yet expanded to offering a complete disaster recovery service. Or you simply haven’t added Managed Backup or Disaster Recovery (DR) to your service portfolio at all. Either way, there are good reasons to consider offering your customers DR, not just as a source of recurring revenue, but also as a sticky service that can create a more trusted advisor relationship that leads to new business. It has become easier to add DR to your portfolio with the advent of Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), especially when working closely with a DRaaS partner.
DRaaS is a perfect example of an on-demand cloud service that is always-on and scales with your client’s needs. For you and your customers, there is the added benefit that you don’t need to keep a second data center for redundant servers and communications services. An additional perk for you is that DR brings in new customers, such as SMBs, that will find it easier to start small and scale as they grow.
DRaaS offers three other main benefits to your customers:
Immediate recovery from any kind of disaster with system failover to a secondary infrastructure within minutes.
Depending on needs and resources, customers get the flexibility to customize the scope of recovery from all types of disasters, from malware and ransomware to hurricanes and wildfires.
DRaaS offers seamless redundancy and no single point of failure to keep data securely protected in the cloud and away from the primary site.
Working closely with a customer to plan for recovery from a disaster that could jeopardize their business, requires that you get a clear understanding of their key operations and those parts of the business that are mission-essential. This disaster recovery planning approach is more strategic and collaborative between provider and customer than with a managed backup service, and requires you and the customer to predefine playbooks for exactly how to respond to different disaster scenarios. This is your opportunity to take your relationship with your customer to a new level. If you are able to add value and insights, you can earn their trust and develop a longer-term relationship with greater revenue potential.
Working on the disaster plan will involve taking the customer through a thorough risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. You may ask, which components are the most important and how do they impact their critical business functions? You will need to calculate both the financial and non-financial costs. Besides loss of revenue, there is the potential loss of opportunity; for instance, companies that recover faster, gain a competitive advantage.
The goal of all this analysis is to develop with the customer what they believe is their realistic recovery time objectives (RTO). In other words, how long can their infrastructure afford to be down? This is often a compromise between what they view as ideal and what they can afford. Similarly, you will also set the recovery point objectives (RPO), which define what level of data must be recovered and at what time-based increment or schedule, which should follow directly out of the analysis of critical business functions.
Qualities and Benefits of a Reliable DRaaS Partner
Having a technology partner that is focused on providing disaster recovery can be helpful during this process. A good DRaaS partner will have extensive experience in helping companies recover from many different kinds of disasters. This experience can be leveraged in formulating a sound disaster plan. And should the time come that a disaster does occur, it’s good to have team members onboard who routinely handle disaster situations and are able to meet the challenge with a measured and effective response that only comes with experience.
Your DRaaS partner will be particularly useful in the setting and defining of RTO and RPO objectives. These objectives set the parameters for the SLA you agree to and defines your relationship and your obligations going forward. This includes identifying the cost-effective services and configurations that are recommended for your customer to meet their RTO and RPO, including full or partial failover, and hot site or warm site replication. It is critical to get it right at the beginning, and this is where the extensive experience of a DRaaS partner can be drawn upon to ensure that the defined service achieves the customer’s objectives as well as your own.
Finally, your ultimate objective in defining a DR plan for your customer is to identify where they are most vulnerable and to help them to address those weaknesses to prevent disasters altogether. Again, you will have to move the needle on your relationship to go beyond reacting to their needs to anticipating them, and as a result positively shape the way they operate their business.
This is why DRaaS is much more than an additional revenue stream or a sticky service, although it is both these things. It is above all an opportunity to move you from being regarded as just a service provider to being a trusted strategic long-term partner for their business.
Storagepipe to the Rescue
Your Backup and Disaster Recovery Heroes
Storagepipe is a trusted global provider of comprehensive cloud, data protection and security services and can help to provide guidance as you work through your SMB or enterprise DR planning process.
Since 2001, Storagepipe has provided these robust and secure Managed Cloud and Disaster Recovery Services from a scalable multi-tenant infrastructure, supported by our first-class in-house technical team. Storagepipe delivers highly flexible and responsive solutions with outstanding value and service, using state-of-the-art technology to offer ultimate protection and peace of mind.
We are driven to be your trusted partner and to ensure that we deliver a Storagepipe Experience that meets your business requirements with the reliability, scalability and support that your business demands.
SaaS applications such as Office 365 are part of what is allowing the global shift towards remote working. Having everything in the cloud means that employees enjoy much greater flexibility about where and when they work, and organizations can reduce their real estate footprint. However, using cloud-based services does not mean that IT can forget about data backup and disaster recovery. While there are lots of good reasons to enable remote work in your organization, cloud services don’t end the need for complete data protection, wherever your employees are located.
Microsoft Office has long been the preferred communications, collaboration and productivity application suite for organizations. So, when Microsoft shifted Office to the cloud with Office 365, it was a strong signal to organizations that SaaS was here to stay. All of which was good news to IT departments that are weary of the time and money spent on supporting the old on-premises model.
Now, with automatic updates, employees always have the latest version of the software and can collaborate seamlessly on documents. When integrated with Microsoft’s other powerful cloud platforms like Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams, any size organization can have the full benefit of this powerful platform for communicating, sharing, and creating information to help drive their business.
Whether employees are working in the office, remotely or while on the move, they can utilize the Microsoft SaaS suite of applications thanks to support for operating systems ranging from Windows to Mac OS and Linux, including IOS and Android tablets and other mobile devices. With all of their data in the cloud, employees can move from device to device with complete confidence that the latest version of their documents and files are available to work on from anywhere, via any device.
As easy as this all sounds, there are still a bunch of requirements and policies that IT departments need to consider when implementing remote workers and Office 365.
BYOD Security Policies
Employees love the freedom that Office 365 gives them to use their own devices. While it may still be best practice for employees to use only business-supplied equipment, for many organizations, BYOD is here to stay. Thus, it is important to set up the right policies for remote workers. For instance, not sharing work devices with family members or, if that’s not possible, ensuring a separate password-protected account for the remote worker on the family machine.
Collaboration and Communication Policies
If the remote employee is using equipment provided by the business, the policy should be to disallow any sharing or personal computer use on the office-supplied laptop — or, at the very least, personal email and social media communications must have a separate account on the device. Email best practices are the same for all employees, and they should be well trained to spot phishing attacks. Documents of importance to the organization should be worked on in SharePoint with proper version control and access controls implemented.
Configuration and Remote Access
Remote updating of laptop configurations is not so different for remote and office workers if remote desktop software is installed. OS updates have to be scheduled with the employee but are easily managed with an internet-facing WSUS server. Management of Office 365 licenses is also similar. Don’t forget that with more workers accessing internal servers remotely, you have to have enough certificates on hand to support NSA multi-factor authentication for those times when remote working volume spikes.
Office 365 Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery
Finally, the need for regular data backup and disaster recovery planning does not go away just because the data is in Microsoft’s cloud. It is true that with cloud services, hard drive failures and lost laptops do not pose the same level of concern regarding data loss as they once did. But these are by no means the only ways to lose precious data.
The most common cause of data loss is user errors. Unfortunately, businesses often learn the hard way that many SaaS applications, including Office 365, lack comprehensive support to remedy these issues. In fact, many SaaS providers specifically exclude covering user error issues in their terms and conditions. Users can overwrite files by mistake, accounts get deleted, folders disappear, and malicious emails are opened. In addition to the applications themselves, you need to have a comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery policy, and workstation backup services that allow you to recover to previous versions of a file, folder, or even an account.
There are other serious considerations around archiving and searching records. If you delete a user license when an employee leaves, Microsoft Office 365 will only keep a backup of an employee’s email, contacts and calendar for 30 days. OneDrive files are kept for longer, but not forever. Thus, when employees leave the organization, it is critical to have a full backup of their files and protection of historical email in case you need them later to maintain continuity with suppliers or customers. You may also need those long-term backups and archives because of legal actions and compliance with audit regulations such as GDPR, PIPEDA, and HIPPA, which require businesses to maintain intact records for multiple years.
On the disaster recovery front, remote worker’s devices are more vulnerable to loss, damage and theft because of the public nature of the places they may work and their frequent mobility. They are just as exposed as any other part of the business to ransomware attacks, which are on the rise. Office 365 and other Microsoft services are often a primary target of such attacks.
Thus, it is crucial to maintain endpoint security for remote devices, managing the remote user’s anti-virus and spam protection. Given the vulnerabilities associated with Wi-Fi, especially public Wi-Fi services, employees should use a VPN to access the enterprise intranet, as well as for connections to cloud-based applications like Office 365. Despite the higher risks that are associated with remote work, a comprehensive offsite or cloud data backup service is your ultimate backstop should they experience difficulties.
The need for these precautions shouldn’t outweigh the advantages of remote work, and there are ways to avoid the extra overhead associated with managing your remote workforce. Look for a partner who can help you get the most out of the Microsoft productivity platform with cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery, as well as management of Office 365 licenses, user account management, end-point security, training and set-up assistance.
Storagepipe to the Rescue
Your Backup and Disaster Recovery Heroes
Storagepipe is a trusted global provider of comprehensive cloud, data protection and security services. Office 365 Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery are some of our top rated services.
Since 2001, Storagepipe has provided these robust and secure managed cloud and disaster recovery solutions from a scalable multi-tenant infrastructure, supported by our first-class in-house technical team. Storagepipe delivers highly flexible and responsive solutions with outstanding value and service, using state-of-the-art technology to offer ultimate protection and peace of mind.
We are driven to be your trusted partner and to ensure that we deliver a Storagepipe Experience that meets your business requirements with the reliability, scalability and support that your business demands.
Office 365 Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
Contact us today to discover your options around Office 365 Cloud to Cloud Backup services, and about other Storagepipe services that can help you to meet your operational demands while protecting and recovering your most valuable asset – your data.
