Retrospect/StorCentric Launches Retrospect Cloud for Offsite Data Protection

Retrospect, a StorCentric, Inc. company, announced Retrospect Cloud Storage, Retrospect Backup 19, and Retrospect Virtual 2022.

With Retrospect Cloud Storage integrated into Retrospect, businesses have a ransomware protection and detection solution that encompasses on-premise and cloud protection. It is a low-cost, HA cloud storage service, with 13 data centers located around the world. It has been one of the most requested features from the company’s customers, combining the simplicity of a single subscription with integration into Retrospect Backup.

Ransomware continues to hamper businesses around the world, locking them out of their business workflows and demanding exorbitant payments. With the availability of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), those attacks will become more frequent, targeting ever-wider segments of businesses. Organizations need tools to defend themselves, both to protect their data and to detect early signs of intrusion.

With Retrospect Backup 19 and Virtual 2022, businesses can protect their critical infrastructure on Retrospect Cloud Storage, with support for immutable backups and anomaly detection, as well as on-premise with Retrospect’s deep support for NAS, including the Nexsan EZ-NAS unit with Retrospect built-in, and tape libraries, including LTO-9 support.

Retrospect Cloud Storage is built on Wasabi Technologies, Inc.‘ Hot Cloud Storage, providing fast object storage. It leverages that foundation to provide advanced data protection features like immutable backups. With the firm’s AES-256 at-rest encryption, sensitive data can be backed up to Retrospect Cloud Storage but guaranteed to remain private from the underlying infrastructure provider, including Retrospect and Wasabi Technologies. Using Retrospect Cloud Storage and the multi-homed backups with the 3-2-1 backup rule, businesses are protected and encrypted from ransomware attacks with on-premise and cloud backups.

“Ransomware is such a threat to businesses worldwide that Retrospect is focusing on providing tools for ransomware protection and detection to help defend crucial data from these cyber-security threats,” said JG Heithcock, GM, Retrospect. “Retrospect Cloud delivers a seamless one-click cloud backup and ransomware protection experience to our customers with a global footprint to minimize latency and adhere to local data regulations. Security-focused features like multi-factor authentication for backup instances and our hosted service ensure every customer is completely protected.”

Retrospect Backup 19
Also included in Retrospect Backup 19:

• Backup comparison: Businesses need to understand not only what is in a backup but what changed between backups. Using anomaly detection and backup comparison, administrators can identify exactly which files changed to signal an anomaly and evaluate their contents to isolate valid ransomware infections.

• OS compliance checks: Many ransomware variants depend on unpatched systems for infiltration. Retrospect Backup utilizes its extensive footprint to aggregate system information and identify systems that are out of compliance with the latest version of each OS.

In addition, Retrospect Backup 19.1 will be released on August 30 with the following features:

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Identity protection is important even for on-premise applications. Retrospect Backup will support configuration encryption and multi-factor authentication combined with a password prompt. Even if an attacker gains administrative access to the computer where Retrospect Backup runs, they will not be able to access the program or the configuration files.

• Flexible immutable retention periods: The company will support an additional type of retention where it extends the period on past backups instead of including that data in new backups.

• Additional 12 WW locations for Retrospect Cloud Storage: It will include 12 additional WW locations, certifying each of Wasabi’s data centers around the world.

• Microsoft Azure for Government: The firm will support blob storage on Microsoft Azure for Government to enhance support for state and local agencies looking for data protection in a US-based high-security data center.

Finally, Retrospect Management Console, hosted backup analytics service, will be updated on August 30 to include following features:

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Identity protection is crucial for cloud services, and Retrospect Management Console will offer app-based multi-factor authentication for a more secure workflow.

• Redesigned reporting: The dashboard will be redesigned to better aggregate information for larger environments to address reporting pains in larger backup infrastructure.

• User roles: Organizations will be able to assign roles to individual users, with ‘Administrators’ able to access any function within the service and ‘Viewers’ able to utilize the extensive reporting capabilities without worrying about changing any settings.

• Audit log: Administrators will be able to access a full audit log for actions taken by any users on their account.

Retrospect Virtual 2022

Included in Retrospect Virtual 2022:

• Faster backups and restores: Fast data protection is critical in physical and virtual environments. It is faster at backups and restores.

• Backup data de-dupe: With de-dupe, it can protect larger amount of data in a smaller storage space.

• Hyper-V 2022 support: Hyper-V 2022 is the latest version of Microsoft’s virtualization software, and Retrospect Virtual is certified for it.

General availability
Retrospect Backup 19.0 and Retrospect Virtual 2022 will be generally available on July 12, and Retrospect Backup 19.1 and Retrospect Management Console updates will be generally available on August 30.

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