Data management provider Cohesity Inc. has launched the Data Security Alliance to enable industry heavyweights in security and services to help enterprises defend against cyberattacks.

Announced today at Cohesity’s annual ReConnect Summit, the alliance launches with an impressive lineup of members. Along with Cohesity itself, the initial members of the alliance include BigID Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., CyberArk Software Ltd., Okta Inc., Palo Alto Networks Inc., Securonix Inc., Splunk Inc. and Tenable Inc. Google LLC’s Mandiant and PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd. are also participants through a security advisory relationship. 

Cohesity argues that security complexities cannot be solved by one vendor alone. When an organization is the victim of an attack, companies want to detect and stop the attack, avoid paying the ransom and, if necessary, recover core business operations as quickly as possible. Achieving these goals requires close collaboration and integration of security and data management solutions and services.

The new Data Security Alliance brings together “the boldest solutions and the brightest minds” in security to provide customers with a comprehensive approach that integrates data protection and resilience into an end-to-end security strategy. The strategy starts with prevention, extends to early detection and protection, and also includes rapid recovery — critical in the event of a cyberattack.

Partners in the alliance can leverage the Cohesity Data Cloud to help joint customers advance their security posture. In one example, partners can leverage Cohesity’s AI-based anomaly detection to gain early insights that an attack may be in progress and accelerate response and remediation.

“Today’s nonstop and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats require an all-hands-on-deck approach,” Sanjay Poonen, chief executive officer of Cohesity, said in a statement. “It’s not the responsibility of one vendor to solve all cybersecurity challenges; it takes a village to fight the bad guys. That’s why, out of the gate, we’re starting with multiple best-of-breed security partners, with tens of billions in market cap, who are serving thousands of customers globally.”

Alongside the launch of the Data Security Alliance at ReConnect, Cohesity also announced DataHawk, a data security software-as-a-service solution that helps customers protect, detect and recover from cyber and ransomware attacks.

DataHawk combines three critical security capabilities into one SaaS solution: threat protection via scans for attack indicators and malware, machine learning-based data classification that provides high accuracy in identifying and detecting sensitive or critical data, and cyber vaulting via Cohesity FortKnox.

Poonen spoke with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, in September on how Cohesity is setting out to disrupt the data management market. In the interview, Poonen said that he saw Cohesity becoming a “Switzerland” solution that works in the multicloud environment where companies often need to back up one hyperscaler’s product into another’s cloud:

Photo: Cohesity