Scale Computing woos public sector with hardened backup

Scale Computing gave its community sector clients a way to lock down and air hole their most delicate data.

Final week, Scale Computing partnered with Acronis SCS and began providing Cyber Backup 12.five Hardened Edition on Scale’s HC3 platform. HC3 now has the exact API-degree integration with Acronis SCS’s data defense as it does with standard Acronis backup. Hardened Edition is particularly aimed at air gapped methods with no online relationship, this sort of as government weapons tests websites and community utility management facilities. It is on the U.S. Division of Protection Information and facts Community Authorized Products and solutions List.

Scale Computing is a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) seller alongside the exact lines as Nutanix, Dell EMC VxRail, Hewlett Packard Company SimpliVity, Cisco HyperFlex and Pivot3 Acuity. It has been sold Acronis backup through a partnership because 2011. In September 2019, the two entered an OEM deal in which Acronis backup built-in with Scale’s HC3 platform, natively interfacing with its snapshot mechanisms. By extending this romance to Acronis SCS, Scale can now tackle the needs of its community sector clients, which have found bigger data defense desire due to increased ransomware attacks. With clients this sort of as Illinois-primarily based Paris Local community Medical center and Texas-primarily based Harlingen Waterworks Procedure, the community sector makes up a single of Scale’s major a few verticals.

Acronis SCS is an independent American firm different from Acronis proper. It was integrated in 2018 and formally released in April 2019 particularly to produce and sell Acronis backup to the U.S. community sector. As this sort of, it does not share data, code or other methods with Acronis, all of its staff are U.S. citizens and all of its goods are validated by U.S. third-social gathering companies. Acronis Cyber Backup 12.five Hardened Edition is its Division of Protection-authorized backup item aimed at federal government companies and utilities. Acronis SCS is led by CEO John Zanni.

Alan Conboy, office of the CTO at Scale Computing, stated ransomware attacks towards community sector entities are rising. With a lot more staff performing remotely due to COVID-19, cyberattacks have increased due to freshly exposed vulnerabilities. Conboy stated the community sector is open to assault for numerous explanations, most of them centered all over budgetary constraints. He proposed hospitals and utilities never usually have the resources to use the latest in data defense technological know-how, nor can they spend more than enough to appeal to major-degree IT talent.

Christophe Bertrand, senior analyst at Company Tactic Team (ESG), stated the Scale-Acronis SCS partnership is timely. There is certainly no problem that ransomware attacks have increased, and this lets Scale Computing provide data defense to corporations with rigid needs on the IT goods they can deploy. He extra that the mix of Scale’s HCI and Acronis SCS’s hardened backup is effectively-suited for decentralized corporations with little IT existence or knowledge at each individual specific internet site.

“It is an successful mix,” Bertrand stated of the HC3 platform and Acronis SCS backup. “I consider it will develop exciting competition in this area.”

VPN vs. VDI

Conboy stated HCI adoption increased along with the surge in remote get the job done. He stated it truly is mainly owed to increased desire for digital desktop infrastructure (VDI), which is a single of the main use situations for HCI. Several corporations turned to VDI to securely assist a substantial-scale, at-household workforce. Simply because this process turns on-premises desktops into browser sessions, the endpoint unit accessing it — alongside with any vulnerabilities it may well have — do not subject.

An additional process for supporting remote end users is to give them all firm laptops and have them log in through a VPN. Conboy stated this process extends a pristine company community into susceptible household networks. He mentioned that ransomware has began concentrating on VPN companies and household networks mainly because criminals could possibly use all those to gain obtain to company networks.

“That is just the erroneous way to do it. You never want to thrust your community out you want to pull your stop end users in,” Conboy stated.

Mark Bowker, senior analyst at ESG, agreed, with caveats. He stated VDI is the way to go, but it would’ve been difficult for corporations that have not laid any VDI groundwork to quickly deploy it at scale at the commence of mandated lockdown. Even corporations that were being invested in VDI mainly only did so at a compact scale, both to assist a handful of remote employees or to supply local DR. Ahead of COVID-19, there was no explanation for corporations to feel their remote workforce would improve, so most of them failed to have the capability in place for substantial-scale VDI.

“The dilemma was a lot of executives in advance of COVID were being unwilling about remote get the job done even although they had the technological know-how for it. No one prepared for this on a global scale,” Bowker stated.

Just after lockdown, corporations went into what Bowker identified as, “reaction manner.” This meant corporations utilised what they had on hand, and in most situations, that was VPN. Bowker’s analysis identified that in the quick aftermath of mandated lockdown, 54% of respondents stated they to start with had to log in through a VPN to get the job done remotely. Only twenty% stated they worked through VDI.

Bowker stated VPN does not scale effectively and opens up assault surfaces for negative actors, but the technological know-how is recognized and has been all over for a lot more than two a long time. He was not shocked that most corporations turned to it for remote get the job done. Even so, he stated the change to VDI is presently happening. Five months into lockdown, corporations are acknowledging the restrictions of VPN and investing in VDI and desktop-as-a-service offerings this sort of as Amazon WorkSpaces.

“VDI technological know-how functions, but it just hardly ever had government assist. VPN was initially enough for their volume of remote employees, so they failed to touch it,” Bowker stated.