Clumio Provides Air-Gapped Data Protection Against Ransomware

“Air-gapping moves data outside your environment. Our Clumio RansomProtect service is in the public cloud, not on the customer’s network. It includes heavy security: all data is immutable, and there is no ‘delete’ button, even with a password. And the infrastructure is all owned by Clumio,” says Chadd Kenney, Clumio’s vice president and chief technologist.

SaaS-based data protection technology developer Clumio on Thursday introduced Clumio RansomProtect, a new application that provides air-gapped protection for data to prevent ransomware from taking over data backups.

While the term “air-gapped” originally referred to the practice of backing data to tape which is then moved to another location where data on the tape cannot be accessed without physical access, today the term refers to technology that aims to make it almost impossible to access data without the proper authorization.

While other vendors have introduced air-gapped data protection, Clumio RansomProtect is unique in that it works with data stored on public clouds, private clouds, and SaaS infrastructures, said Chadd Kenney (pictured), vice president and chief technologist for Santa Clara, Calif.-based Clumio.

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This includes protecting data on the Amazon Web Systems public cloud, with Google and Azure data on-tap for 2021; VMware-based private clouds; and Microsoft 365 environments, with other SaaS data protection to come next year, Kenney told CRN.

“We’ll add more and more data sources for customers to protect,” he said. “We’re protection all these different data sets. That makes this an industry-first.”

Just as important is the fact that Clumio RansomProtect is also available as a way for businesses to add air-gapped ransomware protection to their existing non-Clumio data protection environments without the need for additional hardware, software, or management, Kenney said.

Air-gapping is key to protecting against ransomware, which after infiltrating a customer’s environment can spend up to 200 days or more looking for backup solutions, Kenney said.

“If ransomware gets access to the backups, it can encrypt them or delete them,” he said. “Air-gapping moves data outside your environment. Our Clumio RansomProtect service is in the public cloud, not on the customer’s network. It includes heavy security: all data is immutable, and there is no ‘delete’ button, even with a password. And the infrastructure is all owned by Clumio.”

Clumio has added air-gapped data protection to its own data protection offering for some time with long-term retention. However, when added to non-Clumio deployments, it comes with only 30-day retention, he said.

“But for customers, it’s a good opportunity to test Clumio’s platform,” he said.

Clumio RansomProtect is offered as a service, with customers paying only for what they consume, Kenney said. It provides immutable storage, end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and an option for business users to use their own key for protecting the data, he said.

Clumio has proven itself to be a good data protection technology provider with a special emphasis on the simplicity of its technology, said Scott Rember, senior director of sales at SHI International, a Somerset, N.J.-based solution provider and Clumio channel partner.

Rember told CRN that Clumio’s technology is unique in that it is 100-percent software-based, is agentless, and resides in the data center without the need for incremental hardware or a secondary site.

Clumio RansomProtect is pretty powerful, Rember said.

“A lot of customers today have to buy incremental hardware and look at alternative sites in order to protect data from ransomware,” he said. “This is an important consideration for customers. Ransomware is often thought of after an event. But so much happening in the news with ransomware, especially in healthcare, is bringing it to the foreground.”