Arcserve provides exceptional solutions to protect the priceless digital assets of organizations in need of full scale, comprehensive data protection. Established in 1983, Arcserve is the world’s most experienced provider of business continuity solutions that safeguard multi-generational IT infrastructures with applications and systems in any location, on premises and in the cloud. In an interaction with Manoj Jha, Editor, SmartStateIndia, Nikhil Korgaonkar, Regional Director, India & SAARC, Arcserve discussed about the unified data protection in India and Arcserve’s go-to-market approach.
How has been the traction for Unified Data Protection (UDP) in India?
Unified Data Protection (UDP) is our flagship product. The solution helps future-proof infrastructures by ensuring data protection, replication, archiving and disaster recovery for physical, virtual and cloud workloads. Customers in India and other markets find the UDP solution simple, scalable, robust and integrated.As businesses continue to tread the path of digital transformation, data is evolving strategically for critical business decisions and investment. Business continuity is one of the most important topics for every leader today who would like to sail through this pandemic with less damage to the business.
At Arcserve, we understand all data is not equal. One must consider these five fundamentals while managing data to derive maximum value: Know your data, Federate your data, Mobilize your data, Govern your data and Secure your data
We have been present in the India market since 1998 and have more than 4,000 customers who trust us with their data. We also work with a strong partner base which finds our solutions easy to implement and manage. Our partners have integrated our solutions in vital business discussions, which is now building a traction stronger than ever.
What is Arcserve’s go-to-market approach for its Appliance Series and how has been the market response?
Arcserve’s hyper-converged solutions have seen excellent traction in India. The 9000-Series Appliances are the third generation of all-in-one hyper-converged solutions that addresses data security and data availability needs of businesses. It is the single point of contact for data protection, data security, and hardware and cloud services in a hybrid cloud environment. The range starts with 4TB, going up to 6PB with effective capacity managed from a single console that addresses data protection needs of SMBs to large enterprises.
Integration with Sophos Intercept X makes Arcserve’s 9000 Series Appliances market’s first threat prevention and protection solution to entirely neutralize ransomware attacks. The global alliance with Sophos in 2019 enabled us to deliver the only multi-layered data security and protection solution that integrates anti-ransomware and other threat prevention technologies to prevent data loss. It gives IT professionals a single platform to prevent, protect, and immunize backup data from cyberattacks.
A growing number of our customers have upgraded their infrastructure with Appliances. Partners find them easy to implement and manage. This is a true reflection of Arcserve’s effort in simplifying the space that has multiple, complex, point solutions replacing four to five vendors at times. The result is Appliances have quickly risen to being the choicest solution taking 30 percent of our revenue pie in India.
We have just launched the Arcserve X Series for Multi-Petabyte (PB) Appliances which uniquely combine deep learning endpoint protection and on- and off-site disaster recovery with over 3PBs of effective capacity in one unit, and linear expansion to increase capacity as needed. This will be the first self-contained solutions with integrated cyber and data protection for data volumes of Telcos, Banks, other enterprise & government customers.
With 1 TB RAM (Scalable upto 2 TB RAM) powered by dual Intel Xeon Gold Processors 56 cores allowing you to run 56 DR Instances in case of disaster. It is a game changing as it is giving organizations with enterprise-level data volumes the opportunity to use a single solution for backup, cybersecurity, on-appliance and cloud disaster recovery with options for high availability, making it the true DR Appliances.
Why do Indian companies report more cyberattacks than those in other countries?
An increasing number of cyberattacks on Indian companies highlights they do not have an efficient business continuity strategy in place, either in the form of back-ups for critical data or data about customers and employees. One can even say that Indian companies do not have an infrastructure for data protection beyond their secure workplace networks.
Today, the concept of perimeter security has become irrelevant as about 90 percent of the corporate workforce is operating remotely. This has led to the addition of a significant number of new devices to corporate networks. Most of these devices do not have proper cyber-protection which creates gaps in the organization’s defence and are being exploited by cybercriminals as threat vectors expand.
An increased adoption of the “bring your own device” (BYOD) policy has also led employees to replace their corporate desktops with personal laptops. Even though a significant number of these devices are not accurately secured, they are now connected to corporate networks.
Furthermore, only a few organisations consider URL filtering when evaluating a cybersecurity solution. Without such a practice, employees remain vulnerable to phishing sites. Most Indian organizations are yet to introduce regular in-house cybersecurity training for employees. Such measures are important to apply best cybersecurity practices and protect organizations from cyberattacks.
What is the state of data protection awareness in India?
Organizations in India are increasingly becoming aware of the nuances of data protection and data compliance. Though this number is not high, it is increasing, and the level of awareness varies across sectors and businesses. For instance, BFSI, telecom, cloud and e-commerce sectors have seen a higher data-focused regulatory intervention than others.
The European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has also contributed to this awareness. Indian companies that are part of multinational groups or have business interests in the EUhad to evaluate their data protection frameworks to comply with the GDPR.
Recently, India’s Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019 was introduced in the Parliament. When this PDP Bill 2019 becomes a cross-sector privacy law, perhaps around 2021, it will have a major impact on the IT businesses in India. The bill seeks to provide for the protection of personal data of individuals, create a framework for processing such personal data, and establish a data protection authority. Businesses are aware that once the PDP Bill goes live, they will seriously need to look at managing their data exposure.
What are major data management and security challenges with cloud technologies in India?
Data management creates a challenge when sensitive data is stored in the cloud, but without any security layer. If the security of a cloud service is breached, hackers can gain access to organizations’ intellectual property or other personal files. An increasingly common threat is Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. DDoS attack frequencies in India increased steadily between January and June 2020, with a spurt later again in August. Most of the attacks were traced back to China, especially from the Chinese city of Chengdu. A variety of targets were zeroed in on, including government websites and the banking system including ATMs.
Apart from security, other areas such as data governance, reliability, and performance, loss of control, migration and integration also need equal consideration. Not to mention the difficulty of selecting trusted cloud partners with the necessary capabilities, experience and market stability to support organisation’s requirements.
What are Arcserve’s future plans?
COVID-19 has given rise to cyber threats. It’s our responsibility to educate our customers and we continue to do so. Arcserve has moved beyond its traditional role of being an extension to a storage solution to becoming a solution that helps chief information security officers (CISOs) design data security.
Customers can benefit from the Sophos-integrated Arcserve solution which includes signature-less deep learning for both known and unknown malware, and award-winning disaster recovery and high availability capabilities for prevention against data loss.
The Arcserve 9000 Appliance Series & now the latest X Series Appliances becomes the first and only means to neutralize ransomware attacks, deliver effective disaster recovery (DR) and restore data in an all-inclusive data protection strategy, deployed in just 15 minutes flat. It is powered by the UDP, which uniquely combines deep-learning endpoint protection with on-site and off-site business continuity capabilities for organizations to assure ransomware-free future through a multi-layered approach. Our hybrid cloud solutions assist in on-premise and off-premise maintenance in a public cloud with security layers by Sophos. We will continue to expand our reach in the untapped regions with this solution and add new features consistently. Last but not the least, our Office 365 protection for endpoints has gained prominence, especially in the emerging markets. X series now brings 1 PB effectively 3PB of front end single volume of data that brings virtually the entire enterprise that can use it as a long term solution to effectively manage & protect their mission critical data.
As business continuity gains prominence and market rebounds, we hope to ride the wave as the pandemic curve flattens and businesses ensure their data –the lifeblood of business—remain protected.
