In the last few weeks alone the United States alone has witnessed numerous catastrophic weather events from bomb cyclones in the Midwest to tornadoes in Alabama and Georgia.

Sadly, many businesses are not prepared for such events – too many rely on a single location without proper backup systems to run their company when the weather or other emergency hits like ransomware or worse, something like the NotPetya attack which made files inaccessible forever. This single piece of malware alone caused over $10 billion in damage based on corporate public filings.

Companies need to be prepared and know which vendors they can rely on to assist in their time of need.

To that end, we had an exclusive interview with Mo Tahmesabi, President and CEO of StoneFly, a leader in the space to learn more about their offerings. We hope our community of enterprise IT, MSPS, carriers and government agencies find it useful.

How should companies go about Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) to ensure they can “weather” such events?

Companies need to prepare beforehand, to be able to weather events like Alabama tornadoes or any other natural disaster. Only a well-planned and executed backup and disaster recovery plan can ensure that data isn’t lost and minimum damage is incurred. Backup and disaster recovery solutions cannot be executed haphazardly or in the nick of time.

That is not to say that nothing can be done in the last hour. Solutions such as StoneFly backup and replication software can ensure protection for mission-critical data; depending on the volume of data that needs to be protected in the last minute.

The best bet to ensure data security and recoverability is the 3-2-1 data protection rule. According to this rule, three copies of data, stored on two types of storage media with one offsite copy delivers total data protection and reduces the chances of data loss greatly.

How does StoneFly help?

StoneFly’s purpose-built backup and disaster recovery appliances such as the DR365 product series such as DR365, DR365V, VSO – ready Backup and Disaster recovery appliance. The DR365 enable companies to easily setup the 3-2-1 rule.

The backup and disaster recovery appliances offer built-in cloud connect services. This enables companies to create backups on-premises and store copies of backups in public clouds (like Azure, AWS, etc.) or to StoneFly’s private cloud.

With multiple copies in the cloud and a copy on the in-house backup appliance, companies can seamlessly setup the 3-2-1 data protection rule and ensure availability and recoverability for their workloads – making them tornado or natural disaster resistant.

Why are so many government agencies StoneFly customers?

StoneFly data storage and data protection solutions are robust, battle-tested and facilitate compliance to a number of government regulations such as FedRAMP, FISMA, etc.

As a Microsoft Government Cloud Service Provider Partner, StoneFly data storage and data protection infrastructure enables government agencies to integrate Microsoft Azure Government cloud. This facilitates data security and enables government agencies to observe confidentiality for the sensitive information they have to process.

The backup appliances and the storage infrastructure also employs a number of data security tools that make sure that government data is secure from both internal and external threats and is less prone to data loss. This makes StoneFly solutions the number 1 choice for so many government agencies.

What do you mean by hyperconverged?

StoneFly’s definition of hyperconverged is an “all-in-one” solution that combines storage, networking, and compute into one easy-to-manage storage solution. A complete affordable Trunkey Data Center in the BOX.

This can be in the form of an on-premises storage solution such as the StoneFly USS (Unified Storage and Server) hyperconverged appliance or the patented StoneFly hyperconverged software solution: SCVM – Storage Concentrator Virtual Machine.

With StoneFly USS fully virtualized appliance, users can easily manage their iSCSI and NAS volumes in a single consolidated storage solution plus run all his servers on this appliance concurrently. The USS hyperconverged appliance is also available as an High Availability (HA) appliance – for enterprises looking to remove single point of failure from the storage solution and setup a highly available storage infrastructure.

The StoneFly SCVM is an all-in-one hyperconverged software solution that enables enterprises to setup NAS storage, SAN storage, and NAS + SAN (hyperconverged) storage in public clouds such as Azure, AWS, etc. or in StoneFly’s private cloud.

Ransomware is becoming a huge problem; can your company offer any protection?

Ransomware is one of the emerging external threats that targets enterprise storage and backup infrastructure. One exposure and the malware replicates to every system in the network and encrypts all of the user data.

StoneFly technology is constantly going through innovation and has been developed over the span of decades to be capable of resisting external threats such as ransomware, cyberattacks, hacking attempts, etc.

StoneFly storage infrastructure, such as the Super Scale Out (SSO) NAS appliance offers users a transportable storage option. The intelligent software operating the SSO NAS infrastructure detects abnormalities in storage usage and in the event of detection of an anomaly; the system automatically disconnects the transportable storage drives. This protects the data replicated to the dedicated storage drives from being affected by ransomware or any other cyber-threat. The appliance also snapshot its content which create a time machine to rewind to the time before any ransomware or malware attack.

As with StoneFly’s backup appliances, StoneFly’s storage infrastructure also comes with built-in cloud connect technology – facilitating users to create copies of their mission-critical data in the cloud. With data services such as snapshots and replication, users can ensure that they always have a way to recover from threats like ransomware.

The same principle applies to StoneFly’s backup technology. Enterprise users can opt to setup the 3-2-1 data protection rule which makes it easier to recover and harder for ransomware to affect all of the backup copies of mission-critical enterprise data.

Can NAS be affordable?

StoneFly NAS is affordable as it offers a number of enterprise-grade data services which optimize data storage, improve storage utilization rates and make it easier for users to control their storage resources. The combination of data services and simple-to-use tools offer greater value for money and an affordable TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

For Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), StoneFly offers an affordable enterprise-grade storage infrastructure solution: the Value Scale Out (VSO) NAS appliance series.

The VSO NAS offers data services that optimize data storage, reduce the cost of data storage and retention, and deliver a number of enterprise-grade features without the large price tag.

Why does storage need blockchain?

Blockchain is a simple and effective legislative technology that makes it easier to authenticate data and ensure data integrity.

In use cases where it’s important to ensure that data isn’t changed, edited or tampered with; blockchain plays a vital role. For instance, a contract agreement between the government and a government contractor needs to remain the same for the duration of the contract and both parties need the satisfaction that the contract is not tampered with. With the integration of blockchain technology, both parties can make sure that the stored contract data is not changed. This allows us to create Chain of custody for content.

As blockchain relates to each instance of stored data using a unique hash, every edit or change affects the hash’s value and thus makes it impossible for a change/edit or tampering to go by undetected.

In a few sentences, what pain do you take away from the customers?

As an innovator in the storage, backup and disaster recovery and the archiving industry, StoneFly recognizes that data is one of the most important assets for a business. That’s why StoneFly is driven to make data storage, backup and disaster recovery, and archiving simpler for the enterprise.

That’s why StoneFly has made it a habit to reach out to the end user and collect their feedback and then go back to the lab to add and improve our solutions.

This policy of adapting to the end user has driven the development and innovation of 8 generations of products and a patented software with over 1 million lines of code.

What’s next for StoneFly?

With a firm footing in the storage, backup and disaster recovery, and the archiving industry StoneFly is now looking towards Storage Managed Service Providers (MSPs).

To make data storage simpler and more convenient for the end user StoneFly will be offering storage solutions to MSPs and large corporate users so that they can create storage quotas and configure SAN, NAS, or object volumes as per their usage.

MSPs will be able to sell multi-tenant, highly scalable, feature-rich and high-speed remote data storage to their customers. While corporate users will be able to simplify data storage usage for their departments by dedicating storage quotas and configuring desired data services through a secure and high-speed network.

Another one of StoneFly’s ongoing ventures is Databloc. Datablock is a blockchain powered permission-based storage network which targets data optimization and integrates tokens and coin offerings as the currency of the network. This venture taps into the 2000+ enterprise customer base of StoneFly, creating a vast network of storage users – giving it the potential to be the AirBnB of data services.