248 When we launched ARTESCA in 2021, our aim was to provide an ultra-simple and secure S3 object storage solution that would deliver the speed and efficiency modern applications demand. Lightweight and cloud-native in design, ARTESCA enables hassle-free, efficient growth for organizations across industries — from government and public sector, to healthcare, media & entertainment and more. ARTESCA has become a fast-growing solution for mission-critical business and emerging edge applications. But at Scality, our work is never done. We’re always looking to improve our products to meet the evolving real-world needs of our customers. Making a great thing even better In the past two years, ransomware attacks have risen and cybersecurity is a concern shared by every sector — no one is immune. An increasingly visible but still surprising statistic shows that 94% of ransomware events now target backups, as documented in a 2022 Ransomware Trends report from Veeam. With that in mind, ARTESCA 2.0 brings enhanced security features, and we’ve built upon the solution’s capabilities to offer enterprise-grade functionality with new deployment options. We want using ARTESCA to be easy — easy to download, easy to deploy and easy to use — and we’re dedicated to giving our customers freedom to choose the deployment option that best suits their business requirements. A hardened attack surface for increased cyber resiliency Cyber resiliency is a key focus for many business and public sector leaders today — but especially for CIOs and CISOs. Most technology-savvy businesses now understand that cyber security requires a multi-level solution, starting with best practices for the “human layer” at the top, down to data security for mission-critical assets at the bottom of the infrastructure stack. This requires having a game plan for when ransomware strikes so the organization’s important data is protected and operations are maintained. It is now easy to see that this makes a highly cyber-resilient storage solution a cornerstone and effectively the last-line-of-defense solution against ransomware threats. What better than to have an unbreakable and immutable object storage solution for mission-critical backups — and this is exactly what ARTESCA 2.0 delivers! To help with this, we’ve effectively delivered new capabilities in ARTESCA 2.0 that augment its own internal cyber-resiliency. These capabilities were specifically designed and implemented to harden the attack surface and create bulletproof ransomware protection. Here’s the context for these new capabilities: Application-level resiliency: Veeam “direct to object” backups and SOSAPI support, and automated enforcement of Veeam-validated IAM access control policies Amazon S3 object locking immutability with configurable data retention policies and compliance mode Network and data resiliency: Multi-factor authentication (MFA) for secure UI logins and automated firewall rules on deployment Secure HTTPS/TLS S3 termination and AES 256-bit data encryption-at-rest Storage resiliency: 1 to 6 servers for growth to 5 petabytes with dual-level data protection Distributed erasure coding renders data indecipherable to low-level and data exfiltration attacks, metadata in secure repository on intrinsically immutable object storage layer Integrated appliance resiliency: Integrated, security-hardened Linux operating system, precludes root access, reduces exposure to CVEs to limit a wide range of attack threats Geographic replication resiliency: Asynchronous replication to separate security and management domain for “air-gapped” offsite storage Eliminates the “all data in one place” problem More bang for the buck In these uncertain economic times, organizations are hyper-focused on making sure they get the most return on investment from their IT purchases — and rightfully so. To help them achieve this goal, Scality is dedicated to providing the best of the best at a price point that won’t give CFOs heartburn. All new and existing ARTESCA capabilities are included in our subscription offerings — support, too. Subscriptions start at under $4,000 per year for 50 TB usable capacity — a much lower entry point than any other offering on the market. We now provide two types of deployment options, so organizations can pick the best one for their needs — whether it’s on their own servers, on VMware, or in a fully pre-integrated server. ARTESCA software appliance with integrated secure and minimal Linux OS. The customer provides their own physical server host (as before), but a key difference now is that they do not have to pre-install their own Linux OS distribution. Note that this makes the installation even easier, and ARTESCA also manages all updates/patches to the integrated OS for further simplicity! ARTESCA as a virtual appliance in OVA format for fast and easy installation on VMware vSphere version 7.0 x Update 2 and later. A bolstered strategy for the long term It can’t be stated enough: Ransomware attacks are an unfortunate inevitability. They’re also increasingly expensive and damaging. It’s estimated that the average cost of a ransomware attack is now a whopping $4.54 million — that’s not counting the actual ransom — and they can take an average of 237 days to identify and another 91 days to contain. Organizations must ensure they’re doing everything they can to protect their data — and that includes fortifying their backups, which have become an increasingly common attack target for malicious actors. With ARTESCA 2.0, we’re delivering strengthened capabilities to keep your backups safe — and to provide the absolute best last-line-of defense solution for critical backup data. For our joint customers with Veeam, we’ve made this solution even easier to deploy, with excellent performance on both backup/restore. Should a restore be required after a loss event or ransomware attack, data (and business operations) can be recovered 4 to 8 times faster than with traditional backup solutions. We’re doing all of this in a way that gives our customers more freedom of choice and deployment flexibility than ever before — all at an unbeatable price — so you never have to worry about data and never pay a ransom.
