Continuous DR – Stacy Hayes, Assured Data Protection

This is texturing TV. Hey everyone, welcome welcome back to techstrong TV. I am happy to have a new person a first-time person.

It's not a new person, but he's a first-time person here on Tech stroke TV. His name is Stacy Hayes. He's co-founder over at a short day to protection many of you.

If you've heard of a short data protection may know them is short, but the real name is a short day to protection. Hey Stacy, welcome to text drunk TV. Hey Alan.

Thanks for having me. Really really quite an honor to be on on Tech strong TV. So, thanks.

I don't know if it's an honor, but thank you. Stacey I always like to you know, kind of lay a foundation of giving people an idea of who you are and a little bit about your company. Absolutely, Alan and you know, like you said you there's a there's a lot of company names out there in the world and a lot of people may not recognize our name but they may recognize the name of one of our key Partners, which is a company called rubric out of Palo Alto.

Sure. I'm sure you've heard of rubric before right right. So where they're MSP number one, we literally been working with rubrics since 2015.

So seven years and really have been with them since the very beginning. I mean, you know, they're 10 years old. So we we got a very deep level of experience with them great little Side Story.

They found us they were looking for their their Pathway to Market is is a hundred percent indirect. So they sell through the the value add reseller Channel and And they were looking to begin an MSP offering and they were looking for an anchor partner and the traditional vars, you know, the models don't work. That way of our model is episodic.

It's transactional based MSP is built it so that they will come this is my second company. It's my business partner second company in the data protection space. I've started my first company back in 2000.

We were required in a round about way in 2010 by Verizon and Simon my business partner kind of the same story. He is company was acquired in 2013. We were friends.

We were looking for something to do quite frankly. We didn't want to do day to protection. It's not the most exotic thing in the world.

We would kind of hope we could be Sports agents or or you know, yeah, right, but I think it's some point, you know, you kind of under come to the realization that you need to know you need to do. You know and obviously we noticed space very well rubric literally approached us through a distributor in the United Kingdom. And we got our people right, you know, I you know, Simon had Simon had exited the business was doing other things.

I've stayed in technology and was coming up on an inflection point with another startup that I was at that, you know had been acquired by EMC and then EMC was being acquired by Dell. So the timing is right for us to do something we got introduced to rubric we pulled our engineering people and we said look at this and they were like, oh wow and two big things one. We knew right away that it was gonna disrupt a very static and and Industry segment and needed disruption the data protection space but two, we really saw the foundations for that second act that, you know, you've got to have in the valley, you know, if you got a good idea And you do BC around that time where you start to Plateau, you've got to start monetizing that investment and if you don't have something to springboard that second product and then rubrics instance.

It was really these tools that are now being brought to bear the foresight here was uncanny because you've got an immutable level of protection and this is you know, a lot of immutable is the is a the world would like to tell us that immutability is an overused word it is if you're Faking It rubric you're not they got a they got a hundred percent track record of never being compromised, you know from from a ransomware attack. So it's true immutability, but then the tools that we lay on top of this platform to help customers. Since the looking at the protected data, is there is there a bad actor?

Determine what the blast radius is if the actor strikes and then automate the recovery of the data afterwards. It was those tools that we saw seven years ago really before this scourge of of ransomware stroke malware is upon us that that really made us quit our day jobs and start assured data protection. And so we we literally started the company around one OEM.

We only do rubric we don't do anything else. I like to tell everyone that's a bet seven years later than I'm still glad I made um, and it's been very successful. Absolutely, and you know, you're right Stacey data protection Disaster Recovery.

It's not the sexiest thing on Earth, you know, we'd all like to be sportscasters or movie stars or something else, but you know what it never goes out of style either not only does it never go out of style. You know almost cyclically or periodically new new threats emerge new vectors emerge that once again prove. Look if you are a prudent business person a reasonable business.

You've got to be doing something in the data protection Dr. Space. I mean, you know, I live here in South Florida right for us.

A lot of Dr. Stuff was when I'm safaricane hit and wiped out your data center or you know, something else like a natural catastrophe. But you're right over the last I mean, you know, six seven years you probably did in foresee it but sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart who would have thought that this ransomware.

Scourge as you called it would grow into what it is. I mean we were talking off camera some of these ransomware organizations So full featured they have helped us. They they have channels they have you know Partners.

It's it's amazing. I mean, these are not, you know Kitty scriptures anymore. No, no, they're not and and that's really where a piece of our value gets called into play because in addition to being a man, you know, what is a managed services provider?

Well, you know, it's core, right? It's operationalizing the tech and delivering it as a managed service but but our infrastructure our topology if you will we establish Tennessee tenancy on premise and so we're introducing a physical Appliance a quarter, you know leveraging this technology, but also operationalized and delivered as a service on-prem, but then we replicate that data into very secure data centers all around the globe. So we have physical footprint in Singapore in Europe in the UK and in the US and in those replication sites, we deliver not only Second Sight redundancy.

So like you said in Florida, you know, if you know if we we call it Broken hole right, but for some reason, you know, you got you've lost power for two weeks. You know, let's that's not forget that you know before ransomware. We still need a Dr.

As a service but our topology once we got that second copy is to give customers an automated method of recovery that we Define as Dr. As a service. So in our world we for those customers that that opt for that level of service we have our own proprietary tools that give the customer the ability to launch a recovery and in an automated Fashion on the back end their VMS in their applications to come up, you know, so VMS coming up in an application aware format fully automated with no human Intervention, basically up to the point of human Intervention, which is typically when you see the requirement to cut over active directory.

Because we sit inside of a physical asset. We have the ability to extend connectivity. So a lot of customers will bring in an SD wind device make us a note on their Network again lots of Automation and pre-planning to support Disaster Recovery with this idea that something happens and like you said, you know, we've been talking about you.

You mentioned cyclical. What a great word, right? Because we've been talking about draz literally all of our professional lives and we probably always will be but you know, the idea is that you're dealing with the problem and rant if you think about it ransomware is not much different than a hurricane, right?

It's a problem you got to deal with it. So the idea is that you declare your disaster. Everything's coming up in an automated format up to the point where it's time for you to do something.

But all the work has been done all the pre work has been done. It has been captured in autom. Mission such that when the real problem occurs you're there and you're ready to go.

where we see this impacting the ransomware conversation is That as we talked about off-screen, it's one thing to protect the data. That's kind of table Stakes. If you got to negotiate with the bad guys to get your data unencrypted.

There's not much you can do until you get your data back, but once but let's assume for a minute that the date is protected. Where are you going to recover it to if you're on premise infrastructure still compromised, and and now we see and you mentioned you mentioned cybersecurity and you mentioned that now oftentimes a declaration is taken out of hands of the practitioners and putting the hand of the insurance companies. We see we see law enforcement engaged, you know, basically the the digital equivalent of yellow tape around the infrastructure.

And so your data is protected. Where are you going to recover? And so are you gonna be out?

Are you gonna suffer a business Interruption for 72 hours for a week for two weeks that is as damaged as damaging as losing your data or having your data, it's still traded and so the ability to invoke what would traditionally be something that you only invoked, you know, in the event of something extreme fire cable cut hurricane now to vote that same process in a response to a ransomware attack. Bring that environment back up eliminate downtime. That's really the value of our company and really that MSP space overall.

You know Crystal, thanks for that Stacy. Let's dig into that a little bit. Right we've looked at the ransomware issue, you know seven ways from Sunday, right?

We've spoken to cyber Insurance insurers. We've spoken anti-fishing people we've spoken to you know, many different people along that ransomware kind of attack surface and defense we don't spend a lot of time is Okay. What okay, you you either paid or didn't pay they gave you the decrypt code.

It doesn't work or you didn't pay right but you've paid for an insurance. you know kind of kind of Solution to Dr. Solution, how do you how do you know real nuts and bolts?

How do you recover here? What do you do? What are the steps to get get things back on line back on track without you know shutting your company down for two weeks.

Great great question Alan and and the answer is is that declaration because once you declare and we bring you up again the long pole in this tent isn't the recovery of VMS companies like rubric have made that stick simple. The challenge is the network. It's how do your users find their applications when they're not where they were supposed to be and that's where that pre work and you can't you can't discount the pre-work.

The automation doesn't work if the pre-works not done and so in our world when you sign up it's important to know that when you sign up as a Dr. As a service customer we give you two drills per year for free. For a period of up to six days.

We forgive the consumption cost of resources. So you think about you know, what is the expense of cloud, you know, and we're obviously, you know, we are the cloud provider, you know for our OEM we suspend the cost of those resources for a period of up to six days bring your environment up and give it to you in a bubble. So we don't have to re-ip and the reason for that is so that you can log in and you can do uat you can do performance testing you can move things around you can get a feel for what it means to be operating in in a remote site for a period of time.

We do that twice a year at the end of those drills. We produce two documents one's a simple certificate. It's designed to be handed to a third party many of our customers have to document that they can they not can but they have executed successful drills back to their insurance companies back to their third party audit.

Also up to the board of directors the second report much more detailed and in-depth because it documents all the changes that need to be made to the automation because as you and I know it is not static. It's Dynamic it changes all the time. And so I used to be in the Navy.

I used to run the damage control training team and you know in the Navy you run a drill every day 365 days a year you run a drill and I can't tell you how many times as a young officer on the Navy ship the kids will come up to me. It was it was Christmas Eve and they're like, yeah and you know and I was the dispersing officer and so they call me disbone. They're like this boat tell me we don't have to run a drill today and I was like, yeah, we're running real every day.

And the reason you run a drill every day is because when the surface under your feet is on fire or Sinking you don't want to have to think you want to be able to act you just muscle muscle reaction. And that's what that's what the drill process is about. So Once you've got that really wired up the the thing happens you come up and then like you said, I want to answer your question.

So now you've been over here in your second sight for 72 hours for a week or two. You've got new data, but the great thing about the technology is that what used to be replicas now become primary. And so we're back in that data up and we're capturing all those changes.

When it comes time to come home. And sometimes you come home. Sometimes you don't come home.

We've got a great instance of a company and again to deviate from the ransomware story. They were struck by a riot and and you know in 2000 and it and it penetrated their data center. It was in the back of a retail outlet.

They operated in our environment for 90 days for three months and when they failed back they said we're not going back there. We're going back to a combination of secured Colo and public Cloud Azure. So there's always the coming home did that then has to be sorted.

But again, this is where the magic of the technology continues to have a massive effect. Rubric replication is is is incremental forever. It's astonishing so the replica became primary for a temporary period of time.

Coming home was figured out whether that was back where you used to be or whether it was somewhere else replication is reversed with our staff acting as an extension to your it Department such that now the data is back where it needed to be you're doing it over the weekend in a very controlled format you cut over with zero downtime. So it's all about again the value of an MSP in this environment where if you were on your own you struggle to do that, but because we do that every day, it makes it that much easier and it turns into it turns into that true intrinsic value of having experts that are part of a service delivery model. You don't need them every day you hope you never need them.

But man when you do it's sure good when they when they when they're there You know what? So that's right there Stacy that's gold right because that's the truth. Right?

You don't it's like insurance right? Well beyond that it's like security. the best the best example of having great security is not having any incidents that you've got to report right, you know you hope to never have to and you you deploy your Dr stuff.

You never have to stand it up over there. But when you do you want to know it works, it works quickly and it and it's seamless is already seamless as possible. Let's talk a little bit nuts and bolts.

Someone's listening out there and says, you know. This sounds like something reasonable. Look cyber insurance is going through a crazy time right now.

These cyber insurance agencies are becoming very needy whatever demanding about what they want their customers to do before the insurance and the rates are not. Cheap someone says you know what I'm going to cut to the chase. I want a good Dr.

System here. Rubric sounds great. How do they how did they engage do they have to go through Palo?

Do they go to you directly? Are you the one source of Truth for them? What it how do we do that?

So great question about the business model because in this world it's all about it's it's all about that trusted relationship. And so first off table space State table Stakes, how do you find us assured Dash? com.

So sure Dash DP find us you go to rubric and you say I need managed service for Rick's gonna come right to us because we're MSP number one, but the important thing Alan is how do these customers buy and that's where and I told the story earlier about about rubric being 100% indirect. We are massive Believers of the channel and why that why why do you believe in the channel? Is it a route to Market?

Of course, that's not the value of the channel. The value of the channel is a trusted relationship between an IT supplier in an IT and user and so We mimic the rubric selling motion and we sell all 100% through the channel. There are a lot of big-name brand recognizable value-added resellers where we are their white label provider.

They sell our service as theirs. They take first call support. We're a natural escalation for level two anything my team which is available.

Oh by the way, 24/7 100% trained engineers. And so when you're calling, you know from from either a tier one or a tier two perspective, there's a there is a rubric train rubric certified assured trying to assured certified engineer answering the phone anything. My team can't handle is by definition something that only rubric can handle we're fully integrated into itsm platforms and the ticketing systems.

So it's seamless at no point is the customer get handed off to the OEM and we go. Oh Not our problem. It's theirs and we own it as a white glove service all the way back down to ticket closure and the customer is buying that through CDW Shi or one of their Regional Partners, like like a C3 Technologies or a free it so it's all about that trusted advisor and and that really makes for a good experience versus having to just you know, I don't know put a store put a billboard up and and try to talk people into the fact that they're gonna trust you with their most valuable asset, which is their data.

So I think by working through the channel, we have a great leg up where you know, it's it's all about people are people are worried or how do you make the right choice here? It's difficult. But if you can travel through that that relationship that is the channel between between the end user and and that seller Then you've got a much better experience.

Great. Hey Stacey, we're way over time here. I'm sorry, but I want to thank you for coming on and talking about this because this is kind of a underreported under talked about aspect of this whole ransomware You know wave that would deal with continued success.

Keep up the great work come back and keep us posted. Thank you so much Alan. I could talk about this all day.

But like I said we got things to do. So appreciate you. Alrighty, Stacy Hayes assured data protection.

That's a short hyphen DP. We're going to take a break here. We'll be right back.