Back it Up, With Joe Noonan & Naj Raza of Kaseya

Hello, I'm Dan Thomas Shefsky and this is the connecting it podcast.

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Welcome to the connecting it podcast. I'm your host, Dan Thomas Chesky. And joining me today, I've got some colleagues. We've got Joe Noonan, uh, GM of Unitrends and we've got NAS rasa of the GM of Unitrends MSP. Really excited to have you guys today. Thanks for joining me.

Always a pleasure man. Good to talk to you. And, uh, you know, uh, hopefully one day we'll get to hang out face to face with all this remote work stuff.

Yeah. Looking forward to that and look, you know, today we're going to dive into the world of backup and talk about all different aspects, but we're allowing around ransomware because it's still a big topic and we're hearing a lot of things in the industry. So really looking to hear your guys's insights today. So, uh, we've got a question right out of the gate that I know that a lot of our MSP, uh, listeners tend to ask, you know, some of the different questions about, we often hear about the three, two, one method, three copies of data to different media. One of them air gapped and offsite. I guess, Joe, my question to you is, is this method still relevant, uh, for preventing ransomware from impacting backups? Or is there another method that's more effective?

You know, the reality, Dan, I think the three, two, one rule is as old as it is. Um, you have to follow it and to be honest, you know, the, the way that you mentioned air gap for, for one of them being offsite, there's a lot of really good solutions today that handle that without necessarily having to go to the very legacy strategy of taking data offline on tape and things like that. Um, you know, I, for any data protection strategy, not just for ransomware, right, but really for anything you want to make sure that you have the ability to recover locally and quickly, and that's what you want, you know, that local copy for, you got to get the max one off site and put it somewhere else, right? That's really your, your copy that you're likely going to handle for compliance long-term attention and very likely disaster recovery. If you're putting it in a location where you can recover quickly from it, this is a standard strategy. Uh, most of our customers are following that in a pretty simple way. Uh, and there's lots of solutions and making sure you can adhere to that, not again, not just stop for the ransomware problem. I think where, you know, it gets a little, um, a little nuanced is that, you know, where does that, does that? Does there need to be a copy that's totally offline, right? And these days you can have very secure copies that actually still can be accessed quickly on the right scenarios. Like for instance, if I think about, you know, the Unitrends cloud offering, uh, this is one example and there are ways to protect data in public clouds and other places as well. There's the concept of immutable storage and there's the concept of air gapping or partially air gapping, uh, the on-prem environment from the off-prem environment. And, you know, for instance, with our technology, you can actually, you know, send that data offline. It can be there available for us to recover in our cloud. You can actually bring it back on prem if you need to, but you can't modify it once it lands in the cloud, you cannot modify it from on-prem. So if there is an attack that happens to get through the local environment, it can't go in and do any damage to, uh, the cloud data at that point. So that solves the problem that you mentioned there with the three, two, one rule and kind of an air gap approach without having to take the data completely offline, which in a lot of ways is very inflexible. It's costly, it's time consuming from a management perspective. And, you know, the ability to recover reliably from, from, you know, completely offline data, you know, these days, it's just, it's a big challenge, right? So it's, it's not really something people love to do. And there are good solutions within the three, two, one rule that let you do that even with cloud data. So yeah, I think it's, it's great, but you want to look out for those nuances. You want to make sure that that off-site copy is truly protected and secure so that an on-prem ransomware, a successful ransomware attack can't actually get to the cloud data.

That's great information. I think that's something that, you know, we hear a lot and I think the way you just took us through that and brought that visualization for us, and that's really good information, uh, nausea, I'd like to go to you and ask you a couple of questions, you know, in terms of, you know, first one being is what are some of the common mistakes you see MSPs making, uh, that can lead to larger risk, um, due to ransomware.

Yeah. Then it's pretty, I see kind of two common themes here. Um, especially when I hear horror stories or whatever you want to call it, uh, you know, uh, battle stories from MSPs and really the number one thing is rolling your own solution while it is definitely cost-effective or can be cost-effective in some ways, just from a upfront, uh, surface level perspective, uh, what ends up happening in many times is you end up exposing yourself to more risk, uh, especially because as we were just talking about, um, if there is a ransomware infection that's, uh, spreading throughout the site, and let's say, you're, you have your, uh, local appliance there and it's running on some type of a windows solution or something it's, and it doesn't have a hardened Colonel, or it doesn't have some ransomware defense mechanisms built in you're essentially exposing yourself to that risk. And then in some cases we've also seen with NSPs that then, because they've built the solution themselves where they're replicating that data offsite, that infection will then the encrypted data will then transmit offsite as well. Right? So it, it can create a lot of challenges on that side, uh, just from an exposure perspective. And then the second thing that we're seeing is, um, many MSPs, they get lulled into a false sense of security, um, with some solutions where they're just let's say, taking a screen grab, right? So, so in order to verify their backups, um, they spend them off and, you know, let's say they take an automated, uh, screen grab of a login screen and they say, Oh, look, you know, I, my backup point is there, it's a recoverable. It's great. Uh, but what happens once you log in, right? Once you log in is a data may be encrypted, right? That's certainly something that we've heard, horror stories. And, uh, in order to mitigate that, um, one of the things that we do with our appliances, we offer recovery assurance, right? And with recovery assurance, it's a really cool feature where not only can we go in there and verify that your recovery point is bootable, but then you can set up a whole host of different, uh, tests that go in there and verify that the actual data or services or applications, whatever you want, that the integrity is there and they're actually available when it's, when it's time to recover.

That's that's great information. Do you guys see, I mean, I guess I'll open this up to both of you on this. I mean, do you see a lot of MSPs trying to do it on their own? I mean, you guys are in the trenches with them a lot. I mean, uh, are you seeing that? Is it pretty common?

So, uh, it's, it's, that's a good question, Dan. And, uh, you see some it's, it's almost like you have certain different categories. Um, you have those MSPs that understand that a proper BCDR solution that's turnkey that helps them sleep at night, and that's really what keeps them in business right. And keeps their customers in business. Um, and so, so you, you have that, that a certain category there, and then you have, uh, another category of MSPs where in order to, uh, basically make, create less friction with their customers. Um, and they say, oftentimes, Hey, my customers are really price conscious. You know, they don't necessarily take it from an approach of saying what's the value of your data to you. Um, and they almost look at it as, Hey, maybe I can make a little bit more margin here. Maybe, you know, it's less friction in the sales cycle. Um, so they'll often build their own BCDR, uh, just thinking that, Hey, this will be better for me in the long run. And then oftentimes, you know, we see them coming to us later, um, and kind of explaining some of these stories that they have. So it's definitely pretty prevalent out there.

Yeah. And just to piggyback off of nausea's point, um, we absolutely see, and obviously try to support all these different scenarios. I think the big thing around whether you're going to roll your own, or whether you leverage turnkey is there's two components, right? Do you have access to the infrastructure and days everybody has access to infrastructure because the public cloud, um, but do you have access to the right infrastructure and do you have the people to truly support it, right? Because that investment, when you really think about having a scenario with 40 or 50 clients, even if it's just 10 to 20 and you're, you have a localized type of issue that takes a number of them offline and they have to spin up, that's a lot of work to go and actually handle the process of getting all those folks back up and running in time in a reasonable time and not everybody staff to handle all of that. And that's really where it turnkey helps when, you know, you really want to have a partner to offload a lot of that work too. Um, as well as, you know, somebody that has the infrastructure, the monitoring, the security, everything else that goes along with having to having to manage and roll your own infrastructure for this type of service, either you're doing it yourself or you're trusting somebody else to do it. So a lot of that goes in to just whether you have the resources and the skills to go and handle one of those really nasty situations where you might have to spin up and recover many customers all at once. You know, and I think that's a big part of the decision criteria for people that, you know, sometimes think, well, public cloud makes it easy, so I can just access the infrastructure. They might be, might be missing some of the other evaluation criteria. What if it hits the fan and you got to do all that work, are you, and are you also putting the other tools in place around that public cloud infrastructure to make sure that it's monitored properly, that it's secure and all the other things that just go in infrastructure management. So we're seeing turnkey become a very big popular option. Uh, but that doesn't mean that we don't have some really strong, highly skilled folks out there rowing their own because they can offer some additional value that, that they have with their customers. And sometimes it's just their reputation, uh, and that sense that they want to own the whole thing.

One of the things I think I see the most right now in this last week is just look at what happened in Texas. Uh, I mean, people look at data centers that are down, you've got businesses that, you know, pipes are bursting and you know, all their internal stuff, and then they didn't plan for that. I mean, we're seeing MSPs in that area or that region say, like they're working around the clock right now. And like you said, Joe, you know, having to, to restore, get people up and running, uh, and all that. Whereas more of that turnkey solution that can give, you know, more efficiency, better process and, you know, get customers up faster because it's, it's a turnkey solution. So I think that's a great point. And, you know, I know it's not ransomware, but what's taking place in Texas is a great example. Uh, you just never know when these types of things are going to roll through and you need to be prepared for it.

Exactly. Believe it or not. We actually had someone on our connect engage, uh, panel from, uh, Texas. And they were able to join us even though, you know, people were working around the clock and doing a lot of stuff because, you know, they didn't actually, they are using a turnkey solution that did not actually have to do everything themselves. So, you know, they're busy, it's that great house for sure. Um, but you know, it was definitely a relief for them too, to not have to put in all that work, uh, that extra work on the VR side.

Right. And that's, and that's so important, right. Joe is, uh, having that, that, uh, ability to be able to reach out to somebody for help. Right. In that type of a scenario, just thinking about kind of what goes through your mind when you say, Hey, I've, I've thought about this, I've prepped that I've prepped for this, but when it actually happens, you know, you kind of go into a survival mode almost. Right. And, uh, that's when you really want to have somebody that's got your back. Right. Um, and has expertise in this, you know, who, who does this across thousands, tens of thousands of, uh, customers and partners?

Well, that let's get into that knowledge. I mean, I think, you know, maybe there's MSPs that are out here that are currently reassessing their backup solutions. I think that something that MSPs do, you know, from time to time, they need to look at the way the market is the way the industry is changing, uh, and reassess it, what factors should they consider in their decision process? And when it comes to helping keep their clients' data safe.

That's a good question, Dan. And especially now we've seen within the past year, there've been such big changes to the data landscape, right? The it data landscape specifically around where data lives, right. So we've seen the traditional model of, uh, primarily on prem servers, uh, really changed, not just at essentially all levels of the market, right? Not just for large enterprises, but even for very small businesses. Uh, we saw them, uh, no longer having a need for a file server onsite because they can store everything in office three 65 and leverage SharePoint. So essentially what that's led to is a scenario where you have data that's, uh, essentially in fragmented locations, you've got some that are still onsite. Some that's in the cloud, in public clouds or in office three 65 or on remote laptops. And, uh, so essentially what you need to find is a single platform, a vendor that can provide a single platform that can protect all your data is simple. Uh, and most importantly has automations and integrations that make it very easy for you to be able to know that your data is protected in all of those different locations. Right? And that's, that's the key part. You don't want to be hopping from different interfaces or you don't want to have to deal with all that vendor management overhead of dealing with multiple vendors, right. Ideally, uh, having a single platform where you can go to a single vendor to manage, um, is definitely one of the key things that, uh, that MSPs that are assessing their backups or reassessing their backups. That's something they should look at. And, you know, the other important piece is also, uh, partnering up with a vendor that sees the vision for the future. Right. Um, we see if these, uh, some of these on-prem servers eventually when they get phased out, no, where are they going to go? Right. Most likely it's going to be Azure. We see a huge migration there. And so you want to be able to partner up with a vendor that gives you that flexibility, that if that happens, you know, if you see suddenly your end user is now deciding to get rid of that on-prem server and is moving to a fully to the cloud, right. Uh, your vendors should be able to give you that support to say, Hey, listen, if your data's on prem, we can back it up. If not, no problem, you know, midway through, if you want to be able to shift it through to just a cloud level backup public cloud, we can absolutely do that. So, uh, really that's key is to have that flexibility and a vendor that has that vision for the future.

I think that's a great point. I mean, and that's something that a lot, you know, when you're reassessing as an MSP, I mean, I've been an em in the MSP shoes. I mean, you didn't plan for, you know, the COVID to hit everyone to go working from home that happened. And I think that really made a lot of people go to look and reassess their backup strategy. Um, and I think you bring up great points. Cause you know, we're seeing a lot of people move, you know, to the public cloud or the Azure and different things. And, you know, to be able to pivot and have a vendor that sees the vision and being able to do that. That's, that's, that's a really good point. So, you know, Joe, I kind of want to ask you, you know, a question on this is, you know, not just kind of started to dive into it a little bit. Um, but when we talked about, you know, the, the cloud, you know, how big of an issue is ransomware, if you're using like clouds or SAS services, you know, to be able to do your daily business, you know, what does that look like?

You know, that that's a very popular topic and question just this idea of do I need to protect my data in the cloud? You know, a lot of times when you think about what you're protecting, when you control the data on prem, a lot of times it's the entire infrastructure, not just the data, right? You need to make sure that if something fails, you can actually bring it back up. If you lose something in terms of your data, you can go find it and bring it back up. When you think about the, the cloud side of things, right? A lot of the availability side is taken care of. Um, what people sometimes forget is if you read any policy from the cloud providers, they, uh, they are not the owner of your data, who you are, and it doesn't matter what happens to it, whether something gets in there and, and encrypts it or deletes it, or does bad things to it, or it's just, you know, general human nature to, to make mistakes and, and accidentally delete something or, or get rid of something, you know, in the end it's yours, right. They take no liability for it. Um, so yes, you have to protect the data. And when it comes to ransomware, just like anything, then systems, systems have these vulnerabilities that, uh, you know, smart folks in a multi-billion dollar industry at this point are figuring out how to get access to and hostage so they can, they can make some money. Um, so they're, they're pretty motivated and, and ransomware attacks have, and will continue to occur. And SAS is still one of the primary issues and things you've got to worry about. I mean, human beings, just making, you know, accidental, accidental mistakes, and deletions is still number one in terms of the problem categories there when it comes to cloud data. But, uh, malware and ransomware attacks are still very prevalent. You know, lots of good stats to talk about, you know, 60% of data in the cloud has, has been compromised in some fashion. So it's, uh, it's absolutely a problem. Um, when you think about, you know, uh, an important rule of thumb, right? Things do change when you move data from on-prem into cloud infrastructure, you know, whether it's infrastructure as a service or whether it's into a SAS platforms internationally, there are aspects of the paradigm that change. Um, but one thing that is pretty consistent is that, uh, the data's yours, you should care about it. Um, and you shouldn't trust that the providers necessarily going to, uh, uh, to have your back, if something goes wrong and you always want to make sure that you have a solid data protection plan, that includes that data in the cloud, as well as anything else that's on prem and laptops, you know, that your remote workers are using, uh, were anywhere else, right? It's your data, you know, take good care of it.

Are you guys seeing that grow? I mean, that, that sector, you know, with the SAS backup, I mean, is that an area that you're seeing, you know, substantial growth in okay. Growth, I guess, just trying to understand like where maybe where the industry is pivoting a little bit right now,

Very substantial. Um, it's a topic of conversation in all facets of our business, whether it's through our, our, our MSP channel or reseller channel or our SMBs. Um, it's, it's pretty, pretty amazing if you just look at the growth in things like teams and other, other types of applications that, uh, the number of users using those and the amount of data that is storing is off the charts and people are realizing how important it is and you just, you have to make sure that you're protecting it. So we used to have to have this conversation about, um, why I should back up office three 65 or why I should back up G suite or why I should back up Salesforce. Um, those conversations have definitely, uh, dwindled. We still have, we still have them. They're still important education there, and that's what we're doing. And in conversations like this right then, but, um, you know, it's good to see that people recognize it and because of the recognition, um, a lot of it inspired by the, the growth that's occurred, uh, due to COVID, uh, we're, we're seeing really big, uh, interest there and, and growth in the space. And you know, that obviously not all the data is moved there. So, uh, you know, it, it definitely creates opportunity for this whole industry to, to use that as a foothold into a new client and see what other data's out there and, and make sure that that's protected well.

Yeah. And just to add to that, you know, I was actually just speaking with an MSP the other day, uh, and MSPs are also starting to realize that, um, even if you've read in Microsoft's EULA, for example, um, they actually recommend a third party backup provider. Um, and, uh, on top of that, we also see, uh, phishing scams and, uh, various, um, uh, cyber crime evolving to, to take over these types of accounts right into, and to, um, prey on, on these users, especially the smaller businesses that have shifted to a full office, three 65 deployment, for example, and luring them in because, you know, they've seen this massive growth and this massive transition because of COVID, uh, it's essentially lured them in steal their credentials and then take over their office three 65 data. Um, so, so, uh, MSPs are starting to realize, and even end users are starting to realize, uh, just how important it is to have that backup there. So regardless of either scenario here, whether it's just, um, somebody makes a mistake and deletes a file, or whether it's something more malicious, uh, they're, they're basically protected.

No, that's great. That's great advice from both of you regarding like the SAS backup and just, you know, highlighting again. I mean, like you said, NA you know, the ULAs for Microsoft and, you know, the Salesforce is, and all those in the world. I mean, they recommend it and it's not like a it's hidden, I mean, it's right there for everyone to see. So having a good backup strategy is really important. And I just think that, you know, a lot of times, you know, until a crisis hits, like, you know, when COVID hit, everyone had to go work from home and, you know, different servers went down or things. I mean, people weren't prepared, but now all of a sudden they're like, we need backup. Like we need to make sure that we, we never go down and it's like, you know, you really got to find that messaging to your customers and educate them on the importance of it, why it's important and really sell that value like nausea and Joe have been talking about, um, I always ask everybody that comes on as we get here towards the end. And when it come to both of you, uh, you know, final thoughts, you know, backup the industry, you know, what's, you know what you're hearing, seeing anything that you want to leave, like words of wisdom, uh, but like, you know, Joe, I'll start with you and then nozzle come to you neck. Uh, last on, this is just, what do you want to leave our listeners when it comes to the, the word backup ransomware? Uh, what advice do you want to leave with our listeners?

I think the biggest thing is you have to think about a unified approach these days, right? Um, data is not in one place and your standard backup and recovery, even, you know, data in the cloud and infrastructure as a service on prem. Um, I think there's more to the protection side of things now than there ever was before. And what I mean by that is, you know, these days, I think the industry is to start looking at the evaluation criteria and data protection as how are you also preventing some of this, right? How are you automating a lot of the manual aspects of this whole problem? Um, how are you unifying the ability to protect data in many places and, and limit the number of products you need to use, right? You don't want to necessarily have to go best of breed just because you have some, some data in office three 65, right? That's a lot more management related to that. So I think as you think of the idea of unifying your continuity strategy, you know, a lot of it has to do with, yes, I need unified backup and be able to re backup and recover a lot of different types of data. Um, but I think there's around your complete story there and truly being protected, particularly around cloud data. There's a lot of security components that you have to think of now, like backup and disaster recovery. It's part of security strategies in many organizations, and it's made it much more visible to the business. So that kind of, I think, increases the evaluation criteria in terms of how well does that backup solution fit in, uh, or even integrate with, you know, critical prevention, uh, technologies to avoid losing data like dark web monitoring and, uh, phishing defense, things like that, that you can get with a more complete solution. And that last piece is automation, right? So there's a lot that can happen in the production environment and all around us that are outside of the backup system, that the backup system suffers because in the end, the production environment, isn't in a clean state and it just causes a lot of problems for MSPs, right? You have a lot of customers, you're going to run into a bunch of issues that you have to go in troubleshoot every day. And we know people, you know, nausea, we hear it all the time, right? The horror stories where people are spending eight, 12 hours a day, just looking at logs of their back, all the different backup vendors that they have, just making sure everything works. Um, adding a lot of automation into that process that even goes and cleans up the production environment and, and rigid of issues. So that backups are just run automatically without you having to do anything. And I think these are kind of new criteria around automation security and the unified backup approach that really kind of drive that full unified continuity strategy. And I think at the board to think of all of it, right. You know, it's not just basic backup or recovery anymore.

Yeah, Joe, that was really well said, you know, just to, to add to that, uh, it's, it's all about the opportunity cost of your time, right? As an MSP, you've got competing priorities, you've got a million things going on and a backup is one of those things where like we're were saying earlier, it gives you that peace of mind. So you want to be able to basically set it up and, and put it in, in a scenario where you don't have to spend just like Joe was saying, you know, a 12 hours or, or even have to pay a separate, dedicated tech to stay on site, to manage all your backups. The biggest thing is, you know, gotta think about it at scale as well, right? As, as you scale up, you know, is this, is this really something that you can support? Uh, if you're having to jump between four different back event, you've got one for BCDR, you know, one for a SAS backup and a third for, let's say, cloud backup. Uh, and, and it's just, it's it at a small scale, it can work for some, for some MSPs, but almost always what I've seen is as the MSP grows, um, it ends up having to basically be an anchor around their neck in some ways, right. Uh, and then getting that data out of the different vendors in their clouds, that also becomes very difficult from time to time. So, um, really just, you know, my parting thought is, uh, think about how you can put all of your protection and all of your data into one platform. And just like Joe was saying, uh, save yourself that time, uh, save yourself that overhead and that burden of management. Um, and, and believe me out there, uh, the market has changed, right? BCDR is now, um, certainly with us, it's, it's available to everyone at an affordable price, right? Um, many times there's a notion that, Oh, well BCDR is really expensive. So I got to have one BCDR product. I got to have a separate, uh, backup product and you have separate a third product, whatever it is. Um, but really, you know, when, when MSPs go out there to reassess, uh, whatever their, their current, uh, backup strategy is right now, uh, they might be pleased to know that there are vendors out there that, um, are truly affordable.

Oh, that's great advice from both of you. And look, I think this channel is, it is truly blessed to have two guys like yourself that are so knowledgeable out there in the trenches, uh, working with them and just being able to help them, you know, continue to grow their businesses. So I think you guys, you know, shared some really good information today that I hope is going to spark some conversations with our listeners and, uh, if they want to reach out, they obviously can do that and talk further with you guys and the team to learn how they can maybe build that backup strategy with Unitrends MSP and, uh, how they can, you know, make sure their customers are protected and to be able to have those conversations, because we do know that this is a really important strategy that, uh, not only the MSPs, but their customers need to have. So I just want to say thank you to both of you for, for being on today's. So nausea and Joe, thanks for being our guest. Thanks so much for having us on.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, I've never been, I've never had somebody say was, they were blessed to have a nausea and I around them. So that's a first, then I'll take it. I'll take it.

I think this channel really appreciates guys like yourself and, uh, definitely, uh, we'll, we'll keep the word blessed. So, uh, it'll be the new word of the word of the month. So, um, I want to thank everybody for listening to the connecting it podcast. Make sure you subscribe and rate us five stars on the iTunes store. And until next time, uh, we'll just say, keep backing it up.