The solution comes from a partnership between Cloudian, VMware, and Veeam, and is targeted towards Australian government customers.

Cloudian, VMware, and Veeam have joined forces to offer Object Lock-based ransomware protection, which the tech giants say can combat any sort of vulnerability to ransomware in government bodies. 

Object Lock is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 feature that blocks object version deletion during a customer-defined retention period so customers can enforce retention policies as an added layer of data protection or for regulatory compliance.

Usually, protection is at the bucket layer, but the solution offered by the companies tackles protection at the file layer.

According to Cloudian and Veeam, the solution provides a unique capability to protect data so it cannot be encrypted by ransomware.

It is powered by Cloudian HyperStore object storage and Veeam Availability Suite V10, and can be managed from VMware Cloud Director.

The partnership was inked a few months ago, but it’s now made its way to Australia, with AUCloud offering it as a “sovereign capability”.

AUCloud, managing director Phil Dawson said, is exclusively focused on serving Australian federal, state, and local governments and Critical National Industry (CNI) communities. He said with such a client base, the company must therefore adhere to strict regulatory requirements.

The new Object Lock-based feature has been verified in international certification testing as meeting highly stringent requirements for non-rewritable and non-erasable storage media. 

“We’re enabling Australia and New Zealand organisations to provide the same services … especially for the service providers like AUCloud, we’re enabling them to compete and to have that ability to add value and show value to organisations in Australia for Australian clients,” Cloudian Australia and New Zealand regional director James Wright told ZDNet.

“I think it’s important that we’re enabling Australian owned and operated — provide them with that competitive nature that they need to compete with the larger providers.”

As governments face increasing threats from cyberattacks, Dawson said immutable backups are needed so government departments can recover quickly from IT failures and remain protected against ransomware attacks.

 

Article: By Asha Barbaschow / ZDNET