Fighting Ransomware by Combining the Leaders in Data Protection and Security

Ransomware has become a pervasive and lucrative business for bad actors, as they become increasingly more sophisticated in their attacks. Industry trends like digital transformation and remote workforces, combined with the problem of mass data fragmentation, expand the possible entry points for attackers. Connected critical systems make it easier for infections to spread once a business has been breached. Ransomware as a service offers pay-for-use malware software, making it possible for anyone to launch cyber attacks and hold a company’s data hostage for money.

On average, an organization is hit by a ransomware attack every eleven seconds. No business is off limits, as evidenced in the news full of reports about companies—ranging from healthcare providers to pipeline companies, to meat packers—that are among the latest round of victims. The outages caused by such attacks cost businesses more than time and money. They can also damage company reputations that took years to build but can be ruined in just a few hours.

To help organizations fight ransomware attacks, Cohesity and Cisco have brought their collaboration to a new level. Previously, Cohesity’s relationship with Cisco was laser focused on modernizing data center and hybrid cloud environments, offering organizations next-gen data management solutions integrated with Cisco HyperFlex and Cisco Intersight.

Recently, we expanded our collaboration in the cybersecurity space through the integration of Cisco SecureX with Cohesity Helios and Cohesity DataProtect. This brings to market a first-of-its-kind data protection solution integrated with SecureX to fight ransomware attacks.

Backups are security too

As cyberattacks become more sophisticated and more severe in their business repercussions, a business’ backup remains its last line of defense and the first line of recovery. If a company’s data has been encrypted by bad actors, restoring from a backup copy can be the only available solution apart from paying the ransom. Therefore, it has never been more important for organizations to strengthen their cyber defenses with both data protection and rapid recovery. That’s why Cohesity and Cisco have expanded our collaboration to bring to market the first integrated data protection solution, SecureX.

SecureX provides a simplified, singular security view across a company’s network, endpoints, cloud instances, and applications. SecureX is a cloud-native platform with extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities that are integrated with the broad Cisco security portfolio. SecureX is also integrated with third-party solutions, providing streamlined workflows and visibility across control points. The integration with Cohesity further strengthens organizations’ security posture for data in the fight against ransomware.

A primary reason why the Cohesity and SecureX integration is so important is that data security operations are mostly disjointed today:

• The task of investigating incidents is very complex because companies deploy several security-pointtools that share limited intelligence and context between them. This forces teams fighting ransomware attacks to investigate incidents using multiple consoles.
• The use of point tools creates siloed visibility into data and other protections across a company’s infrastructure when ransomware strikes, increasing the dwell time to resolution.
• These factors make operations highly inefficient, as teams are forced to manually coordinate multiple groups across operational silos for investigation and recovery. This leads to business disruption and employee burnout.

To address these challenges, we have combined Cohesity’s anti-ransomware capabilities—provided by Helios and DataProtect—with SecureX to provide companies with new and faster ways to fight ransomware attacks, as shown in Figure 1. Our integrated approach confidently tackles the three most pressing data security operations’ requirements:

• Faster detection: Accelerate time to discover threats with integrated best-in-class data protection in a single platform.
• Simple investigation: Accelerate time to investigate, using global intelligence and contextual information—for data and more—in one, single view.
• Confident response: Accelerate time to recover with automated data protection workflows to lower costs and strengthen security postures.

Ransomware is the most destructive cybercrime

Ransomware doesn’t discriminate. Every company, from large to small, is a potential ransomware target. According to a 2020 Cisco survey of 2,800 chief information security officers (CISOs) and IT decision makers:

• 57 percent of respondents said the time needed to detect threats was a critical KPI for their business.
• 81 percent reported that a challenge they faced was orchestration between security-point products.

Want to learn more how you can benefit from the Cisco and Cohesity collaboration?

Watch the explainer video and on-demand Cisco-Cohesity webinar to learn more about how Cohesity and SecureX integration can help you protect your business against ransomware attacks.

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