The network and endpoint security firm Sophos has announced a new strategic partnership with the data protection provider, Arcserve. The collaboration will provide Arcserve customers with greater protection from ransomware attacks.
Many businesses have succumbed to ransomware attacks in the past few years and have faced the difficult decision of paying exorbitant demands for keys to unlock encrypted files or having to deal with major data loss. Attacks on businesses are increasing and more sophisticated methods are being used to install ransomware and cause the maximum disruption. Ransom demands of hundreds of thousands of dollars are fast becoming the norm. Research from Cybersecurity Ventures indicates a ransomware attack is now occurring every 14 seconds and that the global cost of the attacks is expected to reach $20 billion by 2021.
Businesses can implement solutions to make it harder for attacks to succeed alongside robust disaster recovery solutions to ensure that in the event of an attack, data can always be recovered without having to give in to an attacker’s demands, but protection from attacks and disaster recovery are not provided by the same solution.
The new collaboration between Sophos and Arcserve will result in the creation of a new solution that uses a multi-layered approach to prevent cyberattacks and protect backup data. This will be the first market solution to be released that incorporates anti-ransomware and other threat protection technologies, AI and deep learning, and disaster recovery in the same product.
Many ransomware variants are capable of encrypting backups to maximize the probability of a ransom being paid so it is vital for backup systems to be well protected against malware and the latest exploits.
The collaboration will see Sophos technology incorporated into the Arcserve Appliance Series, which are turnkey self-contained appliances purpose-built for disaster recovery and application availability. The appliances are powered by Arcserve’s Unified Data Protection and incorporate flash-accelerated deduplicated storage, high-speed networking, and highly redundant hardware and cloud services.
The AI-powered Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Server solution will be integrated into the appliances to accelerate data, system and application resiliency. “Sophos Intercept X for Server provides anti-ransomware, anti-exploit and deep learning technology to provide the highest level of protection. This makes the Arcserve Appliance the most secure solution available in the market,” said Francois Depayras, Sophos’ vice president of OEM sales and alliances.
Arcserve will start selling the latest ArcServe Appliances with Sophos protection in October 2019.