Data protection, backup and archiving

NCSC makes ransomware attack guidance more accessible

Following a swathe of high-profile ransomware attacks, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has made changes to its guidance, emphasising the importance of offline backups Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Clearview hack fuels debate over facial recognition

Customers of Clearview AI, a controversial startup that scrapes and sells billions of photos of people from social media to police forces, have found themselves at the centre of a major data breach Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

IT Priorities 2020: Cloud storage key but SAN/NAS alive and well

In the Computer Weekly/TechTarget IT Priorities survey cloud dominates storage spending priorities for 2020, but on-premise technologies such as SAN and NAS are still key to IT Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Thai university to roll out data protection certification

Thailand’s National Institute of Development Administration is offering a certification programme to get organisations ready for the country’s data protection regime Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

How container applications are shaping storage management

Persistent storage, backup and recovery were not on the minds of those behind container applications, but that is starting to change Continue Reading

Cost of cloud misconfigurations set at $5tn

Cloud security outfit DivvyCloud says more than 33 billion records have been exposed in cloud misconfiguration incidents in the past 24 months Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Veeam readies Availability Suite V10, offers universal licensing

Veeam has taken the wraps off the latest iteration of its software to speed up backup and recovery, along with other features to help enterprises better manage their data in a hybrid cloud ... Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Veeam Availability Suite v10 adds NAS backup and cloud tiering

Availability Suite is mostly about consolidating the company’s data management platform idea, but it has added incremental forever NAS backup, cloud tiering and recovery to vSphere Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cloud key to top 2019 data backup and disaster recovery products

Commvault, Cohesity and Actifio make the podium in our Products of the Year competition for backup and DR. Cloud Daddy wins the new Judges' Choice award. Continue Reading

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• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

US hotel group ditches datacentre for Nasuni cloud NAS

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts got rid of its datacentre and put everything in the cloud, with Nasuni cloud NAS providing storage from which any user can restore files Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Veeam pushes subscription licensing in cloud-centric ‘Act II’

Backup specialist wants to “win the cloud” as it pushes towards a cloud-focused vision that includes pay-for-what-you-use and multicloud after its acquisition last month Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Caribbean island hospital rebuilds after hurricane with DataCore

Hurricane Irma tore the roof off a server room and flooded IT hardware, but that was an opportunity to rebuild redundant IT using DataCore’s SANsymphony software-defined storage Continue Reading

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Acronis CEO bullish as specialist goes beyond backup

Acronis is set to launch Cyber Protect as it rides a wave of confidence based on increasing revenues and investor funding. Will the backup-plus-cyber protection calculation pay off? Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Why settle for just one RTO and one RPO?

I think we can all agree that protecting data is important – perhaps even very important. So how come some still find it a daunting challenge to progress from that acknowledgement into tangible ... Continue Reading

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• Tony Lock, Freeform Dynamics

Why is a data archive plan important?

A data archiving plan might not be simply important for your organization -- it could be necessary, given legal and compliance requirements. Make sure you're ahead of the game. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Kirvan

Podcast: How to boost staff awareness of compliance

Employee awareness of compliance, of the laws and regulations that affect your business, is vital, in some cases even mandatory. We look at the key ways to achieve it Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top four compliance considerations for SMEs

We look at the key data compliance regulations that affect smaller companies – such as GDPR, the Data Protection Act, PCI-DSS and PECR – and some key industry-specific frameworks Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Data privacy benefits outweigh spend, says Cisco

Cisco’s 2020 data privacy study shows organisations can generate substantial returns on their data privacy and protection spending Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Disaster recovery failover choices: Synchronous mirrors, P2V and the cloud

We survey the key options in disaster recovery: whether to failover to an on-site location or off-site facility. We also look at the cloud as an option in disaster recovery Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Investments in data storage vendors topped $2B in 2019

Six data storage vendors closed six-figure funding rounds in 2019. Backup, data protection and newer flash technologies generated the most attention from investors. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Six disaster recovery pitfalls and how to avoid them

We look at some key pitfalls in disaster recovery, such as failing to plan, not testing the plan, not protecting backups, poor communication and neglecting the human element Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Spread of Kubernetes spurs backup and disaster recovery products

Growth of containerised applications brings with it the need to back up and provide disaster recovery. But what do you need to protect, and who provides the products? Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Exposed AWS buckets again implicated in multiple data leaks

A series of data leaks in the past week have once again implicated poorly secured Amazon S3 buckets, which are supposed to be private by default Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Inside NetApp’s transition into a data management firm

NetApp’s leaders in Asia-Pacific discuss the company’s pivot into data services and its traction in the region Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Do you use cloud storage for these use cases yet?

We look at the use cases most suited to a quick transition to the cloud: backup, archiving, disaster recovery, file storage and cloud bursting – cloud storage’s low-hanging fruit Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Thailand gets ready for data protection law

Thailand’s personal data protection law comes into effect in May 2020, subjecting organisations to new rules that safeguard the personal data of individuals Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Threat landscape grew in complexity in 2019, no respite in sight

Check Point’s annual state of security report shares some 2019 trends and looks ahead to 2020 Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

How container applications are shaping storage management

Persistent storage, backup and recovery were not on the minds of those behind container applications, but that is starting to change Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

$5bn buy-out set to make backup giant Veeam a US company

Veeam’s founders are out as investment fund gets its hands on a pioneer of virtual machine backup. Now it will be a US company and eligible to target US government customers Continue Reading

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Don’t become the next Travelex: Get ready for ransomware

With Travelex’s IT still in disarray and banks and travellers left without access to funds more than a week after it was hit by a ransomware attack, we ask what others can learn from the foreign exchange services company’s response to the incident Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

DRaaS decisions: Key choices in disaster recovery as a service

We examine the key decisions when considering DRaaS. Whether to go full self-service, assisted or managed will depend on what you need to protect and your in-house resources Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

New GDPR service aims to ease compliance challenges

Security consultants claim their software platform will address a pressing need for an effective and efficient means of complying with data protection rules Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Five ways that backup has changed since the days of tape

Back in the day, all this was tape, but times have changed, with cloud-to-cloud backup, cloud storage, virtual and physical backup appliances and myriad endpoint hardware Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

Cloud adoption in ANZ gathering pace

Australia and New Zealand have seen a four-fold increase in the amount of data moving from on-premise environments to the top public clouds, survey finds Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Security Think Tank: Put information at the heart of security

The belief that effective perimeter security is the best way to protect data is a fallacy that is being repeatedly exposed. We must recognise the need for a data-centric security model to protect data from both internal and external threats, but what does this mean for security professionals? Continue Reading

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• Maxine Holt, Omdia

Year's best practices for backup feature ransomware, SaaS

Backup best practices range from making sure your backups are safe from ransomware to being able to move on in the face of a failure. Take advantage of the advice and products. Continue Reading

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• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

California’s CCPA an opportunity for security industry to do better

California’s consumer protection and data privacy laws came into effect on 1 January 2020, and present a golden opportunity for the cyber security practitioners Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Top 10 storage deployment stories of 2019

Here are ComputerWeekly’s top 10 storage deployment stories for 2019, which see quite a move away from traditional SAN and NAS to hyper-converged, software-defined storage and object storage Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top 10 storage stories of 2019

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 storage stories for 2019, with the latest trends in enterprise storage arrays, hyper-converged, object storage, scale-out NAS, and more Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Major funding, SaaS trends top data backup news in 2019

Several data backup vendors, including Carbonite, Commvault and Clumio, had a bustling 2019. The backup market continues to develop with acquisitions and more cloud-based products. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

Public sector still losing user devices in high numbers

The Ministry of Justice has lost 354 smartphones, PCs, laptops and tablets in the past 12 months, according to a Freedom of Information request, and other government departments are in the same boat Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Survey finds most firms don’t respond to GDPR requests in time

Most organisations do not respond to requests for GDPR data in the one month allowed, while many return incorrect data. The education sector does best, but the public sector lags behind Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Security Think Tank: In-depth protection is a matter of basic hygiene

The belief that effective perimeter security is the best way to protect data is a fallacy that is being repeatedly exposed. We must recognise the need for a data-centric security model to protect data from both internal and external threats, but what does this mean for security professionals? Continue Reading

By

• Petra Wenham

SaaS backup services deliver data protection for SaaS apps

Providers of SaaS apps offer only basic data recovery protection. Learn which SaaS backup services and cloud-to-cloud data protection products fill this void. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Five essential steps to a sound disaster recovery plan

We walk through the key steps to develop a disaster recovery plan – from risk assessment and setting recovery objectives, to the plan itself and a testing regime to keep it fresh Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Get ready for CCPA: Implications for UK businesses

The California Consumer Privacy Act, a wide-ranging data privacy and consumer protection law, comes into effect on 1 January 2020. How does CCPA differ from the EU GDPR regulations and what are the responsibilities for UK businesses operating in the US? Continue Reading

By

• Peter Ray Allison

Australia’s Fenner Dunlop ditches tape backups for cloud

Australian manufacturer of conveyor belts Fenner Dunlop has freed up its IT staff to focus on future projects by moving tape backups to the cloud Continue Reading

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• Beverley Head

10 steps to creating an effective data backup strategy

A common denominator in well-functioning backup infrastructures is effective process and control. This checklist highlights 10 areas to help build a better backup practice. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor
• James Damoulakis, GlassHouse Technologies

University of Leicester dumps SANs and LUNs for Cloudian object storage

One-to-one mapping between Dell SANs and media servers had passed their sell-by date and caused vulnerabilities for the University of Leicester, which fixed the problems by a move to “stateless” object storage on Cloudian Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Mystery surrounds leak of four billion user records

Threat researchers uncover four billion user records on a wide-open Elasticsearch server but who left them there is a mystery Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

SME disaster recovery made easy with cloud, hybrid and HCI

Disaster recovery is a lot easier for small businesses than it used to be, with use of the cloud, hybrid cloud, physical and virtual appliances, and hyper-converged infrastructure all among the choices on offer Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Datrium boosts VMware protection but won’t add more hypervisors

NVMe flash pioneer turned DR-as-a-service-focused data platform provider Datrium says VMware and Kubernetes have “won the market” and it won’t extend support beyond those two Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Businesses failing to wipe data from old endpoints

Organisations are not taking adequate precautions to sanitise data held on endpoints when refreshing their PC or mobile device estates Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

ASEAN regulatory sandbox will promote cross-border data flows

The Regulatory Pilot Space will offer ASEAN businesses a safe test environment to provide digital services across the region while complying with data privacy rules Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

In your data archive strategy, how long is long enough?

Hoarding large amounts of data increases costs and management time. Here's how to painlessly separate the wheat from the chaff for your data archive strategy. Continue Reading

By

• John Edwards

Taking responsibility for security in the cloud

From accidental leaks to full-on data breaches, maintaining security across cloud services is becoming a headache for enterprises. What questions should organisations be asking of their cloud service provider and, ultimately, whose responsibility is cloud security anyway? Continue Reading

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• Peter Ray Allison

Security Think Tank: Base cloud security posture on your data footprint

Misconfigured cloud environments are increasingly identified as the source of damaging data breaches and leaks, raising serious questions for enterprises. Where does responsibility for data security in the cloud lie, and how can security professionals best work with their teams and cloud providers to resolve the problem? Continue Reading

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• Rob Clyde, Isaca

Best of VMworld 2019 Europe User Awards: The winners

Find out who won what, including the best of show prize, at the 2019 VMworld Europe User Awards in Barcelona Continue Reading

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• Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK

Security Think Tank: Secure the cloud when negotiating contracts

Misconfigured cloud environments are increasingly identified as the source of damaging data breaches and leaks, raising serious questions for enterprises. Where does responsibility for data security in the cloud lie, and how can security professionals best work with their teams and cloud providers to resolve the problem? Continue Reading

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• Petra Wenham

Security Think Tank: In the cloud, the buck stops with you

Misconfigured cloud environments are increasingly identified as the source of damaging data breaches and leaks, raising serious questions for enterprises. Where does responsibility for data security in the cloud lie, and how can security professionals best work with their teams and cloud providers to resolve the problem? Continue Reading

By

• Mike Gillespie

Archive vs. backup and why you need to know the differences

Archiving and data backup are both key pieces of data protection. They can complement each other, but both provide distinct and important capabilities. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor
• George Crump

5 considerations before buying data center backup software

Backup and recovery software should support various OSes and environments such as VMware, as well as applications running in public cloud IaaS and SaaS platforms. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans
• George Crump

NordVPN enlists ethical hackers, launches bug bounty programme

Breached consumer VPN supplier details steps it is taking to shore up its cyber security posture after an unknown actor gained access to one of its servers Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Key storage choices: Cloud vs tape for archive storage?

Tape still has benefits, such as an ‘air gap’ that can insulate archives from threats to data integrity. But what are the opportunities for cloud in tape’s traditional use cases? Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Equifax lawsuit offers more evidence against passwords

Equifax’s internal security policies were a mess and directly led to one of the largest recorded data breaches in history, according to a lawsuit, demonstrating fundamental insecurities inherent in the use of passwords Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Commvault adds Metallic SaaS backup and Hedvig features

Backup software maker adds software-as-a-service Metallic, which can protect on-premise, cloud and hybrid platforms. Meanwhile, Hedvig gets datacentre features and erasure coding Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

PCI DSS: Credit card data and what to expect from version 4.0

We preview October’s PCI Europe Community Meeting where attendees will discuss credit card payment data, with topics covered likely to include the cloud and point-to-point encryption Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

UK and Middle East PR firm ditches NetApp for Nutanix and Talon Fast

Four Communications needed better connectivity for collaboration between the UK and its gulf sites, so dumped server/storage for hyper-converged and a distributed file system Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

How to determine if your data backup strategy has the right resources

The volume of different data backup resources available can be overwhelming. Learn how to quantify what is appropriate for your organization's backup strategy. Continue Reading

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• Paul Kirvan

Enterprise backup software provides data protection foundation

Learn how backup and recovery software has evolved and what features it offers IT enterprises that need to protect cloud and virtual environments and other data sources. Continue Reading

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• Chris Evans
• George Crump

PLC flash: A solid state candidate for analytics and archives?

We thought flash would end at QLC, but storage media makers are working on penta-level cell, which could push capacity to double figures, but at a further performance cost Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Selection criteria for converged data protection

See if a converged backup product will meet your needs by exploring the features you should consider before investing in this relatively new kind of data protection platform. Continue Reading

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• Alastair Cooke

Data storage: The top five storage deployment pitfalls

Key pitfalls in data storage include silos, under-utilisation, backup and disaster recovery, plus neglect of skills and application requirements. We ask analysts how to avoid them Continue Reading

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• Stephen Pritchard

Dutch group works on digitising collaborator archives created in aftermath of World War 2

Experiments have been carried out to ascertain the best technology to open up the analogue archives of the Central Archive of Special Justice in the Netherlands Continue Reading

By

• Kim Loohuis

Pure Storage APAC CTO talks up storage trends

Flash-based storage will be around for at least two decades more, while crystal- and DNA-based storage needs a lot more work before becoming mainstream, according to Pure Storage’s CTO for the Asia-Pacific region Continue Reading

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

GDPR compliance: Whose job is it and is it really possible?

Nobody seems to have a good handle on business GDPR compliance, how many businesses are compliant, or indeed what compliance really is, but according to security experts, it very much depends on who you talk to Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

What are best practices for archiving emails?

Archiving email is crucial to the business continuity and disaster recovery process. For example, consider how cybersecurity and cloud storage can integrate with the archiving. Continue Reading

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• Paul Kirvan

National Library of Scotland says aye to Scality object storage

National digitised archives move off Hitachi SANs and Qualstar tape, object storage is embraced and a “no backup” strategy put in place with petabyte-scale Scality S3/file deployment Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Pure adds Optane and QLC flash to boost performance and capacity

Flash storage player adds Intel Optane modules performance, a capacity flash range based on QLC drives, plus rebranding and GA of its on-premise/cloud leasing service Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cloud provider sweeps away legacy storage for 1PB of Infinidat

Core DataCloud decommissions storage from several vendors to consolidate to 1PB on Infinidat Infinibox, with DRAM and flash to accelerate hot data in front of disk back end Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Basic data and skills needed to fix UK social care

Foundations need to be in place to save the social care system from collapse, and NHSX needs to step up to the task, according to a Doteveryone report Continue Reading

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• Angelica Mari

Data protection customers turn to Pure Storage FlashBlade

Pure Storage created the FlashBlade all-flash NAS mainly for dense unstructured workloads, but customers like Domino's Pizza and ServiceNow are among Pure customers that use it as a backup target. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Universities tempting targets for cyber criminals, warns NCSC

As hundreds of thousands of students prepare for the new academic year, universities have been warned that they are at high risk of cyber attack Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

WannaCry variants accidentally protecting against WannaCry

New variants of the infamous WannaCry malware continue to emerge, and many of them have accidentally turned themselves into a somewhat effective, although ill-advised, vaccine against infection Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Northwestern cuts storage costs in half with Komprise

Komprise’s Deep Analytics helps university classify and migrate research data to cheaper disk and cloud as it cuts storage costs from $1.1m to $680,000 per annum Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Ecuador citizens’ data breach holds lessons for enterprises

What caused the mass breach of Ecuadorian citizens’ data, and what can businesses learn from it? Continue Reading

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• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Top five cloud storage pitfalls

Cloud storage offers apparent simplicity, but unexpected costs, complexity, data movement and integration challenges can arise. We look at how to avoid common cloud storage pitfalls Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

Commvault’s Hedvig throw of the dice

Commvault’s $225 million purchase of software-defined storage maker Hedvig looks like a rational move given the way the backup market is changing. But it also looks like a massive and potentially ... Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

GDPR non-compliance worse than feared

Over half of UK businesses do not yet appear to be fully GDPR-compliant, and many have de-prioritised their compliance efforts Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Ctera launches hybrid cloud HC2400M at media use cases

Edge filer specialist hits up the media and entertainment market with its NAS-like hardware that caches data locally, syncs with other nodes and stages data to the cloud Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Commvault buys Hedvig in push for global storage player status

Backup player Commvault aims to bring together datacentre and multi-cloud operations with software-defined storage that can unify access to almost any storage medium, anywhere Continue Reading

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

How APAC firms can slay the storage management beast

The data deluge and compliance requirements are shaping how Asia-Pacific firms are approaching storage management issues in the age of cloud Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Backup testing: A step-by-step tutorial

Testing backups is a key piece of the data protection puzzle. Explore the different approaches and frequencies you can use to make sure your backups work. Continue Reading

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• Nick Cavalancia, Techvangelism

How tape backup systems improve data protection

Have you analyzed your data protection lately? Tape backup could be a savior if you get hit with a ransomware attack or other malware. Learn more about five tape-related terms. Continue Reading

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• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

PowerShell backup scripts: What are 3 essential best practices?

There are some strong PowerShell scripts that can provide backup capabilities. It's important, though, to be mindful of PowerShell's quirks so you get the best data protection. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

CW Nordics: Copenhagen woos tech startups

Copenhagen offers all the advantages startups need to get off the ground and many are setting up with the intention of staying there for the long haul. Also read how shipping giant Maersk is employing a cloud-first strategy to disrupt competition and build innovation, and why three Finnish banks are sharing a core IT platform. Continue Reading

French national research centre insources with Rubrik backup

France’s national research organisation wanted to insource IT back from Atos and built its private cloud on VMware across two locations with Rubrik appliances for backup Continue Reading

By

• Pierre Berlemont

How a backup administrator can manage large volumes in 3 steps

Backup administrators have a tall task: managing a vast amount of data. Even if the volume is seemingly growing out of control, it's possible to keep a handle on it. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Hop jumps to Pure Storage to avoid big storage complexity

Air France short-haul and regional brand Hop jumps to Pure Storage after coming up against Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE, which all tried to sell it solutions ill-suited to its needs Continue Reading

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

CW Benelux: Dutch academic hunts the personality behind the hacker

Rutger Leukfeldt, senior researcher on cyber crime at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, is working to help organisations understand the personalities behind criminal hackers. Also in this issue, read about research that shows over half of Dutch organisations admit their knowledge of blockchain is substandard. We also feature an article about ABN Amro’s work with researchers to explore how quantum computing can be used to secure online banking. Continue Reading