Barracuda Backup further Safeguard Against Ransomware Attacks [PR]

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, 13 September 2016Barracuda Networks, Inc. (NYSE: CUDA), a leading provider of cloud-connected security and storage solutions, announces new enhancements to its Barracuda Backup product line to enable faster backup and recovery performance, enhance public cloud support, and expand storage capacity for customers – all at competitive price points.

The new Barracuda Backup version 6.3 provides customers with improved performance to more efficiently protect their data with a single solution regardless of whether data resides in physical, virtual or Office 365 SaaS environments. Available in both physical and virtual Barracuda Backup appliance, customers can now boost initial backup speed and recovery performance, while shortening restore windows to improve recovery time objectives.

Thiban Darmalingam, the Regional Manager of Barracuda in Malaysia shares, “This is especially important today where rampant ransomware attacks continue to increase risks of data theft.”

“In fact, in a research survey conducted by Osterman Research, 49.4 percent of companies surveyed indicated they had been hit with one or more ransomware attacks in the last 12 months,” he adds.

A complete backup with an effective retention policy enables customers to recover from a ransomware attack without having to pay any ransom to the criminals holding the encryption keys to their important data.

“Barracuda Backup provides us a with secure way to store critical data, and an efficient way to recover it if things don’t go as planned – such as recently when we were hit with a ransomware attack,” said A.J. Murray, IT Manager at Hayward Tyler, a leader in design, manufacturing and services for fluid-filled electric motors and pumps for high-pressure, high-temperature applications and environments across the global energy sector.

“A solid backup plan makes the difference in having to pay a ransom, lose files all together or recover them in a timely fashion. With Barracuda Backup, we were able to quickly restore our stolen data, allowing us to address this attack with minimal business impact,” adds Murray.

Fast and Efficient Data Restores Enhance Disaster Recovery

Barracuda Backup version 6.3 offers customers a quick and efficient way to restore data.

The enhancements boost initial backup speed and recovery performance – by up to 1.5-2x on large files and up to 3x for file server backups with millions of small files with the Barracuda Backup Agent.

Barracuda Backup provides the flexibility for users to run image-based backups with instant recovery for virtual servers using LiveBoot, as well as the Barracuda Backup Agent for granular file and application recovery, which introduces multi-streaming in this new version and complements existing recovery options for physical-to-physical (P2P), physical-to-virtual (P2V) or virtual-to-virtual (V2V) scenarios.

Customers also benefit from Barracuda Backup’s new queuing system, which significantly increases replication performance for highly transactional environments with large amounts of replicated change data.

Expanded Cloud Support – Office 365 & Amazon Web Services

Barracuda continues to push its innovation in cloud environments. For organizations that have made the switch to Microsoft Office 365 or plan to in the future, Barracuda updated its Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup for Office 365 to reduce incremental backup windows for all customers.

Additionally, Barracuda Backup gives customers flexibility to support their long-term data retention needs; by introducing public cloud integration. Customers with a Barracuda Cloud Storage subscription can take advantage of Offsite Vaulting for long-term retention for up to seven years.

For organizations requiring longer retention times or support for external storage, the Barracuda Backup Export Tool was designed to enable customers to export data to external disk or tape in the local environment. Barracuda Backup administrators now have the option to export data to virtual tapes stored in Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) or Glacier for archiving using the AWS Storage Gateway VTL.

Barracuda Backup Pricing and Capacity Update

As part of this release, Barracuda has reduced pricing while increasing storage capacity for certain Barracuda Backup models. Barracuda Backup 990 has increased usable storage capacity by 33 percent, from 36TB to 48TB. The upgraded appliance will be shipped to all new customers, and is eligible for existing customers via hardware refresh with an Instant Replacement subscription. A hardware upgrade is included at no additional charge every four years for customers with a continuous Instant Replacement subscription. In addition, Barracuda Backup 995 and 1090 appliance and subscription list prices have been reduced.

“Barracuda Backup provides customers with an easy way to protect their data in a single solution, while our Energize Updates and Instant Replacement subscriptions ensure customers continue to see ongoing value as technology evolves,” says Thiban.

“We’ve made a number of enhancements with this software release to significantly improve the performance and functionality of existing systems deployed by our customers. Whether customers are looking to improve their disaster recovery plans, speed up their backups or expand on public cloud initiatives – Barracuda Backup simplifies that process with innovative technology that is secure, easy to use and affordable, regardless of deployment choice,” ends Thiban.

Pricing and Availability

Barracuda Backup version 6.3 is in early availability (EA), and will be generally available (GA) to customers with active subscriptions soon. Customers interested in the current EA version can contact their Barracuda solution provider or Barracuda representative for more information.

Resources: Overview – Barracuda Backup: https://www.barracuda.com/products/backup