Data protection, backup and archiving

Top 10 ransomware and backup stories of 2021

Key articles from 2021 that highlight the link between ransomware and snapshots and backup and their role in repelling attacks, plus effects of the pandemic on backup and recovery Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Gig economy algorithmic management tools ‘unfair and opaque’

Report published by Worker Info Exchange warns of algorithmically enabled rights abuses in the gig economy, noting the insufficient transparency of employers and the lacklustre nature of legal redress Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

IT priorities 2022: Ransomware and cloud drive storage and backup

The pandemic and the move to the cloud has driven cloud storage as a key priority Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Spy tech gets high tech – why MI6 invests in startups

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we’re used to James Bond and his gadgets, but now MI6 is investing in tech startups to develop new intelligence capabilities. Our exclusive IT Priorities survey suggests IT leaders are optimistic about 2022. And our new buyer’s guide examines the latest emerging technologies. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Recovering from ransomware: One organisation’s inside story

In February 2021, French office equipment supplier Manutan fell victim to a DoppelPaymer ransomware hit. IT ops director Jérôme Marchandiau tells the inside story of the incident Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Ransomware teaches us the importance of data protection

Several years ago, around the time that ransomware attacks started making the front pages of mainstream newspapers, not just in the IT press, I took part in a number of webcasts on the topic. The ... Continue Reading

By

• Tony Lock, Freeform Dynamics

Cloud storage compliance pitfalls: Post-pandemic and post-Brexit

We look at the key areas of cloud storage compliance that can trip you up, with shared responsibility with cloud providers and data residency among the most important Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Cloud repatriation: Five reasons to repatriate data from cloud

We look at key drivers of cloud repatriation, including cost, compliance, issues around latency and data gravity, reversing poorly planned moves to the cloud, and supplier failure Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

The ICO is right to push back against government meddling

Some criticisms of the ICO are justified, but the answer to that is not to give Whitehall more oversight over the data protection regulator, argues legal expert Edward Machin Continue Reading

By

• Edward Machin

Belfast City Airport: Most apps in the cloud by 2031

George Best Belfast City Airport has already achieved 50/50 cloud and on-premise working, with 80% of workloads expected to be cloud-based in the next decade. We look at what hybrid cloud means in practice Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Immutable snapshots aim to neutralise ransomware

Snapshots – usually immutable anyway – get functionality to stop ransomware intruders moving or deleting snapshots, so customers know they have clean copies of data to restore from Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

No cloud storage for Belfast City Airport in Nutanix hyper-converged switch

George Best Belfast City Airport ditches ageing Dell iSCSI SAN for Nutanix HCI for half the price of nearest contender, and gets DR site into the bargain. Cloud storage was a no-go for cost reasons Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

How ransomware crews pile on the pressure to get victims to pay

Sophos researchers share some of the more common tactics ransomware gangs use to pressurise their victims into paying up Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Cohesity beefs up ransomware and disaster recovery offer

Disaster Recovery as-a-service, Data Govern and project Fort Knox available or in development as data protection supplier augments its portfolio with ransomware firmly in mind Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Managing cyber risk by integrating supply chains

In this week’s Computer Weekly, our latest Buyer’s Guide examines the security and IT integration challenges of modern supply chains, especially post-pandemic – while we also talk to the CEO of software provider SolarWinds about how the company overcame its huge supply chain attack. And we look at how a small town in Lancashire was chosen as the HQ for the UK’s new National Cyber Force. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

MEPs vote to expand Europol data mandate

The European Parliament has voted in favour of expanding Europol’s mandate to process data and develop AI tools, but critics claim it contradicts a previous vote which opposed using new technologies to predict crime Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

Vast boosts QLC flash offer with ransomware-proof snapshots

Vast majors on QLC flash bulk storage with 3D Xpoint cache to smooth out traffic into sequential flows Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

US intelligence agencies issue advisory on BlackMatter gang

Joint advisory on ransomware gang warns about potential of further attacks on critical infrastructure providers Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

Hybrid cloud: Five key questions in 2021

We look at key need-to-knows about hybrid cloud in 2021, including how it is defined, key use cases, the main pitfalls and where it’s heading Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

APAC expert guide to storage management

In this expert guide to storage management in Asia-Pacific, we unpack the developments shaping storage management and key strategies to extract business value from data Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, Informa TechTarget

Malaysia’s highway authority improves DR capabilities

The Malaysian Highway Authority is now more resilient against cyber attacks through a local disaster-recovery-as-a-service offering powered by Veeam software Continue Reading

By

• Edwin Yapp

Addressing the backup dilemma to ransomware recovery

Everyone knows good backups are essential if one is to recover from a ransomware attack, but using them effectively poses challenges that IT teams need to know about Continue Reading

By

• W Curtis Preston

Is ‘suite’ becoming a dirty word?

How much attention do you pay to the pros and cons of software and service bundling? I was reminded of the topic on a recent briefing call with Dave Russell, Veeam’s VP of enterprise strategy, ... Continue Reading

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• Dale Vile, Freeform Dynamics

ICO expresses concerns over its future independence

In its response to the government’s data protection consultation, the Information Commissioner’s Office has raised worries over its future ability to function independently of government interference Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

French Caisse uses NetApp to move backups to object storage

State financial arm wanted to move backups held on NAS file-based storage to object storage, so stuck with NetApp StorageGRID and achieved near-seamless migration Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

GCP gets triple-redundant NAS and built-in Kubernetes backup

Google Filestore Enterprise will provide synchronous replication across three zones, while Backup for Google Kubernetes Engine brings built-in container cluster data protection Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

secondary storage

Secondary storage is persistent storage for noncritical data that doesn't need to be accessed as frequently as data in primary storage or that doesn't have the same performance or availability requirements. Continue Reading

By

• Robert Sheldon
• Rich Castagna
• Johnny Yu

Dell, NetApp and Pure: Healthy results on Covid easing

Dell’s still top of the storage supplier pile with midrange arrays doing well, but meanwhile NetApp and Pure are making gains on the rise of public cloud Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

NetApp and AWS launch fully managed Ontap cloud file storage

But hybrid cloud still limited, according to NetApp. Until containerisation is widespread, applications tend to be built for the cloud or work better in the datacentre Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Security Think Tank: Managing data securely throughout its lifecycle

Managing data in a secure manner is key to ensuring its integrity and therefore its value to the organisation, as well as reducing risk from breaches and misinformation Continue Reading

By

• Andrew Morris, Turnkey Consulting

Are proposed data protection changes a threat to UK citizens’ privacy?

Though changes are as-yet undefined pending an upcoming consultation, concerns are already being expressed over the government’s plan to liberalise data protection laws in the service of innovation and growth Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Government unveils post-Brexit data flow proposals

The government will pursue data partnerships with countries including Australia, South Korea and the US as part of a post-Brexit data regime that may also see substantial changes to the UK’s data protection law Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Security Think Tank: Steps to a solid data privacy practice

Petra Wenham of the BCS shares her expertise on building, or rebuilding, a solid business data privacy practice in a post-Covid-19 world Continue Reading

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• Petra Wenham

NZ privacy lead John Edwards named new information commissioner

DCMS has named John Edwards, currently New Zealand privacy commissioner, to succeed Elizabeth Denham as UK information commissioner Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Over a million opt out of NHS data-sharing

Failure to communicate benefits of data-sharing proposals and privacy concerns are prompting large numbers of people to opt out of a proposed NHS Digital scheme Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Veeam survey: Big cloud impact on backup and disaster recovery

Backup specialist finds cloud eclipses on-site compute for all workloads while DR makes big strides in the cloud despite concerns about complexity and security Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Disaster recovery for SMEs: Five key areas to consider

We look at key disaster recovery considerations for SMEs, including why backup is not enough, how to create a disaster recovery plan, best-practice DR testing and DR as a service Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

When long-term data archiving means 'forever'

Storage customers such as the German data processing service center GWDG have started to think about how they can archive data forever. It's challenging and complex, but possible. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

Almost half unaware of GP data-sharing plans

Around half of adults in England – approximately 20 million people – remain unaware of the scope of the NHS GPDPR programme, prompting calls for a public education campaign Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Five ways to ensure remote working security and compliance

A mix of on-site and remote working has become a fact of life for many organisations. We look at five key things you should consider to ensure compliance and security Continue Reading

By

• Valéry Rieß-Marchive, Rédacteur en chef
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Secureworks sets up in EU datacentre for XDR services

New datacentre location helps Secureworks’ customers meet EU data residency requirements Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

France TV repatriates backup and archive from public cloud

France Télévisions Publicité couldn’t always get to critical data, so decided to repatriate backup and archiving from the cloud to on-site locations, with help from a managed service Continue Reading

By

• Alain Clapaud
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

City of York picks Barracuda Networks for data protection

York Council needed to refresh its backup service to bring new security protections after it went ‘all-in’ on Microsoft Office 365 Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Opera house shuns cloud for Nutanix and Rubrik hyper-converged infrastructure

The Royal Opera House considered moving all its infrastructure to the cloud, but a hybrid setup with Nutanix and Rubrik hyper-converged infrastructure came in 35% cheaper Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

UK taskforce calls for cutting GDPR protections

The UK’s Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform has recommended scrapping safeguards against automated decision-making contained in the General Data Protection Regulation Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

Europe’s proposed AI regulation falls short on protecting rights

The European Commission’s proposal for artificial intelligence regulation focuses on creating a risk-based, market-led approach replete with self-assessments, transparency procedures and technical standards, but critics warn it falls short of being able to protect people’s fundamental rights and mitigating the technology’s worst abuses Continue Reading

By

• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

How the pandemic changed backup

The Covid-19 pandemic forced big changes in how people work – we look at impacts on backup, including increased reliance on the cloud, plus security and compliance vulnerabilities and ransomware Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Cohesity brings DataProtect backup-as-a-service to Europe via AWS

Scale-out backup appliance pioneer adds backup-as-a-service from a virtual machine on customer premises Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

NHS Digital delays data collection plans until September

NHS Digital has postponed its proposed collection of GP data for two months, to allow more time for the public to understand the process and opt out if wanted Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

National data guardian calls for dialogue on NHS Digital GP plans

The UK’s national data guardian says it is important the public has clarity on how their confidential medical information will be used and kept secure under NHS data-sharing plans Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

EU privacy chief investigates use of US cloud services

Use of Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud services by public sector bodies in the European Union is being scrutinised by the bloc’s privacy watchdog Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

IBM pushes back against US government data requests

Technology giant IBM says the US government has ‘no jurisdiction’ to request data from its European entities Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

Exagrid pays $2.6m to Conti ransomware attackers

Backup appliance specialist hit by Conti ransomware in May with cyber criminals downloading employee and customer data, confidential contracts and source code Continue Reading

By

• Valéry Rieß-Marchive, Rédacteur en chef
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Loss of 150,000 police records made worse by management failures

The loss of 150,000 records from a number of national policing systems was caused by a human coding error, but made worse by process and management failures Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

Veeam bolsters portfolio to cover emerging workloads

The groundswell in containerisation and open-source hypervisors is behind Veeam’s recent move to enable backup and recovery of emerging workloads Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, Informa TechTarget

Oil and gas firm halves backup licence cost with Hycu move

Summit E&P made a strategic move to Nutanix hyper-converged and away from NetApp and VMware and wanted backup that could handle virtual machines and physical servers Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Reports of stolen Irish health service data being leaked online

Leaking of deeply confidential and personal information on patient healthcare marks a new low for the criminal Conti gang Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Microsoft EU Data Boundary dubbed ‘smoke and mirrors’

Data protection experts claim Microsoft’s decision to create an EU Data Boundary is a tacit admission that it routinely transfers and processes the personal data of European citizens outside the bloc Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

Backup failure: Four key areas where backups go wrong

We look at the key ways that backups can fail – via software issues, hardware problems, trouble in the infrastructure and good old human error – and suggest ways to mitigate them Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Leaky Azure storage account puts software developer IP at risk

Source code for multiple products was left exposed in an unsecured Microsoft Azure cloud storage account, say researchers, but attributing responsibility for the error has proved difficult Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Cloud archiving: A perfect use case, but beware costs and egress issues

The advantages of cloud archiving are ease of use and being well-suited to potential latency issues, but IT teams need to be aware of costs and issues around moving data from and between clouds Continue Reading

By

• Maxwell Cooter

AET gets Ctera to smooth hybrid cloud access to big files

Remote locations with unreliable WAN connections needed to share large files, which was a real headache until US engineering firm got Ctera edge filers with Azure cloud as a tier Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Ctera KubeFiler to bring Kubernetes storage to its cloud gateways

KubeFiler uses the container storage interface to allow Kubernetes to access persistent storage as if it were from a local NAS device, and while keeping existing access profiles Continue Reading

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Where now for storage? Hitachi, IBM and Pure Storage

Part II: Storage supplier strategy in the cloud era: Hitachi, IBM and Pure Storage. We snapshot the big six hardware makers, as they take things to the cloud and as-a-service models Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Where now for storage? Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE

Part I: Storage supplier strategy in the cloud era: Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE. We snapshot the big six hardware makers, as they take things to the cloud and as-a-service models Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Backup survey: UK councils’ downtimes five times longer than average

Backup product supplier Veeam’s freedom of information request finds councils’ average downtime is seven hours and that backup and disaster recovery testing is not done frequently Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Backup appliances the hot topic for Pas-de-Calais fire brigade

With requirements for strict, long-duration backup and archiving, French fire brigade set out to replace optical media with a StorageCraft appliance and disaster-proof storage Continue Reading

By

• Pierre Berlemont
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

The 3-2-1 backup rule: Has cloud made it obsolete?

The 3-2-1 backup rule was made for small-scale use in the pre-cloud era when tape still ruled. Is it relevant in the 2020s, or can we repurpose its fundamental principles? Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

IWM uses StorCycle to free capacity for all-flash SAN upgrade

Imperial War Museums set to embark on unstructured data archiving project that will archive cold data to tape and free up capacity for a move to IntelliFlash all-flash SAN Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Survey: Backup failures hit a high as pandemic working hits home

Veeam survey finds distributed working plus operations that span on-prem and the cloud the background to high numbers of failures in backup and restore, with 40% of SLAs not met Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Met Police chooses Capgemini as strategic IT infrastructure services provider

Capgemini has a history of providing the force with day-to-day technology services, and will now deliver its infrastructure services under the Pegasus programme Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

Five ways that disaster recovery changes in a pandemic

Covid-19 has changed IT. Previously, working remotely was a business continuity measure, but now it is the norm. That means disaster recovery has to adapt to new risks and new ways to respond Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Veritas looks beyond NetBackup for growth in ASEAN

Veritas has seen increased demand for its availability tools as it looks to address backup and recovery requirements from cloud, database and VMware workloads Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, Informa TechTarget

UK’s Arkivum up for €4.8m EU science data archive project

CERN-led multi-petabyte scale research data archive bid will use Google cloud and compete with AWS-based and open source designs from other providers Libnova and Onedata Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

SME backup: Card maker ditches tape-only for Nakivo 3-2-1 setup

IG Design Group gains a modern backup regime with data held on disk, in the cloud and long-term on tape in a move that has helped it to slash backup and restore times Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Transport for NSW hit by Accellion breach

Australian state agency Transport for New South Wales is the latest victim of the supply chain attack against Accellion’s legacy file transfer system Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, Informa TechTarget

Arcserve and StorageCraft merger aims for ‘single pane of glass’

Arcserve and StorageCraft bring a lot of similarities but enough differences for their backers to bet on with their merger, with unifying management between product sets the only priority currently stated Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Veeam v11 adds continuous data protection and cloud archive

Backup specialist’s annual upgrade brings continuous data protection to offer better RPOs and RTOs than existing snapshot functionality and without impact on running processes Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

IXsystems: TrueNAS gets hyper-convergence

TrueNAS has added hyper-converged functionality to NAS and aims at the edge use cases left behind in the rush to the cloud Continue Reading

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Executive interview: Tapping APAC’s storage potential

Lenovo’s head of storage in Asia-Pacific singles out the region’s market opportunities and predicts that the healthcare sector will go full-fledged with flash storage in the next year Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, Informa TechTarget

C40, C60 R3, go! Pure adds to FlashArray//C QLC flash range

Hybrid storage killers: Pure Storage adds entry-level FlashArray//C40 R3 QLC array plus re-CPUed C60 R3 that will scale to 5PB or more Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cost-effective snapshot management tips and strategies

Snapshots may be an optimal way to copy and protect data, but they can lead to some unexpected consequences. Find out what those are and how to avoid them. Continue Reading

By

• Dan Sullivan

CW Benelux: Is reluctance to report cyber crimes in the Netherlands helping the criminals get away?

According to an academic study in the Netherlands, only one in seven Dutch people report a cyber crime to the police when it happens - feeling it is better to sort the problem out themselves because they don’t think the police will do anything. This is storing up trouble as cyber crime is an increasing problem in the country. Also in this issue, read why Dutch bank ABN Amro is selling its head office. Continue Reading

Netbackup 9 adds flexibility with hyper-converged backup options

Veritas’s enterprise backup flagship is available in hyper-converged infrastructure and has embraced containerisation, for better hardware and application scalability Continue Reading

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Indian firms see growing value of data

Half of Indian IT leaders see a permanent increase in value of data as their organisations come under threat from mounting cyber attacks amid the pandemic Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, Informa TechTarget

Five key questions about Kubernetes backup answered

We look at when to back up containers, what to protect, the main methods of backup for Kubernetes and the main Kubernetes backup products available in the market Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Nakivo to use AWS Object Lock as anti-ransomware tool

Backup software maker leverages AWS Object Lock’s ability to create immutable WORM repositories as a means of helping organisations protect against malicious deletion or corruption Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Architect slashes 20% off storage costs with Nasuni NAS gateway

LA-based Jerde Partnership replaced on-premise storage and backup with Nasuni hybrid cloud NAS gateways to provide seamless access across timezones to project files Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

APAC buyer’s guide to data management

In this buyer’s guide, we look at the challenges surrounding why enterprises are struggling to deal with data, the use of cloud data management platforms, artificial intelligence, and recommend some best practices Continue Reading

By

• Edwin Yapp

150,000 records accidentally wiped from police systems

Home Office claims data wiped from national police systems only relates to people who have never been convicted of a crime or had further police action taken against them following an arrest Continue Reading

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• Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor

Coalition proposes secure standard model for Covid-19 passports

Vaccination Credential Initiative is working to ensure that people vaccinated against Covid-19 can access their records in a secure, verifiable and privacy-preserving way Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

6 data backup service providers to watch

Evaluate how offerings from six prominent BaaS providers differ when it comes to considerations such as pricing, scope of coverage and the amount of data they can back up. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Cloud DR from the Big Three: Who’s best at what?

We look at cloud disaster recovery from AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google to see which is best for provision of turnkey solutions, breadth of portfolio and modular building blocks Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Data Dynamics aims at single view of unstructured data

Data volume is ballooning, and storage is becoming more disparate, which makes the need for a single platform to manage storage and compliance a key requirement for organisations Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Dell data protection products portfolio keeps evolving

Follow the rebranding and renaming transitions of the multitude of Dell data protection products acquired and cultivated over the past 30 years. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Robin.io aims its Kubernetes storage at databases and big data

Cloud-native storage runs in Kubernetes and pools storage media to present it to application persistent storage needs, including snapshots and backup on top Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Five key points about cloud vs in-house disaster recovery

The cloud is well suited as a disaster recovery failover option. The key questions are about what you should keep on-site and what goes to the cloud. We look at five key points to consider Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Top 2020 data backup tips target remote protection, cloud

From improved security to SaaS protection, these data backup tips are important for your business, especially in an IT world changed by the coronavirus pandemic. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

Top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020 Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top 10 container storage stories of 2020

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 container storage stories for 2020, when providing persistent Kubernetes storage, backup and disaster recovery became a key challenge for many organisations Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor