We`ve Got Your Back

Customer profile
We’ve got your back
In the global battle for cyber security, ISC8 is thwarting millions of cyber attacks.
Behind the lines, NetVault Backup protects it from data loss.
Company Industry Country Employees Website ISC8
IT Security
United States
18
www.isc8.com
Business need
A new backup strategy to save on IT
productivity, restore confidence in the
system and eliminate the risk of losing
data required for financial auditing and
product development.
Solution
ISC8 chose NetVault Backup
and DR4100 Disk Backup and
Deduplication Appliance.
Benefits
• Ending threat of serious data loss to
finance/development departments
• Boosting confidence in the IT
system to protect digital assets
• Saving 10% of IT staff time by
performing backups with
NetVault Backup
• Recovering an entire file share server
(9TB) in under 20 minutes
• Shrinking backup footprint to
31:1 ratio
“The biggest surprise really was around the
DR4100 and the rate of integration with
NetVault Backup software — how easy it was
to deploy and how painless it is to use, it’s really
pretty amazing.”
Scott Millis, Chief Security Strategy Officer, ISC8
Solutions at a glance
• Backup & Recovery, Disaster
Recovery & Replication,
Network Security
ISC8’s technology aims at protecting critical business assets
by helping companies detect the presence of sophisticated
adversaries hiding inside enterprise networks. “We shed light
where there was only darkness before,” explains ISC8’s chief
security strategy officer Scott Millis. ISC8’s intelligent solutions
empower cyber security professionals to more accurately
assess serious threats by including the largely missing insideout protection so that their organization doesn’t become
“the next big headline.”
“We are able to run
all of our weeklies
in just a few hours.
To date we have
protected 78TB of
data, using only
2.55TB of physical
storage on the
DR4100. This is
about a 31:1 ratio.”
Scott Millis, Chief Security
Strategy Officer, ISC8
The need for ISC8’s services has never
been greater. Online security can make
or break a company and targeted
network break-ins are on the rise. A
single security breach can damage,
sometimes irreversibly, proprietary data.
In the worst-case scenario, a company
loses not only commercial secrets and
valuable IP but also its hard-earned
reputation. ISC8’s product line addresses
some of the toughest security challenges
an organization can face, including the
human, “8th layer” — a problem that until
now has gone virtually unanswered.
Backup turmoil
While busy solving the latest advances
in cyber attacks, ISC8 discovered it
faced a challenge on the home front: it
was urgently in need of a new backup
strategy to protect its intellectual
property. “Virtually all of it,” says Millis, “is
comprised of digital assets.” And some
of those assets were at risk.
Over a period lasting roughly a year,
he estimates the company had been
losing nearly 10 percent of IT staff time
either babysitting backups or rerunning
backups that failed. The resulting data
consumption was “very large and
growing quickly.”
Millis, who is responsible for IT at ISC8,
was running weekly full backups that
had to be divided over several days,
“because of the length of time to run the
agent on every server and push the data
to the data store, without deduplication.”
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The data sets he describes as “core”
are about 40TB. “We were spreading
this around different system targets.
Management was difficult and we were
consuming approximately 80TB on
several physical systems.”
A small company with a big role
ISC8 did not have IT resources to spare.
It is a small company that nevertheless
plays a big role in the rapidly changing
world of information security. Since the
majority of available security tools have
been deployed to safeguard against
anticipated threats rather than alerting on
suspicious “inside” activities, ISC8 is on
a mission to not only educate about the
growing scope of the threat ecosystem,
but also to help ensure that the security
postures and practices companies
around the world adopt are sufficient and
work holistically to protect their digital
property as well as their reputation.
Products & Services
Hardware
DR4100 Disk Backup and
Deduplication Appliance
NSA 3600 Network Security
Appliance
NSA 220 Network Security
Appliance
Software
NetVault Backup
Given this mammoth task, the loss of
productivity on backup issues was of
real concern. But there were other, far
greater risks. “Aside from the qualitative
service issues and associated lack of
confidence in IT, there was a very real
risk of losing unique proprietary data
and electronic records required by
regulations for a public company. And
that could be very serious,” says Millis.
“Our financials are audited, we must have
security and reliability.”
“The main victims,” of this backup turmoil,
according to him, were “the development
and finance departments. Their peace of
mind was constantly challenged.”
Millis needed a solution that would not
only secure and protect these assets but
also make them permanently available
to the right people and processes, at the
right time — no matter what.
Bit perfect
When the maintenance license of the
previous backup solution came up for
renewal, Millis decided it was time to
look elsewhere. After exploring multiple
options, he chose NetVault Backup
software. The reason: “The total solution
architecture works together to lower
the total cost of ownership and improve
service levels.” The Dell licensing model,
based on capacity, was also a factor. “It
allows unlimited agent types, which
should come in very handy as we scale
up the business.”
Millis was already using another Dell
product to mitigate risk at ISC8.
SonicWALL secures all data from prying
eyes. He describes the VPN solution as
a “dream.” All inbound ISC8 connections
come from either nailed-up tunnels
using SonicWALL or SonicWALL VPN
solution(s). It’s a “simple, effective high
availability solution for our main site and
remote sites.”
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NetVault Backup now protects data and
software applications in ISC8’s physical
and virtual environments — Windows
and Linux Ubuntu — all with one crossplatform solution. At the same time
ISC8 installed NetVault Backup it also
purchased Dell’s DR4100 rack-mounted
deduplication appliance. “We wanted
the simplicity of a single-vendor solution
in this critical business service area,”
explains Millis.
In particular, he appreciated the ease of
installation. “It took less than 30 minutes
to install the server and the VMware
agent, and run the first backup. It
couldn’t have been any easier.”
The next step was trial by full recovery.
“We actually did a test on one of our
servers where we copied all the data
off of the D drive to a safe place and
then did a full recovery and a bit wise
comparison: The full 8 terabytes were
bit perfect. It was really pretty impressive
how easy it was to restore.”
With a mostly virtualized IT environment,
ISC8 needs to protect its own virtual
machines from disasters, media failure
and data corruption. Since NetVault
Backup is completely integrated
with VMware vStorage APIs for Data
Protection (VADP), it allows ISC8 to
protect an entire VMware environment
(without the need for complex scripting)
from a single, centralized console.
Via the NetVault Backup web user
interface, which can be accessed from
any browser, Millis can get a realtime read on what is happening in his
backup environment and can simply
create backup and restore policies as
needed for virtual environments. “I was
impressed with the Server Monitor page
and the Device Activity page. It really
helps us a lot when we’re trying to figure
out what’s going on in the system.”
“It took less than 30
minutes to install
the server and the
VMWare agent and
run the first backup.
It couldn’t have
been any easier.”
Scott Millis, Chief Security
Strategy Officer, ISC8
Boosting speed, shrinking
the footprint
With NetVault Backup, Millis has seen
a dramatic increase in the speed of
backups while their footprint has
shrunk. “We are able to run all of our
weeklies in just a few hours. To date
we have protected 78TB of data, using
only 2.55TB of physical storage on the
DR4100. This is about a 31:1 ratio.”
“We have recovered
an entire file share
server (9TB) in less
than 20 minutes.”
How is this possible? NetVault
Backup software orchestrates backup,
replication, and recovery in sync with
DR4100’s built-in deduplication and
compression. The DR4100 leverages
Rapid Data Access (RDA) technology to
track all the data prior to backup. Only
new and changed data is sent over the
wire. The result it significantly reduced
backup times between ISC8’s offices in
Dallas and California.
“We have recovered an entire file share
server (9TB) in less than 20 minutes,”
using NetVault Backup in an actual
restore,” says Millis. “The biggest surprise
really was around the DR4100 and the
rate of integration with NetVault Backup
software — how easy it was to deploy
and how painless it is to use. It’s really
pretty amazing.”
About Dell Software
Dell Software helps customers unlock
greater potential through the power
of technology—delivering scalable,
affordable and simple-to-use solutions
that simplify IT and mitigate risk. This
software, when combined with Dell
hardware and services, drives unmatched
efficiency and productivity to accelerate
business results. www.dellsoftware.com.
Scott Millis, Chief Security
Strategy Officer, ISC8
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Reference Number: 10013595 © September 2014, Dell Inc. All Rights Reserved
CaseStudy-ISC8-NVBU-US-KS-25052