Business disruption, inflation, market volatility, natural catastrophes…these are just a few of the many risks facing today’s businesses. But the top worry that keeps most business and tech leaders up at night? Cyber incidents[i]. Protecting against data breaches, ransomware, IT outages, and other events through increased cyber resilience has never been more critical.
Yet complexity, resource limitations, and an ever-evolving threat landscape compound efforts to transform cyber resilience for many organizations, both large and small. That’s where GDT comes in. Our comprehensive approach to cyber resilience includes holistic services and carrier-grade capabilities spanning assessment and planning, implementation, and managed services. Furthermore, GDT maintains deep partnerships with the world’s leading data storage providers like NetApp to deliver intelligent cyber resilience you can rely on—no matter where you are on your journey.
Let’s walk through some of the benefits and capabilities that this Gartner “Storage Magic Quadrant” leader offers and how together, GDT and NetApp can help you realize your dream defense.
Ransomware Protection
Ransomware attacks have surged, impacting 72% of organizations in 2023, with a 90% increase in publicly extorted victims over the past year[ii]. Yet 39% of global businesses say they’re not sufficiently resilient to handle sophisticated cyberattacks[iii]. But did you know that the right data storage solution can help you reduce the risk of a ransomware attack?
That’s one of the many advantages of NetApp. NetApp data-centric ransomware protection for storage can help you protect, detect, and recover from a ransomware attack. In fact, it’s the only enterprise storage validated for top-secret data with cyber-resilience capabilities that align with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. NetApp even offers a ransomware guarantee.
On a high level, NetApp ransomware protection provides the following capabilities:
- Protection: NetApp automatically blocks malicious file types, rogue admins, and malicious users. Immutable and indelible snapshots prevent data destruction, and encryption provides secure data access end-to-end.
- Detection: Native capabilities leverage machine learning to automatically detect and respond to file system anomalies that may signal a ransomware attack. NetApp leverages AI to detect user behavior anomalies when accessing ONTAP-based storage.
- Recovery: When an anomaly is detected, NetApp creates a secure snapshot to minimize damage and enable recovery in mere minutes (or even seconds). BlueXP classification provides insight into what files were altered or encrypted by whom and when and prioritizes the most important data to restore first.
Data Backup and Recovery
While I’ve touched on NetApp’s data backup and recovery capabilities, let’s dig a little deeper into how NetApp makes that possible — starting with NetApp® BlueXP®. BlueXP backup and recovery leverages native ONTAP protection to back up your data to another ONTAP device or your chosen object storage, whether on-premises or in the cloud, accelerating data backup and restoration.
To streamline backup, restore, and clone management across disparate applications and infrastructures, there’s NetApp® SnapCenter®. This enterprise platform expedites application and database development while preserving data integrity and simplifying backup and restore processes. For secure object storage, StorageGRID provides a turnkey solution. For organizations needing simple, speedy, and reliable SAN storage for data-intensive applications, NetApp offers E-Series hybrid-flash arrays.
Disaster Recovery
As you might expect, NetApp has a comprehensive line-up of disaster recovery (DR) capabilities that help organizations improve data availability, protection, and recovery. For example, SnapMirror offers high-speed synchronous and asynchronous data replication to ensure that data remains up-to-date and available. Organizations can take advantage of NetApp’s DR-as-a-service capability for fully orchestrated failover testing. Additionally, NetApp offers cloud-based DR, leveraging Cloud Volumes ONTAP for cross-region replication and tiering to lower-cost object storage options.
Governance and Compliance
Finally, NetApp has robust solutions to help organizations meet governance and compliance objectives and keep sensitive data private. NetApp applies data-at-rest encryption and AI-driven privacy controls to safeguard privacy and streamline compliance. NetApp solutions meet a variety of regulatory standards, such as FedRAMP, StateRAMP, and DoD Impact Levels. NetApp governance and compliance solutions focus on key areas such as:
- Data classification: BlueXP classification enables organizations to discover, classify, and categorize data across sources and clouds.
- Access controls: Robust access controls ensure only authorized users can access, modify, or disclose data.
- Data retention: NetApp supports retention policies that comply with regulatory requirements, using technologies like WORM and object locking to secure data.
- Monitoring and reporting: NetApp helps organizations stay ahead of potential issues through comprehensive visibility and insights, as well as monitoring and alerting to identify suspicious activity.
Cyber Resilience You Can Rely On
Increasing cyber resilience has never been more critical, and it’s something that GDT can help you with. We’ve helped countless customers of all sizes and industries improve cyber resilience in the data center. When it comes to NetApp solutions, GDT is a top-tier NetApp Prestige Partner with more than 60 certifications and was recently named NetApp Growth Partner of the Year FY24. GDT can customize solutions to meet your unique business and technical requirements. Our methodology ensures a strategic, phased approach that minimizes disruption and maximizes ROI.
If you’re looking to increase your cyber resilience, I encourage you to learn more about how GDT and NetApp can help you build your dream defense.
[i] Allianz: Risk Barometer 2024, found at: https://commercial.allianz.com/news-and-insights/news/allianz-risk-barometer-2024-press.html
[ii] Statista: Annual share of organizations affected by ransomware attacks worldwide from 2018 to 2023, available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/204457/businesses-ransomware-attack-rate/
[iii] World Economic Forum: Key strategies for building cyber resilience in 2024, available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/04/cybersecurity-key-strategies-cyber-resilience-2024/
