According the company, Wendy’s was looking for a modern approach to managing “complex and burdensome backup and recovery infrastructure.”

Its previous backup and recovery capabilities relied on a variety of products from providers that were “so complicated that it took a full-time dedicated IT staff person to manage and troubleshoot the process,” says the release.

Why Wendy’s wanted Cohesity

Cohesity was evaluated along with several other solutions as part of a three-month proof of concept conducted by Wendy’s IT team.

The Cohesity PoC enabled the IT team to reduce backup times from 12 hours to two, and Wendy’s decided to deploy Cohesity across its entire IT environment, which includes one petabyte of data, approximately 850 Linux and Windows servers, and over 700 hundred VMware virtual machines (VMs), according to the release.

Wendy’s simplified administration by bringing the management of all backup data together in a single interface. As a result, the IT team freed up more than 15 hours per week of staff time (60 hours per month), which could then be spent accelerating other business-critical IT projects within the company, says Cohesity.

Related: Study Finds Perception Gap Between IT and Business Decision Makers on Data

Wendy’s was also able to automate processes and reduce costs. For example, when the IT team adds a new VM, it is now automatically discovered and assigned the appropriate protection policies through the auto-protect feature and integration with VMware vSphere.

In addition, with the help of Cohesity deduplication and compression, Wendy’s was also able to achieve an 18X reduction in storage space required for backups, helping the company reduce storage costs.

Overall, Wendy’s was able to realize several benefits with Cohesity:

• Reduced IT staff time previously dedicated to troubleshooting by 15 hours per week
• Reduced backup times from 12 hours to two as part of the three-month proof of concept
• Cohesity auto-protect technology makes it simple and easy to set up new VMs
• Capital expenditure costs reduced by more than $60,000 per year

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The plug-and-play appliance streams data directly to StorageCraft Cloud Services, providing enterprise-class protection and recovery at an SMB price point with the simplicity the segment requires, according to the company.

OneXafe Solo 300 features:

• provides cloud-based anytime, anywhere data backup, protection, and recovery for small business environments with zero upfront cost
• two-step deployment process
• protects single tenant and multi-tenant environments within minutes
• users power on and assign Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs)
• does not impose a limit on the number of machines it supports and backs up VMs, physical servers, desktops, and laptops
• business continuity setup managed through a single pane of glass using StorageCraft OneSystem
• in the event of failure, including through a ransomware attack, users can instantly recover by virtualizing their machines or entire infrastructure into the cloud

Read Next: These Companies Want Leaders to Join Their Group for Data-Informed Business Cultures

More from the company on this business continuity solution:

StorageCraft channel partners can now standardize on the StorageCraft technology stack across their data protection business. Since the deployment of OneXafe Solo 300 requires no capital expense and minimal technical support, channel partners can serve small businesses with ease, confidence, and healthy margins. Simple licensing, billing, and reporting through seamless integration with ConnectWise and Autotask business management platforms add to the management and economic benefits of standardizing on StorageCraft business continuity solutions.

Travis Vigneau, Director, Solution Partner Strategy for ConnectWise:

“This is going to be highly attractive to MSPs. Instead of relying on building their own solutions to deliver cloud-based business continuity, StorageCraft has given them a simple, graceful solution that is going to be a breeze to manage. The benefit of no upfront cost, single pane of glass management and easy integration to the ConnectWise business management platform all adds to the margin potential.”

OneXafe Solo 300 will be available this Fall through major distribution partners. Subscription pricing is less than US$100/month per protected machine.

The post OneXafe Solo 300 is a Cloud-Based Business Continuity Solution appeared first on My TechDecisions.

The data was stored on the Oak Ridge Summit supercomputer, which is currently the world’s fastests supercomputer. Globus was tasked with moving files from disk to tape, a typical migration for researchers. Globus is software-as-a-service for research data management, used by hundreds of research institutions and high-performance computing (HPC) facilities worldwide. The service enables secure, reliable file transfer, sharing, and data publication for managing data throughout the research lifecycle.

“Storage is in general a very large problem in our community — the Universe is just very big, so our work can often generate a lot of data,” says Katrin Heitmann, Argonne physicist and computational scientist and an Oak Ridge National Laboratory Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) Early Science user. “Using Globus to easily move the data around between different storage solutions and institutions for analysis is essential.

“Due to its uniqueness, the data is very precious and the analysis will take time,” says Dr. Heitmann. “The first step after the simulations were finished was to make a backup copy of the data to HPSS, so we can move the data back and forth between disk and tape and thus carry out the analysis in steps. We use Globus for this work due to its speed, reliability, and ease of use.”

“With exascale imminent, AI on the rise, HPC systems proliferating, and research teams more distributed than ever, fast, secure, reliable data movement and management are now more important than ever,” says Ian Foster, Globus co-founder and director of Argonne’s Data Science and Learning Division. “We tend to take these functions for granted, and yet modern collaborative research would not be possible without them.”

The post Argonne Completes Largest Single File Transfer in Globus History appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Data security breaches can be costly—especially if they involve HIPAA violations. Earlier this year, Anthem reached a $115 million settlement for a data breach impacting 78.8 million records—a new record.

HIPAA fines aren’t the only costs associated with healthcare security breaches. When a breach occurs, organizations must work through a series of time-consuming (and often expensive) actions to mitigate the situation. Here are five steps your healthcare organization should take to ensure a timely and appropriate response in the event of a data security breach:

#1: Identify vulnerabilities

The first step is to identify the root of the problem and isolate any security issues to stop the breach. This may involve performing a risk analysis to determine the nature and scope of the security breach, as well as its origin.

There are several questions you’ll need to answer:

• Who is responsible for the breach? Internal personnel? External hackers?
• When did the breach occur?
• How did the breach occur? Were servers or systems hacked? Did an employee unlawfully access information?
• Was any ePHI compromised?

#2: Seek professional legal and security counsel

Seek assistance from legal and security professionals. The legal team can review your notification plan and help you draft documentation and communications related to the breach. They can also provide advice on how to handle people affected by the data leak and help prepare you for the potential of liability lawsuits. For instance, they may advise you to offer credit card monitoring to all victims for a period of time after the breach.

The security team can do a deep dive into any identified security flaws. Then, they can help you fix network issues and ensure all systems have returned to a secure state.

#3: Notify appropriate parties

The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule requires all healthcare organizations that experience an ePHI security breach to adhere to a strict breach notification process. In short, covered entities (and their business associates) must notify all affected individuals and the Secretary of HHS. In addition, facilities are required to notify prominent media outlets in their area if more than 500 individuals may have been affected by the breach.

Notifications must be provided in a timely manner—within 60 days of the security breach discovery. If an organization doesn’t self-report a breach, it is considered willful neglect. If the unreported breach is discovered during a HIPAA audit, the organization could face a minimum fine of $10,000 per violation.

Health organizations should also be aware of any state data breach notification laws that may come into play after a breach.

#4: Address risks

While immediate threats should be addressed as soon as a data security breach is discovered, other outstanding issues may still need to be remedied after the breach is stopped and appropriate individuals are notified. You should conduct a thorough security audit to identify additional risks and work to implement safeguards to help protect your systems against future attacks.

Some remediation actions to consider include:

• Restoring data from clean backups
• Reformatting hacked devices
• Updating all accounts with new, secure passwords

#5: Manage resulting consequences

Healthcare security breaches can have long-lasting consequences. As mentioned previously, HIPAA violations often lead to costly fines from the OCR. Depending on the circumstances surrounding the breach, criminal penalties (such as jail time) might also be handed down. Additionally, you’ll have your work cut out for you with regaining patient trust and restoring your reputation. However, if you can smoothly manage the fallout by following these five steps, you’ll be on your way to repairing relationships and rebuilding trust in your organization.

The post 5 Steps Healthcare Organizations Should Take After a Data Security Breach appeared first on My TechDecisions.