“SysAdmins are the gurus behind the scenes that keep us moving ahead. Home or business, keeping our lives in synch starts and stops with these hardworking folks. Ransomware, phishing attacks, viruses—cloud migrations, software/hardware updates, infrastructure architecture, website accessibility…want me to go on!! SysAdmins are constantly on the move in an always learning profession to keep us protected and our businesses/home lives running smoothly.” – Ken Barth, CEO of Catalogic Software.

The team at Catalogic would like to thank our IT Manager, Dawuan Myers, for his continuous help on all ends of our business. Check out Dawuan’s Q&A and learn from his experiences:

What is the day-to-day security part of your job?

Security is a big part of what I do every day. I spend a lot of my day doing what is necessary to keep our systems safe. We want to ensure we stay ahead of the curve to prevent ransomware attacks.

What actions have­­ you taken for phishing prevention?

We have scheduled malware scanning on all our critical systems. We went from scanning once a day to scanning multiple times daily. We also train our users on what to do when they receive messages that look suspicious as most phishing attacks originate through email.

How did the work-from-home transition affect your job role?

The WFH (Work from home) transition was a bit tough in the beginning. In IT, you are so used to interacting with people face-to-face. Going from face-to-face interaction to interacting more on Microsoft Teams and email was a bit challenging. It took some time to adjust to this “new normal.”

What is the most challenging part of your job?

It is always a challenge to keep up with the security patches that are released daily. I often receive vulnerability alerts for the various applications that we use. We have systems in place that allow us to auto-patch most of our systems. However, there are a few systems that require manual updates.

Sysadmins are responsible for a wide range of duties, but what are the most essential?

With ransomware attacks at an all-time high, communicating with our users, making sure we are always aware and alert, as well as keeping our systems up to date is extremely important.

Make sure you show your appreciation to all System Administrators today!

The importance of cloud object storage is growing increasingly every day. It is critical to have a solution that you can rely on that is scalable, secure, and affordable. Now, with ransomware proactively targeting and removing backup data, cloud storage is even more important for providing protection from ransomware for critical datasets like your backups. 

Catalogic is pleased to partner with Backblaze to create a robust data protection solution that provides our DPX customers with the flexibility and comfort that their backup datasets are safe and secure from ransomware, and always accessible for recovery and compliance. So, what is DPX, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, and how do they work together? Below we will discuss those points, some of the benefits of the two solutions and we will also show you a high-level overview of the solution as well. 

Catalogic DPX is an efficient and flexible all-purpose enterprise data protection solution for physical and virtual environments. DPX now offers seamless integration via S3 APIs with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage to provide low cost, cloud storage for archiving block level and VMware agentless backups from DPX or for direct backup of filer data via NDMP (Network Data Management Protocol). 

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is high performance, S3 compatible, cloud object storage. Backblaze B2 is simple, reliable, and affordable, at a 75%+ lower cost than competitors. You can easily sign up for Backblaze B2 and get started.  

Why Use Backblaze B2 

Whether your business uses offsite or cloud storage for disaster recovery or not, you should be using air-gapped cloud storage for ransomware protection, as part of a 3-2-1 backup strategy. Backblaze B2 acts as a remotely located S3 cloud storage target that compliments on-site disk or tape for backups. This also provides a cost-effective, long-term storage solution for data that must remain under your control for compliance or data governance reasons. With built-in connectivity via the S3 API, Backblaze integrates as easily as connecting to any public cloud, and without any additional software required. 

If you are currently using S3 cloud storage and are ready to make a switch, Backblaze’s cloud to cloud migration service has zero data migration and egress fees. If you are ready to migrate from using tape, see the LTO vs. B2 Cloud Storage calculator. 

How it Works 

DPX integrates seamlessly with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage to provide a fast, secure, and virtually limitlessly scalable backup target. This is critical to accelerate and achieve recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO and RPO) SLAs, from DPX agent-based server backups, agentless VM backups, or direct filer backups via NDMP. Instead of having to wait hours to days to recover data from a cloud, Backblaze guarantees no cold delays or speed premiums with a 99.9% uptime SLA. 

Catalogic DPX Archive to Backblaze B2 

To deliver immutability of the data being stored in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, DPX can enable S3 Object Lock on your S3 bucket to ensure your precious backup and archive data can never be deleted or overwritten, providing your business with a key extra layer of protection against ransomware and data loss. 

Your Next Steps   

To learn more, please join or watch on demand the Backblaze and Catalogic webinar entitled “Reduce Backup Costs and Increase Security with Catalogic and Backblaze” on Wednesday, March 23^rd at 11 AM EDT. 

 
With cyber-attacks proactively targeting and removing backup data, do not wait to further protect your organization’s backups from a ransomware attack. In all cases, it is not a matter of if, but when, an attack will occur. Stay safe by getting started now with the free VMware and Hyper-V backup promotion for Catalogic DPX, or with the free service plan of CloudCasa for Kubernetes backup and cloud-native applications.