Dell Technologies Inc. is stepping up to the challenge of helping organizations protect themselves against the rising threat of ransomware.

It announced the launch of new software and services today that help accelerate virtual machine backup data availability, simplify the management of large data sets and ensure business continuity during cybersecurity recovery operations.

Ransomware, the name for malware that employs encryption to lock up data and demand a ransom be paid to unlock it, is becoming increasingly ubiquitous among enterprises. According to recent survey data from International Data Corp., in the last 12 months more than a third of organizations worldwide have fallen victim to a ransomware attack or other data breach that blocked access to critical data or systems.

The challenge companies face in securing themselves from these is complicated massively by increased data sprawl. Findings from Dell’s 2021 Global Data Protection Index show the average organization is managing 10 times the amount of data it did five years ago, up from 1.45 petabytes in 2016 to 14.6 petabytes today. Companies know it’s a problem too, with 82% of respondents admitting they have concerns their existing data protection systems won’t be enough to protect their business.

Those fears are well-founded, as Dell’s own findings suggest 30% of companies have experienced data loss in the last year, with 45% of those reporting unplanned system downtime.

To help enterprises better protect themselves against such threats, Dell has announced a number of new software and managed services offerings. Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager, for example, adds a new feature called “Transparent Snapshots” that give organizations a unique way to protect VMware-based virtual machines at large scale.

It helps simplify and automate VM image-level backups and requires less infrastructure than before. Dell claims it’s five times faster at creating backups with five times less VM latency, helping ensure more efficient and effective VM data availability.

“By removing the need to deploy or manage proxies to move data, our virtual machines can be backed up faster, saving us time,” said Drew Hills, infrastructure analyst for IT Systems at USC Australia.

Dell said Transparent Snapshots will be available to all PowerProtect Data Manager customers free of charge later this quarter.

Meanwhile, Dell’s PowerProtect family of software and appliances is being bolstered with a new feature called “Smart Scale,” in preview from today. It’s said to help companies manage multiple data protection appliances at exabyte scale so information technology teams can make more informed decisions about their capacity needs and keep up with data growth.

With Smart Scale, the company said, customers can configure multiple appliances as a single pool, giving them the ability to see and manage large data sets in one entity, including as many as 32 PowerProtect appliances and more than 3 exabytes of logical capacity.

Finally, Dell has announced a new service called Managed Services for Cyber Recovery Solution, which involves its own data backup experts managing customer’s day-to-day cyber recovery vault operations and providing support for data recovery activities. That service is globally available starting today, Dell said.

Jeff Boudreau, Dell Infrastructure Solutions group president and general manager, said that although ransomware can have a devastating impact on people and businesses, accepting defeat is not the answer. “Our portfolio addresses this growing challenge by helping customers adopt a holistic cybersecurity and data protection strategy to identify, protect, detect, respond and recover from ransomware and other cyberattacks,” he said.

IDC analyst Phil Goodwin said the onus is on organizations to outpace ransomware and other cybersecurity threats they face with innovation. “Dell Technologies’ new advancements in software and services are designed to help organizations increase their ability to recover business critical data from a cyberattack with the least amount of disruption,” he said.

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