Cloud

HPE Discover 2021: Learning How to Protect Data in a Post-Pandemic World

2020 presented multiple new challenges for IT teams, including the need to develop security strategies to account for remote workers.

Joe Kuehne

Joe Kuehne is an Associate Editorial Director at BizTech magazine.

When the pandemic sent many employees home from the office, IT leaders around the world were faced with the challenge of reconfiguring their security plans to protect data being created and managed in new locations and on new devices.

“Overnight, centralized IT organizations were catapulted into highly distributed networks now supporting a highly remote workforce,” said Danny Allan, CTO and senior vice president of product strategy at Veeam Software, speaking at HPE Discover 2021. “Budgets were tightened even more, strategic plans were slowed, and unfortunately, rampant ransomware was on the rise.”

Veeam Offers Cybersecurity Through Partnership with HPE

Veeam and HPE are working together to solve security challenges, beginning with data protection, Allan said.

“We protect your data on HPE primary and secondary storage,” he said. “We're currently working to develop and innovate the best-in-class data protection solution for HPE Alletra, and we'll continue to invest in the resources, the technology and the people to make this alliance successful.”

Organizations expect protection that is simple, flexible and reliable, Allan said: “With the addition of Kasten by Veeam to our portfolio, we offer a best-in-class solution that couples with HPE to provide operations teams a Kubernetes solution for flexible storage, backup and mobility with unparalleled performance and operational simplicity.”

Allan also said that Veeam aligns closely with HPE GreenLake’s vision of Everything as a Service. “Veeam understands that 70 percent of customers still have their mission-critical applications on-premises, yet they also have applications in the cloud,” he said. Veeam data protection is available via HP GreenLake for customers who want a cloudlike experience on-premises and security for their onsite data, all with reduced risk and sufficient storage.

HPE Unveils New Security Component to Protect Against Threats

HPE also introduced a new zero-trust security element this week, which is expected to be available in fall 2021. In a June 22 press release, the company announced multiple enhancements to its HPE GreenLake platform, including the newly unveiled Project Aurora.

“Project Aurora will embed within the HPE GreenLake cloud platform building blocks to automatically and continuously verify the integrity of the hardware, firmware, operating systems, platforms, and workloads, including security workloads. In addition, Project Aurora’s continuous attestation capabilities can be used to automatically detect advanced threats from silicon to cloud in seconds,” the press release noted.

At HPE Discover, Adriane Cardozo, HPE program manager for security engineering, extolled Project Aurora’s effectiveness in defending against cyberattacks.

“Attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and ambitious,” she said, citing upper layer workloads and operating systems with potentially vulnerable code, as well as software supply chains.

Over time, she said, Project Aurora is designed to deliver “a set of zero-trust building blocks that, among other things, will automatically and continuously verify the integrity of hardware components, operating systems, platforms and workloads.”

“Trust and integrity are now more critical than ever before,” Cardozo added. “We must assert trust, from devices to workloads to everything in between. No matter where they run this, when thinking about security edge or securing a device, we must think about the integrity of all layers.”

To keep up with our coverage of HPE Discover 2021, bookmark this page, follow us on Twitter at @BizTechMagazine or the official conference Twitter account, @HPE_Discover, and join the conversation using the hashtag #HPEDiscover.

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