NetApp boosts cybersecurity with air-gapped data vault
In a bid to help local enterprises grapple with rising workloads and increased ransomware attacks, NetApp has expanded its data storage offering with an air-gapped cybersecurity vault. This new development is designed to keep business-critical datasets safe and compliant, while capitalising on AI-driven threat detection and response. The initiative has drawn significant collaborators such as NVIDIA and Lenovo to broaden its application across the enterprise.
Led by the newly announced AFF A-Series systems, NetApp's project is poised to power the most demanding IT workloads, such as GenAI, VMware, and enterprise databases. This comes in the wake of rising pressure on organisations to accelerate innovation, outsmart cyber threats, and increase productivity in the current AI era. According to the 2024 NetApp Cloud Complexity report, 74% of organisations believe that data and IT infrastructure, at 71%, are critical to achieving business success with AI.
Speaking on this development, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage at NetApp, Sandeep Singh, opined, "Data is undeniably the most valuable asset for any company to outpace its competitors. The data infrastructure a company chooses to run it on makes all the difference." Further, he expressed confidence in NetApp's robust data storage portfolio, which ranges from on-premise solutions to public clouds, as the go-to solution for enterprises seeking robustness against demanding workloads.
The core of the NetApp offering lies in its unified data storage systems, designed to cater to any data, app, or cloud. The new AFF A-Series systems, namely the AFF A1K, AFF A90, and AFF A70, boast impressive specifications, such as a 99.9999% data availability and a leading raw-to-effective capacity. To checkmate ransomware attacks, these systems feature integrated real-time ransomware detection with over 99% accuracy and a ransomware recovery guarantee.
NetApp's Director of Engineering for Australia & New Zealand, Wojtek Malewski, highlighted that the company's secure data offering empowers Australian enterprises to maintain flexible and compliant data security. He further explained that its autonomous threat detection and data recovery capabilities would facilitate the adoption of new workloads without being threatened by cyber risks.
The ongoing innovation by NetApp is geared towards remaining the leader in providing intelligent data infrastructure. The company has added other capabilities to offer customers advanced data management, industry-leading ransomware protection, and cloud integration required by modern workloads. These new features and capabilities include NetApp's new StorageGRID Models, the Cyber Vault Reference Architecture, SnapMirror Active Sync, FlexCache with Writeback, NetApp AIPod with Lenovo, and the BlueXP Classification.
In reflecting on the evolving AI market, Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies and BuyerView Research at IDC, noted that companies must possess storage infrastructure that combines on-premise data storage with cloud environments. Nodding to NetApp's strategy, he ended with, "NetApp’s strategy of delivering powerful unified data storage that works with any data protocol, in any environment, to run any workload gives its customers the power and flexibility they need to face whatever challenges come their way."
