Providing intelligent data backup at massive scale—Cobalt Iron Compass®

A catastrophic event can happen anytime. And in these scenarios, fortune favors the prepared. But is your business prepared to handle the worst-case scenario? Is your business at risk of a catastrophic network failure that will render your company’s entire collection of data being wiped clean?

That’s a scary thought.

Cloud-based enterprise backup systems and solutions offer firms an effective method to protect their data from potential disasters.

Conventional wisdom from even a few years ago dictated that it is best to control backups closely. Whole generations of IT administrators have grown up with rules — like making three copies of all data, keeping a tape copy offsite, etc. However, two drivers — SaaS and Mobility — have forced a disruption that is causing a rethink of several strategies; and data backup is no exception.

One use case for SaaS backup software is to store and protect the data that SaaS products create. SaaS backup software stores data in a secondary location, either on-premises or often in the cloud, so if the SaaS product fails, the client information is stored safely. If the SaaS products fail for any reason, the client can recover the data stored by the SaaS backup solution to restore the failed SaaS product to a functional state.

Imagine if it were possible to automate and unify the entire enterprise backup infrastructure, no matter the complexity or size, and make it impervious to cyber-attacks. That’s what Cobalt Iron’s Compass software does for enterprises today.

Q. The need for cyber-secure SaaS cloud backup software — How did Cobalt Iron create a solution for a burgeoning problem?

After consulting with large enterprises for many years about their data protection infrastructures, Cobalt Iron observed that many data and IT professionals were burdened with operating and maintaining incredibly complex and even outdated data protection technologies. These technologies were often cobbled-together backup infrastructures that had evolved over many years with legacy backup products. These managers had to maintain the operating system and the applications themselves, not just one but many, because they use different backup products for different applications. These managers were also in charge of the duct tape and baling wire needed to get all of it to work together. They focused so much time just making it work that data security was an afterthought. And these complexities opened the enterprise up to all sorts of exposure.

Then COVID-19 urged businesses to adapt to a new normal: working from home. Many companies accelerated their digital transformation efforts. However, this rapid shift toward the digital realm became even more challenging to safeguard mission-critical data. The reputational, operational, legal, and compliance implications could be huge if cyber threats were neglected. So the onus was still on backup administrators — even if they were working from home — to protect data from cybercriminals and guarantee effective deployment, operation, and administration of backup systems.

Cobalt Iron and Compass were born to remedy the repeated failures, high costs, increasing product complexities, spiraling data growth, and growing need to protect enterprise data beyond essential backup and restoration.

Q. What Is Compass? The revolutionary SaaS cloud-based data backup software

Compass is an enterprise-scale data protection software delivered as a service (SaaS). The software automates and optimizes backup functions, infrastructure, orchestration activities, and software currency for organizations. Compass supports various cloud providers — including Alibaba, Amazon, Azure, Google, and IBM Cloud — for different cloud use cases. Compass scales to petabytes of data in data centers or across thousands of locations. Furthermore, Compass automates daily operations, allowing customers to run backup servers across hundreds or thousands of locations with relative ease. Compass also provides end-user self-service to enroll, review, and monitor backups.

The Compass data protection platform delivers the highest levels of security in a simple-to-deploy and easy-to-manage solution, ensuring that data will be available when and where it is needed.

The Compass approach provides simplicity, operational automation, and secure deployment and maintenance of components. Compass’ robust workflow integration results in backup operations that are securely consolidated within the enterprise’s IT operations — a characteristic that also delivers higher levels of visibility for the backup procedures.

Compass’ Ace in the Hole – Providing real-time cybersecurity for cloud-based data backup solutions

One of Compass’ biggest differentiators from its competitors is built-in security. Compass Cyber Shield technology, included in every deployment at no extra charge, offers customers incomparable security features by design.

Compass protects the entire backup infrastructure and data with robust features such as:

• Built-in containment and immutability
• Extensive auditing and data governance
• Powerful multitenant, role-based access controls
• Backup domains isolated from production domains for safe recovery

The Compass solution protects backup data and operations by restricting access to the backup infrastructure. No user or administrator logins exist for the backup server, operating system, backup software, or storage. All management is handled by policy and channeled through the Compass Commander user interface. This approach eliminates nearly all cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the complex backup estate. Backup containment and isolation by design secure the backup data against unauthorized access during Compass’ lifecycle.

Compass also adds extensive ransomware monitoring and analytics, which bring additional security benefits such as:

• Elimination of common backup attack points
• Continual software-enabled problem detection and predictive problem avoidance
• Data content inspection features to ensure the absence of ransomware in the backup data
• Ransomware analytics for continuous cyber-readiness

Additionally, using analytics, Compass constantly monitors and analyzes metrics, conditions, and events associated with backup infrastructure, operations, and environment, continually looking for indications of ransomware or other security attacks. Thanks to Cobalt Iron’s patented techniques, many of the analytics are internally optimizing, meaning Compass can adjust itself based on the conditions, behaviors, and events it detects across the entire Compass universe.

The Compass data-protection platform delivers the highest levels of security in a simple to deploy and easy to manage solution, ensuring enterprises that data will be available when and where it is needed.

The man behind the revolution of SaaS-based data backup and recovery

Richard Spurlock is the CEO and Founder of Cobalt Iron. He is an intellectually curious entrepreneur; Richard is recognized as a global expert on data protection and recovery. After 15 years of designing and delivering the world’s most extensive data protection applications, Richard harnessed that expertise to build a disruptive, software-defined data protection solution: Compass.

An experienced speaker and subject matter expert, Richard is a frequent industry spokesman and – along with his family – an avid Formula 1 racing fan. He holds a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Kansas.

“Eliminate ransomware threats with Compass Cyber Shield™”