The firm of Cybersecurity Ventures has predicted that businesses around the world will be victimized by a ransomware attack every 11 seconds in 2021. With the frequency of such threats increasing, it is becoming more vital than ever for companies with critical data to protect it.

JANA Investment Advisers Pty. Ltd. is Australia’s leading investment consultant, helping clients manage funds with approximately $500 billion AUD under advisement. A ransomware attack is something that JANA wants to avoid at all costs.

“We’ve had incidents in Australia where organizations have found six months down the track that their backups have been compromised,” said Kevin Pritchard (pictured), head of IT and business systems at JANA. “We can’t afford to do that. We have to give assurances to our clients that we are resilient, that we’re meeting increasingly stringent benchmarks.”

Pritchard spoke with Lisa Martin, host of SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming video studio theCUBE. They discussed protecting data as a critical business asset and the importance of visibility in disaster recovery and backup solutions. (* Disclosure below.)

Driven by data

The process of reassuring clients involves protecting the critical assets of JANA’s investment business. Today’s investment landscape is driven by data, and JANA knows that the advice it provides to clients has to be based on readily accessible and accurate information.

“Our data forms our IP; it’s the core of our advice,” Pritchard said. “It’s not just what we’ve done today, but what we’ve done five or 10 years ago. It has to be there for ready reference; it’s a critical business asset.”

To protect its most critical asset, JANA relies on the Dell EMC Data Protection solution. JANA’s board has insisted on continuously testing various aspects of the firm’s backup and recovery capabilities, including how workloads are running in the cloud, according to Pritchard. This means being able to see and monitor performance on a regular basis, with regular reporting to have a measure of confidence that data assets are being properly protected.

“Visibility is very important,” Pritchard said. “It’s a pretty critical part of data protection, and our clients are greatly comforted by it. In the end, Dell offered the best solution, and they showed they had an understanding of my environment and, more broadly, where the industry is going.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE