News Sponsored by HUAWEI Pura80 series:

The surge in AI adoption and the continuous evolution of cyber threats are reshaping the expectations placed on IT infrastructure. Protecting data is no longer a solely operational concern - it’s a cornerstone of business continuity fundamentally tied to customer trust and organisational success.

“Today’s IT environments are more complex than ever before, spanning on-premises infrastructure, multicloud solutions and edge deployments. At the same time, cyberattacks are increasing in volume and sophistication,” says Musa Masungwini, Data Protector & Cyber Defender at Dell Technologies South Africa.

To help businesses stay a step ahead, Dell has released a host of cyber resilience enhancements that redefine how organisations can secure and recover data.

“With innovations designed to enhance data security, detection and recovery capabilities, Dell helps ensure businesses can navigate an increasingly hostile cybersecurity landscape with confidence,” Masungwini says. “Enhancements to Dell’s PowerProtect Data Manager deliver the infrastructure flexibility and operational efficiency organisations need to adapt their data protection strategies without compromising security or performance.”

For example, the Linux Installation option expands deployment choices by enabling direct installation on physical servers with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 (SLES15) SP6, providing organisations with hypervisor flexibility to align with their preferred infrastructure strategies. Organisations gain true platform choice during infrastructure planning, while the Generic Application Agent with Custom Script Support extends protection to modern database environments including MySQL, MariaDB and MongoDB, accelerating time-to-protection for new workloads.

In addition, enhanced visibility and simplified management drive operational efficiency across distributed environments. Multisystem Reporting with PowerBI support enables centralised monitoring of up to 150 Data Manager instances through enterprise-preferred visualisation tools. Similarly, Avamar VM Copies Migration provides a clear consolidation path by managing legacy Avamar VM copies directly within PowerProtect Data Manager.

According to Masungwini, security enhancements through Enterprise SSO integration with EntraID and Ping One align with corporate identity management standards, while Conditional Replication optimises storage consumption by enabling selective replication of specific backup schedules rather than every backup copy.

On the cybersecurity front, PowerProtect Cyber Recovery and CyberSense enhancements deliver new capabilities to address critical challenges in ransomware recovery, multicloud protection and operational efficiency. CyberSense Analytics now supports Azure environments, providing 99.99% accurate data integrity validation within a Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery vault housed in a customer’s Azure tenant.

“This enhancement ensures faster, more reliable recoveries from cyber threats. Additionally, CyberSense Analytics expands to support Commvault client-direct backups of File Systems and SQL via DD Boost, enabling secure and efficient protection with immutable copies for enhanced resilience and rapid recovery,” Masungwini says.

Dell has also introduced significant improvements to recovery processes. PowerProtect Data Manager streamlines policy restoration, simplifies the management of multiple Data Domain systems and enhances recovery orchestration from a Cyber Recovery vault. These updates reduce complexity and dramatically improve recovery time objectives (RTOs), providing customers with faster, reliable data restoration and confidence in their operational continuity.

Enhancements to the Data Domain operating system further bolster security and usability with SAML-based Single Sign-On, GUI-based Common Access Card (CAC) and Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card support, and one-time password Multi-factor Authentication with Google and Microsoft. Updates also strengthen reliability with KMS cluster support for uninterrupted operations and simplify troubleshooting through an automated health check tool, delivering a secure, efficient and streamlined experience.

Furthermore, NetWorker introduces enhancements to boost performance, efficiency and security capabilities. Features include modernised tape and library management, orchestrated replication and high-density NAS administration. Compliance is fortified with OpenSSL 3.0 and support for JAVA JDK17 and JRE17, while multi-hypervisor support adds File Level Recovery for Hyper-V and improved resource monitoring. With performance upgrades for high-density NAS, CloudBoost enhancements and Data Domain Operating System 8.3 support, the release also offers granular level recovery for Microsoft SharePoint service applications which help ensure robust, streamlined operations across workloads.

Masungwini says Dell Technologies continues to set the benchmark for how organisations build scalable, cyber-resilient infrastructure to future-proof their operations. “With solutions like PowerProtect Data Manager, PowerProtect Cyber Recovery and PowerProtect Data Domain, the PowerProtect portfolio provides organisations with the tools they need to protect their data and help ensure business continuity in the face of evolving cyber threats.”