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Air-Gap: A Cybersecurity Benefit

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Of course, magnetic tape is an old technology but the simple reason of being old does not make it ineffective or impractical to use in the modern data center. Many would dare to say, magnetic tape is so retro its totally new again. I am inclined to believe that. Why? For one, the most modern data centers, called hyper-scalers, are leveraging the use of magnetic tape and cost-efficiency for such large magnitudes of data. For the rest of us, it mainly has to do with the cybersecurity benefit of air-gapping a backup copy.

I recently did a webinar where I teamed up with one of Quantum’s IT managers to discuss mainly what his IT organization did to protect against Ransomware. (If you missed, see here: Ransomware Webinar ).  Maybe for some it felt like it was a pitch for tape coming from a company that owns more than 30% of the tape market, but the reality is that we have seen and heard from many companies how air-gapping a backup copy truly became the best last line of defense against the nemesis of Ransomware. Plus, if we didn’t use the solution ourselves, would you really buy it from us?

When your organization was saved multiple millions of dollars because you stored a backup copy of your asset or last week’s data on tape and saved the most precious intangible commodity of time, creativity and effort plus the tangible ones like new data of new customer acquisitions, market intelligence and new product analysis you too would also say, damn tape is freakin’ awesome. Ransomware, due to the patience and tenacity of the criminals behind it, can sit and pause for any length of time inspecting your network from a distance until they discover a way to bypass your security. This is not to say, that the cybersecurity software in the market today aren’t amazing solutions, but if we’ve learned something it is that cyber-criminals are tenaciously patient and very hungry to be rewarded. This is why, air-gap is the best last line of defense. Working together with cybersecurity software, SDDs, flash and replication technology as data moves from a hot to cold status, air-gapping becomes very cost-effective and the best way to store long-term data.  In no way, are we saying replace your ultra-speeds that SSDs or flash offer in a back-up scenario, but rather include an air-gap backup copy on magnetic tape in the event you find your network connected devices compromised by ransomware. The enterprise backup environment is being hit hard by these vile characters and you don’t want to be caught by surprise.

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Tape Storage – a Proactive Layer of Protection Against Ransomware

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As we close out another year, cyberattacks like ransomware continue to be top of mind for many organizations. We expect it to be top of mind in 2020 and beyond as organizations make investments in the latest technology. With all the energy and spend going towards new technology and cybersecurity efforts, I can’t help but wonder what continues to give these cyber adversaries the upper hand? I’d be naïve to say that profit isn’t a huge motivator because there is a straight line from development to profit. It is a well-known fact that these intrusions are expected to yield more than just profits when they cripple your systems, they seek to yield the grand prize – your company secrets, your data is the currency of choice. An article published by Tech Republic states, “Cybercriminals are searching for higher returns on their investment, and they can reap serious benefits from ransoming organizations over individuals, who might yield, at best, a few personal files that could be used for extortion or identity theft.”

A backup strategy is important to overall protection

Backups are a critical component to your overall protection strategy. Is all your critical information being backed up. Is it being stored offline? Has the backup strategy implemented been tested to ensure it works? The FBI has recommendations for ransomware preventions and responses fo r CEOs. It is not a surprise to see that the first answer to the question of ho w to protect your network was Backups.

Tape storage: Your last line of defense

We have learned that ransomware seeks and attacks known vulnerabilities in the
network, where data on servers, storage, and everything else connected to it
will most likely be compromised. For your data to be truly protected, we recommend
an offline or airgap copy in your backup strategy that works in conjunction
with your security software, hard disk drives (HDD), and cloud storage.

Because tape storage is an ‘offline’ storage technology, it provides
effective protection against ransomware and malware. Tape is your last line of
defense—simply because criminals can’t delete or encrypt what they can’t access
over the network. To fully protect your data against ransomware, prevent the
infection in the first place, and then perform regular backups, replicating
data to off-site and offline media such as tape.

Tape offers high-speed restore rates

Not only is tape storage cost-effective, but it offers high-speed restore rates, currently with LTO-8 generation it has an up to 750MBps transfer rate. That makes it ideal for both storing large volumes of data over the long term, as well as protecting your assets. Although replication technologies can provide faster restores, let’s remember they do not protect from ransomware.

Make tape part of your backup and DR strategy

Given the prevalence of ransomware attacks, you need a strategy for
defending your files against these debilitating events. We’ve seen state and
local governments, educational institutions, and private enterprises rendered
helpless in their ability to continue their day-to-day business after an attack.
Start with a proper data protection strategy.

Understanding what part of your data is critical to your operations is the
first step to ensure that a backup copy is readily available on magnetic tape. Keeping
a disconnected offline copy of your data is important to your data recovery
(DR) plan because tape storage provides the best offline option, is
inexpensive, portable—and offline.

When ransomware hits, you want to be proactive, prepared, and in the
position to stand up against ransomware threats. Let’s stop giving them the
upper hand and may this 2020 be uncompromising and ransomware-free.

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Why Density Matters in your Data Protection Strategy

CMMA Blog

Generally speaking, higher density is more desirable – any way you look at it. This is true because more data can be stored in the same physical space. The demands in the data center to retain, secure, and store data to meet compliance requirements is a constant factor. IDC forecasts that by 2025, more than 7 .5 ZB will be stored and dealt with. A good percentage of that data may need to be kept as-long-as forever. When your data center is running out of footprint, what do you do?

Get a high-performing, super dense deduplication appliance.

Choosing the right purpose-built-backup-appliance (PBBA) can be confusing with so many options in the marketplace. While I’m certain the first thing that popped in your mind was, “we can leverage the cloud,” I say that’s great, but certain types of data must be kept on-premise inside the four walls of a data center. This could be data requiring security or special handling, such as trade secrets, customer lists, highest security financial transaction, classified information, just to name a few. Of the data that can leave your four walls and be replicated offsite, it shouldn’t be replicated in its raw format when possible.

A purpose-built backup-appliance does an excellent job, and many vary in its effectiveness. However, they are built to replicate, encrypt, and have full-hardware redundancy, and in some cases, have an integrated path to tape for cold storage. These are some of the standard features, keeping costs low and predictable. (We will get into dedupe ratios in another blog). For now, research states, data will continue to explode. The combination of HDDs + deduplication will excel at reducing costs, and the more effective the data reduction, the lower your TCO will be. Ultimately, that is the goal. An enterprise PBBA will not only give you the performance to meet your RTO/RPO and help you in your drive to zero, but it will be completely compatible with all leading backup software and offer the least disruptive scalability like capacity-on-demand options.

Quantum’s DXi9000 High-Density chassis comes loaded with 12 TB HDDs. This means MORE density footprint + HD chassis and lower power and cooling in enterprise space. DXi9000 is a true enterprise-scale disk backup system. It provides industry leading performance of +37 TB per hour and scales over 20 PB logical capacity all in a 10U!  

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The “Chill Factor” in a Secured Backup and Archive Solution

air-gap

The topic of data growth and security continues to be a challenge for many
organizations. The question to “air-gap” or not to “air-gap” is consistently
being posed across all industries as they think about a solid backup and
archive strategy. When it comes to how and where to invest, air-gapping becomes
the last item on the checklist, and understandably so. Data keeps growing and
while budgets may increase slightly, IT resources are forecasted to stay flat,
according to IDC. With so many avant-garde technologies out there, it seems
tape is shrinking in its usage. However, tape’s unique ability (despite its
advanced age) to morph into a sustainably green, secure, and very
cost-effective alternative to other backup and archive solutions allows it to
stay relevant – even over cloud alternatives. I’d say a rebound could be on the
horizon…

So, what is the chill factor?

As in weather, the wind chill will determine how cold it actually feels on
your skin when the wind is factored in. Likewise, organizations today must
understand their data to determine how hot or cold it is to leverage the
appropriate storage solution that is efficient yet cost effective. Much of the
data in more expensive primary storage is cold. Cold data is simply
infrequently used data. IDC estimates that about 40% of the 7.5 ZB of data will
be commercially related and of that, about 60% will be cold
data or data with expected retrieval of greater than 30 days. This data is a
perfect candidate for tape storage in your data center or in the cloud. And
hey, cold storage doesn’t require a lot of power and cooling.

Security

Tape continues to be the de facto to secure your cold storage/long-term
data. Fact is, the physical air-gap between tapes and the network simply does
not allow malware/ransomware or hackers to break through to reach offline data.
The goal of these evil agents is to destabilize and destroy the ability to
self-recover, and then demand a ransom. We’ve heard many stories and companies
go out of business because of the vulnerability of keeping all data online.
While any online data can be destroyed by an eventual hacker, the data stored
securely on tape is untouched with its integrity intact.

Considering both costs and damage created by these attacks, plus the
astronomical hit on your resources and valuable time that could be spent on
managing critical data, there are more than enough reasons to create the best
protection of your critical data on tape. Sure, you can keep cold data on hot
disk, but the best approach is to tier it off to the most cost-effective
alternative – tape. That’s why we highly recommend the 3-2-1-1 approach to
protection. At the end of the day, what matters is “are you able to recover?”.
If your data is chilled, there is no reason to tremble.

Economics

Determining the value of your data will help you understand the eventual
storage solution required. Never underestimate the value of your historical
data. We live in a world where our “always online” way of life opens the
door to a barrage of threats. The good news is, economics is on your side. Tape
is still the lowest cost for storage available today, and the foreseeable
future. At less than $50/TB, as long as data is preserved on tape, it will give
you the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).

Taking these factors into consideration will bring a tiering approach to
your backup and archive strategy and enable the proper protection approach for
the type of data in need of saving, cooling, and securing.

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ESG Tech Validation Report: DXi9000

CMMA Blog

I was just reminded that this month I celebrate my 11th year as a Quantum employee. 11 years! That’s a lot of product launches, trade shows, briefings, and PowerPoint slides. It’s also a lot of time spent with industry analysts. In fact, one of my first assignments, when I joined the company in 2008, was to drive completion of a lab validation for Quantum’s then-new DXi7500 appliance with ESG’s Senior Validation Analyst Tony Palmer. At that time, Tony was already a veteran of DXi validations, with his first hands-on experience beginning in 2007.

Since then Tony has had a front-row seat for the evolution of the DXi-Series of backup appliances, with successive innovations in performance, deduplication, replication, data availability, scalability, and encryption. When we launched the DXi9000, it was only a matter of time before it would come under Tony’s scrutiny. To summarize:

Performance Results

ESG validated that the DXi9000 can sustain more than 38.4TB per hour—with DXi Accent—of multithreaded enterprise backup throughput with pay-as-you-grow capacity scalability. With Quantum’s variable-length deduplication the DXi9000 can be used to protect more than 300TB of data in an eight-hour shift using less than 50TB of disk space and is capable of restoring individual files in just seconds.

Capacity Efficiency

In ESG testing, Quantum DXi variable-length deduplication provided 85% data reduction for both structured and unstructured data, under both full and incremental backup schedules, compared with just 50% reduction for the tested fixed-length deduplication method. Tony noted that this leads to significant savings in both disk capacity and network bandwidth, easier integration into an organization’s existing backup environment since backup admins don’t need to adjust their schedules or methods.

Pay-as-you-grow Scalability

ESG validated the pay-as-you-grow scalability of the DXi platform. With it, organizations can scale to 1.02PB of usable capacity—up to 20PB of logical capacity with deduplication—in 51TB increments, on-demand, without disrupting operations.

Security

According to ESG’s research, strengthening cybersecurity is the top IT priority for 2019. Testing verified the Quantum DXi9000 secures data at rest and in transit with integrated AES encryption and prevents unauthorized data access.

Flexibility

ESG demonstrated that the DXi platform can be
configured for a wide range of data protection requirements. ISV integration
provides complete lifecycle management support and convergence of backup,
business continuance, and disaster recovery. Multi-protocol support provides
universal connectivity over CIFS, NFS, and Fibre Channel. Simple licensing
combines all software functionality, including replication, direct tape
creation, VTL, OST, AIR, and DXi Accent, in a single package.

Efficiency

Over the last 12 years, ESG has observed continuous improvement in every area of efficiency they’ve examined in the DXi Series, including improvements in ease of use and management, software and capacity licensing, storage density, security, and backup application integration.

dxi9000blogpic 1
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group

Tony notes in closing, “With the DXi9000, Quantum has once
again produced an impressive solution to protect data in physical and virtual
data centers of any size. ESG believes that the combination of variable-length
inline data deduplication, enterprise-class performance, extreme density, and pay-as-you-grow
scalability provides a unique approach for optimizing data protection and
recovery in today’s distributed enterprise.”

Thanks again to Tony and the ESG team for giving the DXi9000
a closer look. You can check out the full report here .
And thanks Quantum for a great 11 years!

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