Cisco and Cohesity team up against ransomware

Ransomware is said to be the fastest growing cybercrime. It’s causing businesses greater financial losses every year. As the cyber attack on Honda proves, no company is immune. Cisco and Cohesity have teamed up to offer a holistic approach to cybersecurity that prevents your backups from being targets for ransomware. Having an integrated solution protects your enterprise.

There was a webinar today on ransomware, and how Cisco and Cohesity are teaming up. The participants were Alan Stearn, Technical Solutions Architect, Cisco, and Derek Cowan, Head of System Engineering, ANZ, Cohesity. Ms Taehee Song, Sales Specialist, Cisco, moderated the session.

Derek Cowan said Cohesity was founded in 2013. It has a highly experienced team working for Nutanix, Google, VMware, etc. Cohesity data management is redefined on Cisco UCS. Cohesity DataPlatform is powered by SpanFS. It also has the Cohesity Marketplace and Cohesity Helios.

Alan Stearn added that partnerships take on lot of different characteristics. Cisco is invested in Cohesity. Customers can buy and deploy the solutions from Cisco. Solution support is critical. It is really an end-to-end integration.

Environment today
There are many ransomware attacks taking place. It is important to understand how is the environment right now, asked Ms. Song.

Cowan explained that there are bad guys trying to exploit the opportunity. There is a very big financial impact. There is about $2.1 trillion cost to the global economy due to cyber attacks. There is $11.5 billion due to cost of ransomware attacks. There is $1.2-$2.5 billion average cost of downtime. There are entry points through the user action and vulnerabilities are getting exploited. In fact, organization still have vulnerable systems that are attacked.

So, are the enterprises ready? At least, 21% have contingency plans to recover from ransomware attacks. That means, 80% are not prepared. There are 11% who can recover data and apps within three days after an attack. 58% said data and apps can be recovered after an attack. There is also loss of customer trust.

One data management platform
You can reduce the attack surface on one data management platform. That is, you can protect, control and leverage your data. Consolidate backups, files and objects, etc., globally dedupe, index and search all data, manage all operations with a single UI, and run the apps on the same platform. You can improve the security posture of your files and objects. There is machine-driven anomaly protection. Ransomware targets backup copies.

Cohesity anti-ransomware protection looks to defend data. You can prevent with immutable file system, DataLock (WORM), and multi-factor authentication. You can detect with machine-driven anomaly protection and automated alert. You can respond with scalable file system to store worth years of backup copies. There is instant mass-restore. Respond to ransomware attack with global search and instant mass restore. Detect ransomware attack on production with ML-driven action.

Alan Stearn noted that Cisco has a global visibility, threat research and analytics. Cisco has an architectural approach. Integrated threat defense architecture saves dollars. It provides 38% TCO reduction. We bring the overall architecture for customers. All the platforms are tested and hardened. They have data-at-rest protection platform. He added that Cisco and Cohesity are creating tremendous value. There are critical items.

Cowan concluded that Cohesity is redefining the backup and data management, along with Cisco. They are also reducing TCO by over 70%.