{"id":16587,"date":"2022-06-27T13:51:30","date_gmt":"2022-06-27T12:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/?p=16587"},"modified":"2022-07-06T11:53:58","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T10:53:58","slug":"city-of-sarasota-protects-against-ransomware-with-veeam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/2022\/06\/27\/city-of-sarasota-protects-against-ransomware-with-veeam\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Sarasota protects against ransomware with Veeam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As if hurricanes and flooding weren\u2019t enough, Sarasota also worries about ransomware attacks. When the legacy backup solution no longer met the city\u2019s data integrity needs and put city services at risk, Sarasota\u2019s IT team replaced it with Veeam. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it takes a crisis to demonstrate the power of city services, and no city knows this better than Sarasota. A coastal community on the Gulf of Mexico, Sarasota is vulnerable to hurricanes and flooding, and like most municipalities, it\u2019s also vulnerable to ransomware attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To guarantee residents have uninterrupted access to city services, Sarasota created a digital component for nearly every service and modernized data protection in a facility that can withstand a Category 5 storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarasota offers many digital services. They include utility bill payment, permit applications, a domestic partner registry, crime mapping and an emergency management website that helps residents prepare for, respond to and recover from hazardous weather.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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Herminio Rodriguez, Information Technology Director for the City of Sarasota<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cOur job is to help keep city services running all the time, particularly in the event of a crisis,\u201d said Herminio Rodriguez, Information Technology Director for the City of Sarasota. \u201cWe were using a product that was unable to meet the city\u2019s data integrity needs in any way, shape or form because it began to fail, putting city services in jeopardy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After spending three days on the phone with the backup vendor, Rodriguez said he and his team downloaded a free trial of Veeam Availability Suite. Within 30 minutes they configured Veeam (he said it\u2019s intuitive and easy to use) and began the first of many reliable backup jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe started using Veeam to keep city services running and support Digital Transformation of future services, but Veeam\u2019s true test came a year later when cybercriminals attempted an attack on our city,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cThey encrypted three file servers supporting city services and demanded US$34 million in Bitcoin. Rather than risk city services, we recovered our file servers with Veeam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot one service or resident was impacted, and we avoided paying ransom. If we hadn\u2019t been able to recover our servers, we would have had massive data loss affecting all facets of the city, and ultimately it would have impacted our residents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon Sarasota tapped Veeam for additional ransomware protection. The IT team began sending backups to Microsoft Azure and immutable backups to isolated, hardened Linux repositories. The team also deployed Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 to protect employees\u2019 collaborative data – not only for ransomware recovery but also to support compliance with the state\u2019s Public Records Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Veeam solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veeam helps Sarasota guarantee city services are available to residents and employees non-stop. Veeam fortifies cybersecurity plans and ensures Business Continuity for the first time in city history. Veeam also supports data integrity requirements and compliance with Florida\u2019s Public Records Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarasota is a forward-thinking city regarding modern data protection. Sarasota aligned Veeam backup with cyber preparedness to ensure swift and efficient response to ransomware attacks (and avoid paying ransom). The city\u2019s IT team knows that people, process and technology are the triad for a solid cybersecurity strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVeeam has changed our city for the better because backup has become a key component of our incident response strategy,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cWe know of another city that didn\u2019t have an incident response strategy and suffered a terrible ransomware attack. City services were down for 35 days, which was crippling. There\u2019s great comfort knowing that if we experience any type of crisis, Veeam is our way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way forward begins with the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule (three different copies of data on two different media with one copy offsite and one copy that is air-gapped, immutable or offline and zero backup recovery errors).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veeam backs up the city\u2019s 60 TB across 150 VMware vSphere virtual machines (VMs) and 12 physical machines on-premises and off-premises via tape and cloud. Some backups are immutable and some are air-gapped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To ensure zero recovery errors, Veeam SureBackup verifies the recoverability of backups and Instant VM Recovery recovers from them in minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSureBackup and Instant VM Recovery are phenomenal features,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cKnowing every backup is restorable and can be restored in minutes is priceless. Both features help simplify proof of data compliance during annual audits too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rodriguez said Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 also simplifies proof of data compliance, and it supports compliance with the Public Records Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cComplying with this Act means we must be able to retrieve Microsoft 365 data from several months or possibly several years ago,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cRetrieving items like Microsoft Outlook calendars and emails for compliance purposes would be difficult if we didn\u2019t back up with Veeam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veeam backs up the city\u2019s 22 TBs (Microsoft 365 files, documents and mailboxes used by 1,200 people) on-premises. Veeam Explorers for Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Teams restore items quickly – further improving their ability to recover from ransomware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have full faith in Veeam and our ability to recover in a crisis,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sidesteps disaster to provide uninterrupted services to residents<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy aligning Veeam backup with our incident response strategy, we can respond fast to a ransomware attack,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cInstead of paying an outrageous ransom that no city could afford, we simply recover data from backups.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guarantees Business Continuity for the first time in the city\u2019s history<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great feeling being able to tell city commissioners that Business Continuity is absolute,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cWe finally found a solution that meets the city\u2019s data integrity needs. Veeam will be part of the city\u2019s lifeblood for the foreseeable future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supports data integrity requirements and compliance with the Public Records Act<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to being the only solution that meets Sarasota\u2019s data integrity needs, Veeam supports compliance with Florida\u2019s Public Records Act. Veeam Availability Suite verifies backup recoverability (SureBackup) and recovers quickly (Instant VM Recovery). Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 provides mailbox protection reports to ensure mailboxes are backed up successfully, and Veeam Explorers recover items like calendars and emails in minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As if hurricanes and flooding weren\u2019t enough, Sarasota also worries about ransomware attacks. When the legacy backup solution no longer met the city\u2019s data integrity needs and put city services at risk, Sarasota\u2019s IT team replaced it with Veeam.  Sometimes it takes a crisis to demonstrate the power of city services, and no city knows this better than Sarasota. A coastal community on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":16588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,510,50,17,21,514],"tags":[121,759,3406,322,3405,210],"class_list":["post-16587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies","category-case-study-newsletter","category-east-coast","category-enterprise-security","category-government","category-used","tag-cybersecurity","tag-florida","tag-herminio-rodriguez","tag-ransomware","tag-sarasota","tag-veeam"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16587"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17194,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16587\/revisions\/17194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}