Around the world, organizations are joining the cloud revolution to drive business value. The cloud offers unbelievable speeds and resilience, but data security in the cloud requires a modern mindset. At AWS re:Invent, we asked HYCU how organizations are to secure hundreds of modern applications across a hybrid landscape.
Companies’ Data Protection Responsibilities
Data protection in the cloud begins with understanding what part is the client’s responsibility, and what is taken care of, by default, by the providers. “We see a significant number of customers do a lift and shift to the cloud. Once they are there, they take a set of application – about 20% of the core applications – and modernize them. AWS does a phenomenal job of keeping the core services up and running, but the data is the customer’s responsibility,” says Subbiah Sundaram, Sr. Vice President of Products.
As-a-service applications typically lean on a shared responsibility model which means companies themselves must protect the data within the applications.
Modern applications are composed of many critical services. The more services there are, the more data points need securing. “Your security settings, identity settings, serverless functions, even your infrastructure as code, all are separate entities that have to be protected. They must be recoverable,” notes Andy Fernandez, Director of Product Management.
Safeguarding these sensitive data points on a shared infrastructure like public cloud must follow a simple, but novel strategy. “It’s not the same as snapshots on-premises, and making sure your VMs are ok. It’s about protecting every consistent point within the application,” he emphasized.
Typically, organizations rely on scripts to secure services. But in the cloud, every minute a new service is being added making the situation fluid and ever-changing. At the cloud scale of things, scripting and manual configuration are messy and complex.
“The classic method of writing scripts to protect stuff doesn’t really work well in the cloud. We hear customers saying they have to have an automated solution that can understand the environment completely and protect it,” told Sundaram.
Platforms like AWS and Azure provide built-in data protection, but with nuances of their own. “At a larger scale, customers need automation. They want to be able to manage all of these services from a single pane of glass,” says Sundaram.
Simplifying Data Protection Management
Organizations require access to true backups where data is stored away in a separate infrastructure and can be recovered with one click.
HYCU is a versatile solution that takes care of data protection holistically across all locations. HYCU has over 50 integrations and works with more than 40 partners that contribute to the engineering and evangelizing of the solution.
Observability and protection are complimentary concepts. Lack of observability frequently causes unsecured data to persist in the environment and become sources of exploit. HYCU provides a comprehensive view, unlocking true observability of all entities. “It’s just not about the PaaS, or the IaaS. It’s about the SaaS, the DBaaS, and everything else. You’ve got to get a full picture,” insists Sundaram.
R-Graph is a visualization solution that provides end-to-end visibility. Customers who are looking to get a holistic view of their data estate just need to turn on the service. At no extra cost, they can enjoy customizable views of all services and applications within the estate, by department, and identify security blind spots.
HYCU covers every atomic aspect of the application that can jeopardize the entire application in the event of a cyber-attack, accidental deletion or misconfiguration.
“The goal here is to not just protect the services, but everything you use to build, run, release and manage these services – it’s the entire lifecycle, not just point services,” says Fernandez.
Additionally, the mission is to “make sure that every single point where you have a critical configuration can be restored so that you don’t have to go and rebuild an entire environment.”
To make that happen, HYCU has brought backup services for things that didn’t exist before. These include the usual suspects like storage, database and instances, but also critical security infrastructures, containers, functions, all of which contribute to the smooth functioning of the application.
HYCU data protection spans the end-to-end pipeline, covering everything starting at source code. “Keeping your production, which is, all your different services available, not just from a backup and recovery standpoint, but also in terms of disaster recovery capability. That’s why we provide the entire resilience of the data all the way from build to run,” explained Sundaram.
Backing up too is effortless with set-and-forget policies. But where does HYCU back up all that customer data? “We firmly believe that our customers deserve to have the data in their control, in their storage, for every single point application out there. Not in another managed storage,” replied Fernandez.
That why, HYCU welcomes companies to choose the tier of storage, cost and configuration that work best for them.
Granular recoverability is one of HYCU’s biggest value propositions. The platform lets users search and find specific files and restore them directly to production with one-click. They can be recovered either to the same instance, or to an alternative location as needed.
With new services continually added in the cloud, HYCU understands the importance of keeping the platform cloud-native. Designed with an easy, low-code approach, services can be added in days. “That’s the agility of the platform. It’s truly built for the cloud,” says Sundaram.
Wrapping Up
Management complexity often makes data protection overwhelming. With a truly cloud-native, one-platform solution like HYCU’s that leans on automation to blunt the operational edge, and eliminate moment-by-moment work for all involved, data protection can become a breeze in the hybrid cloud.
Be sure to watch the interview with HYCU from AWS re:Invent 2023 to learn more about HYCU’s solutions. Also check out HYCU’s deep-dive presentations from the past Cloud Field Day event.
