Recently Palo Alto-based Rubrik announced their acquisition of Laminar, a leading manufacturer of cloud-native, DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) software. Mike Tornincasa, Rubrik Chief Business Officer, said
“[The] combination [of the two companies] will create the industry’s first complete cyber resilience offering of its kind by bringing together cyber recovery and cyber posture across enterprise, cloud, and SaaS.” How does this affect Rubrik and the other data protection providers in the market? Read on and we’ll talk about it.
Backup vs Data Protection Software
Backup software does exactly what its name implies: It backs up production data so that it can be restored to avoid data loss. Since this software was protecting a company’s data, the term Data Protection (DP) software has replaced the term backup software. Data Protection sounds much more sophisticated than Backup software, doesn’t it?
At some point, some of the DP software manufacturers realized that data protection solutions could do much more. Since DP software is touching and reading all of the data, it should be able to glean information from that data. In the early 2000’s a few startups tried to dive into this area but the ones that did only provided products with basic functionality and they failed to show businesses useful information which would enhance their value. While these original attempts were clumsy, a new path for DP software is taking place due to the threat landscape that has affected corporations.
Rubrik has been one of the pioneers in pushing the new paradigm of Data Protection software capabilities. As malware has become a constant threat that IT staffs are forced to combat, Rubrik has added cybersecurity features to scan for malware and to remediate systems should they become compromised.
With this acquisition of Laminar, Rubrik continues to push Data Protection software into the security area of the IT landscape.
What does Laminar do?
“Laminar’s signature product is a data security posture management tool that detects and alerts on policy violations, prioritizes issues for resolution and provides actionable remediation recommendations. The company also can discover and classify data across AWS, Azure, GCP and Snowflake, map which entities are accessing what sensitive data, and monitor and detect anomalous access patterns.”1
Cost of a Data Breach
A few stats about the costs of a Data Breach (who doesn’t love stats, right?)
- The global average cost of a data breach in 2023 was $4.45 million, a 15% increase over 3 years.
- 51% of organizations are planning to increase security investments as a result of a breach, including incident response (IR) planning and testing, employee training, and threat detection and response tools.
- The average savings for organizations that use security AI and automation extensively is $1.76 million compared to organizations that don’t.
- 82% – The percentage of breaches that involved data stored in the cloud – public, private, or multiple environments.2
As you can see, increasing security to an IT environment has proven savings. It has also created opportunities for software manufacturers to develop products to fill this gap.
And what does this all mean?
Most companies have adopted hybrid-cloud strategies which has resulted in employees putting data in a multitude of places including databases, file shares, chats, Microsoft teams, etc. Laminar provides visibility to information on where it is located, who has access to it, and the ability remediate it. Determining where sensitive data resides is no easy task. Ask any IT administrator where the company’s sensitive data resides, and they’ll just turn up their hands.
“There is a dark side to digital transformation in the form of shadow data, and more businesses are realizing they can’t protect against what they can’t see—leaving them vulnerable to cyberattacks,” said Amit Shaked, Laminar CEO and co-founder.
“The combination will create the industry’s first complete cyber resilience offering of its kind by bringing together cyber recovery and cyber posture across enterprise, cloud, and SaaS. This acquisition supports Rubrik’s leadership position as one of the preeminent data security platforms and furthers the company’s mission to secure the world’s data.” 3
1www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/datadog-rubrik-are-in-talks-to-buy-laminar-for-200m-p-3445
2www.ibm.com/reports/data-breach
3www.rubrik.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/23/rubrik-acquires-dspm-leader-laminar-to-accelerate-cloud-data-security
How Mainline Helps with Data Protection
The Data Protection discussion should be about how DP software can proactively protect your environment instead of just being a reactionary tool. Gaining visibility to those threats is key to being able to fight them.
Mainline works with all the major data storage technology companies, like Rubrik, and together we develop an optimum data protection strategy to protect company information. With deep knowledge across the entire spectrum of cyber storage and data protection options, we help our clients select and acquire the best offerings to suit their unique business needs and budget.
There are many cyber storage solutions in the market and selecting the right solution for your business can be daunting. Mainline offers a free cyber storage assessment which helps bring clarity to selecting and implementing the right enterprise data protection solution for the client’s business.
Summary
With this acquisition, Rubrik will provide greater insight into the environment to help combat threats to corporation’s data. We see the key benefits of the Rubrik and Laminar Integration as follows:
- Proactively improve cyber posture to stop cyberattacks before they happen by knowing where all the organization’s data lives, who has access to the data, and how it’s being used.
- Expand focus beyond just network and endpoint security to include cloud and data security.
- Prepare for more sophisticated cyber threats with AI-driven technology.
More information
For more information on how we can help your organization improve their cyber storage resilience to combat cyber threats, or assistance with primary storage or secondary storage options, contact your Mainline Account Representative directly, or reach out to us here with any questions.
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