Cohesity backup gains ransomware detection, SAP HANA restores
Cohesity backup boosts its anti-ransomware capabilities with a new DataLock feature to prevent unauthorized backup deletion and releases a certified integration with SAP HANA.
Cohesity is beefing up its backup and security capabilities by enabling immediate restores of SAP HANA data and adding tools to battle ransomware.
Cohesity added the features to the Pegasus 6.1.1 version of its flagship DataPlatform software that is the key to the vendor's converged secondary storage product.
The new certified SAP Hana integration allows for immediate restore of HANA data through Cohesity backup capabilities. This integration also provides users a single view of data that may be spread across multiple storage environments. Customers can use the consolidated data to run analytics or for testing and development purposes.
Steven Hill, senior analyst at 451 Research, said the SAP HANA in-memory database's popularity stems from its real-time analytics. He said the key to Cohesity's increased support of SAP HANA is the ease of access to protected data it provides.
"Cohesity's offering provides both data and application protection, but goes beyond backup and recovery to enable access to those large data sets via secondary storage," Hill said. "The easier we make data available, the more potential value we can extract from it."
Cohesity backup defends against ransomware
Cohesity added three features to help with ransomware protection. DataLock allows trusted administrators to lock down backup snapshots to prevent them from being modified or deleted. Cohesity backup also introduced multi-factor authentication and anomaly detection that warns customers of signs of an attack, such as data changes or ingest rates that don't match historical trends.
The spread of malware is mostly based on social engineering, and there's no real way to educate every user on all the possible ways they could get infected.
Steven Hillsenior analyst, 451 Research
Cohesity claims these features help proactively block ransomware from causing changes. The Cohesity backup platform can also detect compromised files, inform users and restore to a clean state when an attack occurs.
"The spread of malware is mostly based on social engineering, and there's no real way to educate every user on all the possible ways they could get infected," Hill said. "Cohesity's model looks to detect and intervene when the malicious behavior starts, combined with a backup strategy that insures there's always a safe copy to fall back on."
Hill said there is probably no perfect defense against ransomware, which continually evolves with new vulnerabilities for criminals to exploit. Even if the defenses from a technology standpoint are top-notch, social engineering will continue to be a weak point.
"As long as you continue to follow the protocols of a system like Cohesity, your odds are probably the best possible," Hill said. "The problem is usually that people can be too trusting, or too curious, or just plain oblivious to the social engineering that usually gets malware into our systems."
Cohesity DataPlatform's data ingest anomaly alert can help detect ransomware attacks.
How Cohesity stacks up in competitive market
Cohesity is among the well-funded private companies challenging the data protection establishment. Cohesity has $410 million in funding, a haul it needs to compete with Veeam Software, Rubrik and other relative newcomers, as well as market leaders Veritas, Dell EMC, IBM and Commvault.
Veeam, which pulled in a $500 million investment last week, updated its flagship Availability Suite software this week. Rubrik closed a $261 million funding round last week, and plans to invest in acquisitions and internal development.
Cohesity executives said its revenue increased 300% over the last fiscal year. They plan to use a $250 million funding round from 2018 to add close to 400 U.S. employees in the first half of 2019, and to double Cohesity's worldwide headcount to 1,500 this year.
