Backup is Dead: Acronis Cyber Protect is Here

The catchy title for this post celebrates a special moment. Not many companies have a chance to disrupt and transform an old, stable industry, but that’s exactly what Acronis did today.

The days when traditional backup was good enough to protect data are gone. The rapidly growing complexity of IT systems and the exploding amount of data makes storing and protecting IT workloads costly and complicated – and complicated often means not well protected and not secure.

When cost and complexity come into play, security isn’t often top of mind for IT users or even managed service providers (MSPs). They just need to get the system up and running quickly – especially now that so many employees are working remotely – and then they may not have enough time to revisit how they’re protecting their data, applications, and systems.

Since we all depend on IT now. Only IT allows us to stay productive while staying at home and, suddenly, it has become a basic need, like water, food, air, and shelter. Yet no IT system can be reliable without adequate protection, making the protection of the IT system mission-critical.  

This is where Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) comes into play. This revolutionary product combines data protection, cybersecurity, and management capabilities into a single solution, dramatically reducing complexity and cost while providing superior protection. This integration enables a single IT person to protect significantly more end-user devices, empowering MSPs to secure the home office environments that their clients suddenly, desperately need to protect.

As customers suddenly move from secure corporate IT environments to insecure home networks, MSPs have an extremely challenging protection task. Home networks are usually less secure (if secure at all) and often have several other connected devices that may not be protected – all of which can be exploited by malicious agents to penetrate the network. More than that, the number of users and locations that must be protected increases tremendously, as does the number of devices, types and versions of operating systems, and applications.

Running multiple protection tools on one computer no longer works either. First, relying on separate backup, vulnerability assessment, patch management, remote management, anti-virus, and anti-ransomware solutions requires an MSP technician to learn and maintain all of those applications. Besides, multiple agents can overload the system, decreasing performance and making users unhappy. There’s also the potential for failures and incompatibilities with every update, which requires a major commitment and attention to detail to keep all of the tools up-to-date.

Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) combines all of these tools into one single product with one single agent, one single management console, and one single license. Quick learning, easy deployment, and streamlined management mean more hours saved and more customers supported by a single IT professional.

If we dissect Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup), we can distinguish improvements for backup, security, and efficiency.

For those looking for a more reliable and secure backup, Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) steps up the backup game combining proactive, active, and reactive protection. Vulnerability assessment and patch management, removal of malware from backups, and patching on recovery to prevent reoccurring infections provide proactive protection against downtime. Continuous data protection, active defenses against viruses and ransomware, and self-defense capabilities that guard the agent and backup storage all deliver active protection from threats. Integrated disaster recovery, metadata storage for the forensic investigation of incidents, and the ability to co-exist with other security solutions provide reactive protection.

Those looking for endpoint security will find all of the necessary capabilities in Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup). These include real-time anti-malware and anti-ransomware protection, on-demand scanning and malware removal, AI-based pre-execution analysis, behavioral analysis, dynamic detection rules, and the other capabilities of traditional anti-virus and endpoint protection solutions.

AV-Test, the renowned security laboratory known for putting security solutions through their paces, ran a pre-release version of Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) in March 2020 against their usual routine for testing anti-virus business solutions. On a computer running Windows 10 Professional, AV-Test tested both the status and dynamic detection rates of Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup), scanning a set of 6,932 malicious Windows executable (PE) files. Acronis scored perfectly with a verified 100% detection rate. Acronis also delivered a perfect result in the lab’s false-positive test, causing zero false positives. Additional details of the findings are available here.

This integration of data protection and cybersecurity also brings unique capabilities, making Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) the only product capable of delivering an unprecedented level of cyber protection. The availability of backups not only ensures data recovery, but also provides for the scanning of cold backup data for threats, creation of whitelists built from backed up data by aggressive heuristics, and fail-safe patching with an option to roll back if issues occur.

Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) also includes productivity boosters for IT professionals, such as quickly assessing the protection status of a device via a #CyberFit score, data protection mapping to discover any important files that are unprotected, and the ability to connect to a remote computer directly from the management console using RDP.

With Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup), MSPs can improve the protection and satisfaction of their customers, while increasing their own productivity. They also gain the opportunity to increase their margins, since the total number of the integrated capabilities available in Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) comes at a lower list price than if an MSP paid multiple vendors for multiple solutions.

Just to add some flavor, several MSPs who participated in the beta program offered their insights about Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup).

VMotion IT Solutions and Union Technology Cooperative each discussed how the solution will allow them to improve their clients’ cybersecurity posture, enhance their own market position, and easily generate additional revenues. Zebra Systems added that they expect to see triple-digit growth thanks to Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup).

“We are excited for the launch of Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup),” said Nick Keene at Synapsys. “It’s a great product, and having a unified product with a single agent and interface will make a big difference in our market. It should be a game-changer.”

That approach to integration and automation also enables MSPs to use Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) to overcome many of the obstacles they face in building a sustainable and profitable business – as they extract every efficiency from both their technology and their team members. The recently published whitepaper, The Five Levels of MSP Platform Integration, illustrates all of the opportunities an MSP can uncover by deploying a broader suite of cyber protection services using Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup).

“The unique integration of AI-powered data protection and cybersecurity in Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) enables Ingram Micro Cloud to satisfy the cyber protection needs of service providers, small and medium businesses, and enterprise-edge workloads,” said Tim Fitzgerald, Vice President, Cloud Channel Sales, Ingram Micro.

While preparing this release, Acronis saw the upheaval that the coronavirus pandemic caused for MSPs – specifically in helping their clients protect the remote workers that they now had to rely on. Acronis rapidly developed and incorporated into Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) a set of features to help MSPs and their clients smoothly transition to safe, secure remote work.

For remote workers and their devices, these enhancements include default templates with secure protection plans for remote work devices, a native VPN capability, the ability to wipe data from remote devices, and integration with a secure file sharing solution. Other improvements include voice-enabled, touchless controls that are important when fighting such global pandemics.

Given Acronis’ commitment to its partners who are trying to navigate today’s tumultuous business environment, the company supports partners with Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) adoption. Notably, we are making Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) free until July 31:

• For existing Acronis Cyber Backup customers who switch to Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup), the MSP will continue to be billed at the same price as Acronis Cyber Backup.
• For any new clients added, consumption of any Acronis Cyber Cloud services by those clients will not be billed until July 31.

Industry experts and analysts agree that the evolution of IT needs requires a new approach – one that merges the traditionally separate disciplines of data protection and cybersecurity. For the MSPs charged with delivering these services to their customers, they need a solution that will enable them to keep up.

As a single solution, with a single agent, interface, policies, and management console, Acronis Cyber Protect (includes Acronis Cyber Backup) makes it easy and efficient for service providers to address the needs of the growing number of customers.

Visit https://www.acronis.com/en-us/cloud/cyber-protect/ to sign up as a service provider or to request a fully functional trial.