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31 October 2024

R17.1 Viper: AI Control with Rubrik Resilience.

Back in March 2024 as part of the R15: Honey Badger release, we took a significant step forward by adding Rubrik support to the Predatar platform. Since then, we’ve consistently rolled out new features every month to deepen user experience and bridge any gaps in resilience. Now, with the release of Predatar R17.1: Viper we’re excited to announce that Rubrik support has reached full parity with the IBM suite of backup products, along with several powerful enhancements that benefit all our users. This release aims to make recovery assurance management easier, smarter, and more secure, putting our end users in control like never before.

1. Complete Rubrik Feature Parity

With R17.1: Viper, we bring Rubrik users to feature parity with the full IBM backup suite, delivering a cohesive experience across backup products. This update unlocks advanced functionality such as Cyber Grading, Anomaly Detection, Data Visualisation, and the AI-powered Recovery Risk Report. Together, these features give users a comprehensive overview of their resilience status.. The Recovery Risk Report stands out for its AI-driven analysis, which dives into users’ Rubrik environments to identify any resilience gaps, highlight deviations from best practices, and recommend tailored improvements. Through Data Explorer, users now get a single view of all their backup workloads, with insights on backup and recovery status, recovery confidence, cyber grading, and anomaly tracking. This unified experience allows Rubrik users to harness insights and confidently manage their entire backup ecosystem with fewer clicks and more visibility.

2. Aurora: AIOps Assistant

As previewed at the start of October at this years Control24 event, this release also introduces a new demo mode for the Aurora AIOps Assistant, giving users a hands-on preview of our AI-powered assistant designed to simplify backup resilience guidance. Aurora uses the data within your recovery environment augmented with a consolidated knowledge base that spans IBM SP, SPP, Rubrik, and Veeam, answering questions and providing clear, actionable insights without users needing any backup expertise. This makes it a game-changer for teams at any level. Users can now experience how Aurora provides on-demand answers to common backup questions, highlight issues and risks in your estate, while making it it easier than ever to resolve issues and keep data secure. It’s like having an on-call expert right within the platform.

3. CleanRoomTM 3.0 Early Access

Again as previewed at Control24, CleanRoomTM 3.0 has also made its way into R17.1: Viper through our early adopter programme, providing users and partners with an enhanced configuration process. The updated setup screens are streamlined to make deployment even quicker without compromising the robust security foundations the Predatar CleanRoomTM is known for. Early adopters will enjoy a simplified, seamless experience, with the assurance that their critical data remains resilient and protected.

Predatar R17.1: Viper is packed with these updates to keep up with the evolving demands of modern recovery environments. Each feature in R17.1: Viper aligns with our commitment to simplifying resilience, empowering users, and ensuring that your data protection strategy stays ahead of the curve. You can check out more details on the release here.

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30 October 2024

Recovery Assurance. Is HPE dismissing backup?

At Control24, HPE’s Shariq Aqil and Sasha Acosta delivered a keynote that challenged the status quo. At Predatar we always strive to thinking differently, so this session was right up our street. It wasn’t just the content, but the refreshing perspective on recovery assurance that really stood out.

Some in the backup community might have felt uncomfortable with the discussion, which centred around the limitations of traditional backup – Particularly when it comes to speed of recovery. But for us, it was exactly the kind of forward-thinking conversation that needs to happen. It’s not about undermining backup, it’s about recognising the growing importance of answering the question, how fast can you recover?

The Challenge: Is Backup Being Dismissed?

When Shariq Aqil stated this, it might have sounded like a challenge to traditional backup solutions, which, while reliable, can often take time to restore data after an incident. And yes, time is the issue. In high-risk situations like ransomware attacks, businesses can’t afford the luxury of waiting weeks to access their critical systems.

But let’s be clear. HPE isn’t dismissing backup. It’s a vital part of the cyber resilience toolkit. Instead, Shariq was pointing out that recovery speed has become a non-negotiable factor in today’s fast-paced, high-stakes environment.

The Reality: It’s About Recovery Assurance, Not Backup

Shariq’s message wasn’t that traditional backup is obsolete. What he was really saying is that recovery is the new battleground. Backup protects the data, but the real test comes when you need to restore it. That’s where tools like Zerto’s Continuous Data Protection (CDP) step in. Unlike traditional backup, which is typically done every 24 hours, CDP replicates data continuously, ensuring businesses can recover within minutes and lose only seconds of data.

As Sasha Acosta explained during the session,

That’s not a slight against backup; it’s a recognition that in today’s climate, speed of recovery is just as important as having the data backed up in the first place.

The Bigger Picture: Recovery Assurance

At Predatar, we’re all about making sure that recovery isn’t just possible, but guaranteed. That’s why Predatar provides Recovery Assurance. Our focus is on giving businesses confidence that their data can be recovered quickly when it matters most.

Shariq made the importance of Recovery Assurance clear when he stated.

This highlights our ongoing collaboration and commitment to delivering real-world solutions that balance protection with recovery speed.

So, Is HPE Being Controversial?

To some, it might have seemed like HPE was dismissing backup in favour of newer technologies, but the reality is much more nuanced. What they’re saying is that recovery speed is critical and businesses need to rethink their strategies in the face of modern cyber threats. It’s not about choosing between backup and recovery, but about ensuring you have the right mix to stay resilient.

At Predatar, we love these kinds of conversations – They challenge assumptions, drive the narrative forward, and ultimately helping businesses not just survive but thrive in a landscape where ransomware and other cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated.

Backup protects your data, but fast recovery saves your business. That’s the real message we took away from HPE’s session at Control24, and we couldn’t agree more.

To learn more about HPE’s Cyber Resilience Vault with Zerto and Predatar you can watch Shariq and Sasha session from Control24 on-demand now. The event recording is available here.

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25 October 2024

Lets talk about the Elephant in Vegas

As the IBM TechXchange draws to a close and we wrap up another year in Vegas, it’s clear that the conversation around cyber resilience has evolved significantly over the last 12 months. Last year, the buzz was all about immutability, anomaly detection, XDR, SIEM and SOAR tools. These were seen and discussed as the front line in preventing, detecting and recovering from attacks.

Fast forward to this year, and while those tools and techniques are still very much front and centre, they’re being increasingly discussed alongside AI. The rise of AI-driven security and storage solutions has taken the spotlight, promising to revolutionise how we detect and respond to cyber threats. But amidst all the excitement, no one is really addressing the elephant in the room: the siloed nature of security and infrastructure teams.

Digging into the delegate analytics from TechXchange could provide some fascinating insights. Did security specialists stick to security sessions? Did infrastructure experts focus on storage? If that’s the case, it highlights the ongoing risk of keeping these two critical areas separate, even as AI creates new opportunities for better integration across systems.

And it’s not just security and infrastructure teams working in silos—within infrastructure itself, many teams are divided too. Most infrastructure departments have two or three backup products, with data scattered across different technologies, whether on-premise, in the cloud, or hybrid environments. Even these teams can be fragmented, and the lack of cohesion between them further widens the resilience gap.

The Real Opportunity: Breaking Down Silos

While AI is quite rightly grabbing headlines, breaking down the silos between security and infrastructure is arguably the the most impactful and cost-effective way to boost resilience. Bridging the gap between these teams can unlock massive benefits, enabling faster responses to threats and more robust recovery strategies. Yet, this important ‘fix’ isn’t being prioritised amongst businesses.

Here are three key actions companies should take to bridge this gap:

  1. Ensure Security Teams Gain Insights into Storage Security teams need a clearer understanding of how storage environments work, particularly in backup and recovery. If they know what’s working and what needs improvement on the storage side, they can better tailor their strategies to safeguard critical data. Conversely, storage admins should be informed about security trends and threats to ensure their systems are robust against potential breaches.
  2. Provide Consolidated Views Across Security and Storage A unified dashboard that brings together security and infrastructure insights is essential. Businesses should avoid the trap of isolated monitoring systems, which lead to disjointed decision-making. Instead, a consolidated view enables faster, more coordinated responses to threats, reducing the time it takes to detect and recover from cyber incidents.
  3. Focus on Recovery as Much as Prevention Businesses have become hyper-focused on stopping attacks, often neglecting the importance of being prepared for recovery. The reality is that no system is 100% secure, so it’s crucial for companies to invest in backup and recovery strategies. Making recovery just as much of a priority as prevention helps ensure that when attacks do happen, businesses can bounce back swiftly and effectively.

This year’s TechXchange may have been dominated by AI, but the real challenge remains the organisational silos that limit resilience. Bridging the gap between security and infrastructure teams (and even within infrastructure itself) is an immediate, cost-effective solution that can transform how businesses protect and recover from cyber threats. Let’s hope that by next year, the industry will finally be talking about and addressing the elephant in the room.

To find out how the Predatar platform can boost your cyber resilience by tackling these 3 challenges, contact the team.

See you next year, hopefully with fewer silos and stronger defences!

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23 October 2024

Chasing the AI Unicorn

There’s something about being here in Vegas, surrounded by all the tech buzz at IBM’s TechXchange, that makes you reflect on how much has changed. Over the years, we’ve seen tech hype after tech hype with technology like blockchain, Kubernetes, virtual reality all arriving with promises to change the world. And while they’ve found their place, none have truly become the centrepiece of business like they were supposed to.

Then there’s AI. Unlike the others, AI isn’t just making waves, it’s everywhere. Whether you’re talking about Apple and Samsung’s consumer AI baked into their latest handsets or the way we use it in Predatar, AI is in everything. The conversations happening around us in Vegas, the demos we’ve been seeing, it’s clear that AI isn’t going away. It’s not a passing trend, it’s the real deal. The rapid pace of adoption is almost unprecedented, especially compared to those other technologies that are still working to gain traction.

But here’s the kicker, not all of this hype is for the right reasons.

The AI Threat in Cybercrime

We’ve all heard how AI can solve problems and drive innovation, but it’s empowering cybercriminals too. The 2023 MGM cyberattack is a perfect example. It started with a basic social engineering tactic, a simple phone call to MGM’s helpdesk, where the attacker pretended to be an employee. With just a bit of publicly available information, they tricked the support team into handing over credentials. Once inside, they wreaked havoc on the business, shutting down casino floors, disrupting hotel services, and causing millions in losses.

Now imagine how AI can take these attacks to the next level. With freely available tools like ChatGPT, even an amateur attacker can craft professional, convincing phishing emails that bypass language barriers. Advanced AI can scrape personal data from social media, emails, and the web, allowing attackers to build detailed profiles on individuals, making social engineering attacks more personal and effective than ever before.

AI isn’t just a tool for business; it’s fast becoming a weapon for attackers. The ease with which cybercriminals can leverage AI to increase the scale, speed, and sophistication of their attacks is a warning sign. And businesses need to be ready for what’s coming.

Finding Real Value in AI

The message from Vegas is that AI is being presented as a powerful tool for tackling a wide range of challenges that range from boosting cyber resilience to improving operational efficiency. And many of the AI innovations on display have the potential to significantly impact businesses, especially as cyber threats evolve. The real challenge isn’t in finding value, it’s in prioritising which AI solutions will make the most sense for your business. With so many options, how do you choose which AI investments will deliver the greatest return?

Here are three ways to stay grounded when evaluating AI:

  1. Start with the problem, not the solution: It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement, but AI needs to solve a real problem. Look at your biggest challenges, whether it’s bolstering security or automating processes and choose AI that directly addresses those issues. Don’t jump on the AI bandwagon just because it’s popular.
  2. Understand your data: AI is only as good as the data it’s fed. Before adopting any AI tool, assess the quality and structure of your data. Without the right foundation, even the most impressive AI won’t deliver. The presentations at TechXchange do a great job of highlight AI’s potential, but data quality is what separates hype from results.
  3. Think long-term: AI should empower your team, not just automate tasks. Look for tools that help your employees make better decisions and become more efficient over time. Sure, some AI solutions promise immediate results, but the real value comes when they grow with you, making your business stronger in the long run.

The truth is, AI is both an opportunity and a threat. The businesses that take the time to figure out how AI fits into their strategy will be the ones to truly benefit from it. So while it’s tempting to chase every AI unicorn, the smart move is to find the one that will actually work for you and leave the rest of the hype behind.

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18 October 2024

A Year After the MGM Cyber Attack: Have the Right Lessons Been Learnt?

Last year, during the IBM TechXchange at the MGM in Las Vegas, the unthinkable happened, a mass cyber-attack brought the MGM’s operations to a halt. Slot machines went offline, hotel check-ins were reduced to pen and paper and queues for room keys stretched endlessly. Guests were left without TV, room service, or even working phones. It was a vivid reminder of how fragile our interconnected systems are.

As the Predatar team once again returns to Las Vegas for TechXchange 2024, it’s a good moment to reflect on the key lessons learned since that attack. Despite heightened awareness and increased investments, businesses are still missing some fundamental aspects of cyber resilience. Here are three critical areas where organisations, including many of the prospects we’ve spoken with, are still falling short.

1. Money Can’t Fix Human Error

Cybersecurity spending has surged over the past year. According to a report from Gartner, global cybersecurity spending is expected to reach $188 billion in 2024, up significantly from previous years. Yet, despite these investments, many attacks still succeed. MGM attack is a prime example. Reports suggest the breach was enabled through social engineering and the exploitation of stolen employee credentials. The Predatar platform has found malware hidden in backups in 74% of our clients. After investigation with the client we found that the vast majority of this malware got through because of human error.

Both these examples bring up a vital point: no matter how advanced the tools are, human error remains a major vulnerability. While companies spend heavily on technology, they often invest far less in educating their employees. Proper training on identifying phishing attempts, securing credentials, and following best practices could make a huge difference. But for many organisations, staff training is still treated as an afterthought.

Why does this happen? It’s easier for businesses to justify spending on shiny new tools than on something as intangible as staff education. Yet, the people in your organisation are often the first and last line of defence. Without proper training, even the best tech can’t protect you.

2. Silos Are Killing Resilience

A recurring theme we hear from hundreds of prospects each year is the disconnect between security and storage teams. While we don’t know the exact details of the MGM attack in this regard, many organisations are dealing with a similar problem: these teams operate in silos, with little coordination or communication.

This lack of integration makes it difficult to respond quickly and effectively to cyber incidents. Cyber resilience requires a unified approach where security and storage teams are aligned and able to collaborate seamlessly. Yet, in many businesses, the best you get is token integration.

What’s needed is a solution that brings these worlds together. A single pane of glass that allows security teams to monitor and manage all the various storage products in use, helping them understand each other’s environments, communicate better, and respond jointly to threats. Having these teams work off the same data, in real-time, is key to closing the gap that so often leads to recovery delays.

3. All Defence, No Recovery

While businesses are investing heavily in stopping attacks, they’re often neglecting an equally important part of the equation: resilience. It’s not just about preventing an attack, it’s about ensuring that, when the inevitable happens, you can recover quickly.

In MGM’s case, the recovery process was slow and painful, with systems offline for days. Many businesses still under-invest in their recovery plans, focusing more on building barriers than on what happens when those barriers are breached. This approach leaves them exposed to extended downtimes and revenue loss when a breach occurs.

Ensuring resilience means investing in solutions like immutable backups, automated recovery testing, backup scanning and tools that can protect and restore data even during an ongoing attack. Companies need to shift their thinking from merely preventing attacks to being able to recover from them efficiently.

What Needs to Change?

As we head into TechXchange 2024, it will be interesting to see how often these three key issues, human error, siloed teams, and a lack of resilience are addressed. Will the sessions focus on the bigger picture, or will they lean towards point solutions that only solve one part of the puzzle?

While the presenters, tech and tools on display will be impressive, the real value lies in addressing these broader challenges. Businesses need to bring their teams together, train their people, and build resilience into every aspect of their operations. Only then will they be truly prepared for the next inevitable attack.

One year on, MGM is still recovering not just from the technical fallout but from the reputational damage caused by the attack. It’s telling that this year’s IBM TechXchange is being held at Mandalay Bay, a shift that suggests the long-lasting impact of such a breach. The damage to a company’s reputation can linger long after systems are restored, a reminder that cybersecurity failures leave scars that take far longer to heal.

We’ll be in Vegas and would love to meet with you to discuss how to build true cyber resilience into your business. Reach out to book a meeting with us while we’re there.

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15 October 2024

Predatar R17: Viper. Sometimes to go forward, you must look back.

Innovation isn’t about chasing the next trend, but building on what works – refining and enhancing it. At Predatar, we were the first to market with the Predatar CleanRoomTM over 3 years ago. In fact, we actually coined the phrase ‘CleanRoom’. Since then, we’ve been on a journey of improvement, evolving through two major iterations to bring you CleanRoom 3.0. The most advanced, flexible, and intelligent recovery environment available.

Predatar Managing Director, Rick Norgate recaps on the journey…

Looking back

CleanRoom 1.0 used VMware NSX and took over a week to deploy. While it was a breakthrough, we knew there was room for improvement. Listening to customer, we created CleanRoom 2.0. This simplified the setup, removed the reliance on NSX to reduce costs & complexity, expanded its support for more workloads including primary storage and backup platforms, and cut the deployment time down to just one day!

Moving forward

Now, with CleanRoom 3.0, we’ve gone back to the drawing board. We took all the learning and feedback from the last few years to create a truly transformative solution. Built from the ground up, CleanRoom 3.0 can be deployed in just hours, doesn’t require any third-party licensing, and supports multiple hypervisors, not just VMware. This means it’s faster, more cost-effective, and incredibly adaptable to your unique environment.

And to top it off, CleanRoom 3.0 features Predatar Aurora AI baked-in, making it the smartest CleanRoom available. Aurora AI ensures real-time anomaly detection, automation of key processes, and adaptive responses to threats, giving you unparalleled control over your backup & storage environments.

Join the revolution

CleanRoom 3.0 is not just an evolution, it’s a revolution. We’ve taken everything we’ve learned from the past two iterations and created a solution that is faster, more flexible, and smarter than ever before. If you’re looking to strengthen your cyber resilience, Predatar Recovery Assurance with CleanRoom 3.0 is your answer.

Read more about what Viper has to offer here. Interested in Early Access Preview? Register here.

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11 October 2024

Highlights from the Control24 cyber resilience summit.

This week we hosted our 5th annual ‘Control’ cyber resilience summit. Did you miss it? Don’t worry, here’s a summary of highlights and key takeaways.

Summary

Never before has the Control summit attracted such a wide range of speakers and delegates. Cyber Security experts and Storage experts from some of the world’s leading technology and consulting companies came together to discuss and debate cyber resiliency and the role of AI.

…And there were some surprises too! We always say that Control is not your average tech conference, and this year didn’t disappoint with mystery spot-prizes, an AI co-host, and even a house band!

The best bits

We’re thrilled to announce that once again the event achieved a 4.5 star review rating from attendees. A huge thank you goes out to our speakers for providing such compelling content. That’s you, Sasha Acosta and Shariq Aqil from Zerto/HPE, Steve Kenniston and Liz Campell from Dell Technologies, Christian Farrell from Accenture, Harpinder Powar and Richard Cassidy from Rubrik, and Martin Borrett from IBM Security.

But, the most popular session – voted for by the audience, was a real-time CleanRoom deployment challenge with Predatar’s own CTO, Ian Richardson. During the course of the event Ian proved that an AI-powered Cleanroom can be built from scratch – with threat detection, automated recovery tests, and deep malware scanning up and running in under 3 hours.   

3 Key Themes

We covered a lot of ground at Control24, and several themes kept coming up. Here’s the top 3:

1. Regulation is driving resilience
In any business there’s things you know you REALLY SHOULD be doing. Validating the recoverability of your data has been in that category for a long time. Then there are the things businesses MUST do. With a whole raft of new regulations coming into force (DORA,HIPAA,PSA,FISMA, and NIS2 to name a few) businesses are finally prioritising resilience.

In our opinion – it’s about time!

2. AI is an opportunity and a risk
Most (if not all) of the expert speakers at Control24 at least touched on the topic of AI in the context of cybercrime. The great news is that all of the major security and storage vendors are leveraging Artificial Intelligence in incredible ways – Better threat detection, intelligent recovery assurance and faster incident response are just some of the AI-powered capabilities available.

BUT, as IBM’s Martin Borrett explained in his session, the fight against cyber crime is always ‘a game of cat and mouse’. Cyber criminals are using AI in ingenious ways too, so one thing that is certain is that AI is rapidly becoming an essential element of any cyber strategy.

3. Storage teams are becoming cyber superheroes.
Gone are the days when backups were a safety net for accidental file deletions and 1 in a million disasters. The data that your storage teams is looking after is a the target for cyber criminals, and the backups they manage might just save your organisation from total catastophy.

If the storage and security teams aren’t aligned  in your organisation, your incident response is at risk. If you do just one thing as a result of Control24, it should be this… Have a conversation with your storage or security counterpart about recovery confidence. If a crisis hits can your organisation recover quickly, cleanly, and completely?

Watch Control24 On Demand

If you missed Control24, or loved it so much you want to see it all again, it’s now available On Demand. Watch it here.

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