The need for effective modern data protection and cyber resilience has never been greater.

In the past few months there has been an escalation of cybercrime and cyber intrusion attempts.[1] Plus, cybersecurity priorities changed overnight and traditional flows of data have been dramatically altered, opening new avenues for cyber threats and increasing the challenges for data security and business resilience professionals.[2]

These reasons highlight the importance of IBM modern data protection. Today, IBM Storage is announcing several new enhancements to its modern data protection portfolio. These new data protection capabilities enhance workload support in hybrid multicloud environments, including expanded support for cloud-based workloads, greater Kubernetes awareness and improved data retention on tape and object storage to improve cyber resiliency.

In particular, this release of IBM Spectrum® Protect Plus offers a wide range of new benefits:

• Enhanced data protection for Amazon Web Services (AWS). In hybrid cloud environments, enterprises can use IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deployed on premises to manage AWS EC2 EBS snapshots, or customers can deploy IBM Spectrum Protect Plus on AWS for an “all-in-the-cloud experience”. AWS workload support now includes EC2 instances, VMware virtual machines, databases, and Microsoft® Exchange.
• Enhanced protection for containers. Advanced SLA management to enable policy definition and assignment from the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus user interface. Developers use policies to schedule persistent volume snapshots, replication to secondary sites and copying data to object storage or IBM Spectrum Protect for secure long-term data retention.

The new release also enables developers to back up and recover logical persistent volume groupings using Kubernetes labels. This capability is key as applications built using containers are logical groups of multiple components. For example, an application may have a Mongo DB container, a web service container and middleware containers. If these application components share a common label, users can use the Kubernetes label feature to select the logical application grouping instead of picking individual volumes (persistent volumes) that make up the application. Developers can also back up and recover logical persistent volumes associated with Kubernetes namespaces.

• Modern data protection for Windows file systems. With the Spectrum Protect Plus agentless technology, users can now back up, recover, reuse, and retain data in Windows file systems, including file-level backup and recovery of file systems on physical or virtualized servers.

In addition to the update to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, IBM is also announcing enhancements to IBM Spectrum Protect and IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management:

• The latest IBM Spectrum Protect release includes retention set to tape, which is the ability to efficiently copy and store data on tape for cost-effective and secure “air-gapped” long-term data retention. Spectrum Protect also now enables users to back up the IBM Spectrum Protect database directly to object storage including IBM Cloud Object Storage, AWS S3, Microsoft Azure, as well as other supported S3 targets.
• IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management’s new release helps users simplify and improve SAP HANA Point in Time (PIT) recovery with native log backups using IBM Spectrum CDM and IBM Spectrum Protect for ERP. Prior to this release, users could recover data using hourly snapshots. With the new log support, recoveries can be much more granular.

Additionally, IBM is announcing a new licensing option for IBM Spectrum Protect Suite: Committed Term License. Like monthly subscription licenses, committed term licenses grant clients the right to use licenses in a cloud-centric model. Committed term licenses can be procured for a minimum of 12-months and up to a 5-year term. This new model will provide all of our clients with a lower-entry cost option, a flat price per TB and increased flexibility with no vendor lock-in after the term.

More than ever before, data protection and cyber resilience for vital data assets is on the minds and the agendas of business and IT professionals. As more applications and workloads move to containers and the cloud, enterprises need data protection and storage efficiency solutions with the technology and sophistication needed to enable the future of modern business.

Find out more here.

[1] The New York Law Journal: COVID-19: Now Infecting Cybersecurity, April 2020 https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/04/10/covid-19-now-infecting-cybersecurity/?slreturn=20200327120543#

[2] ESG: 3 Ways COVID-19 Is Changing CISO Priorities, March 2020 https://www.esg-global.com/blog/3-ways-covid-19-is-changing-ciso-priorities