What Does Axcient’s Motto, Protect Everything™ Mean?
Axcient x360 provides one platform for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to Protect Everything™. As a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions provider, Axcient has been ‘protecting everything’ for years, but only recently did we trademark Protect Everything™ to define us as an organization. Recently, Axcient CEO David Bennett, sat down with long-time Axcient partner, Kevin Dunn, Partner and CEO of DataTrends, to discuss the meaning behind the motto.
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Protect perimeters.
As a technical company devoted 100% to MSPs, we are in the business of protecting our partners, and that means our partner’s customers. David says, historically, the perimeter of protection has been the business – including things like network protection and corporate security. When 2020 accelerated the digital transformation, the perimeter expanded significantly. Then, and now having embraced remote and hybrid environments, that perimeter is a perimeter of one. It’s each individual accessing business-critical data, collaborating with coworkers, and sharing information from anywhere outside the traditional office.
Now, it’s our job to protect at-home perimeters and that puts a lot of responsibility on individual users. As we all know, despite corporate directives, best practices, and regular training, human error, laziness, and accidents are always a factor. Human error is the number one cause of data loss and in a relaxed, at-home environment, the probability of data loss rises. Not to mention the continuing spike in ransomware and phishing attacks targeting our dispersed workforce.
As a 100% channel-focused provider, Axcient is dedicated to protecting the data, privacy, and security of end users through our MSP partners. Unfortunately, as perimeters evolve and expand outside of traditional office environments, the potential for data loss increases. Some common scenarios include the following:
- Files get saved locally rather than on the corporate infrastructure – right before the device is lost, stolen, or accidentally soaked in coffee.
- New employees get taken advantage of with an imposter phishing email from the ‘CEO’ requesting specific data, or a click on the encryption link.
- Long-time users take a one-time short cut that leaves a door open for attackers to enter systems and remain unnoticed.
- Anyone in an organization can accidentally or unknowingly delete a file that is still necessary to the business.
Axcient is committed to protecting all of these individual perimeters in an effort to cure data loss. To do so, we have to protect our partners – who will protect their clients, as well as our business, so we can provide best in class solutions.
Protect MSPs.
Axcient can’t cure data loss without our MSP partners securing their clients. That makes our partners and the MSP community essential to our mission and existence. Kevin, a longtime member of Axcient’s Partner Advisory Council (PAC), has collaborated with Axcient and fellow partners for years. David says, “We have to be humble and introspective and ask, ‘does the technology uniquely solve a problem our partners are having? Or a problem our partner’s clients are having?'” Axcient looks to the PAC for these insights, including product innovation, user experience, feedback, and to identify channel needs, and we also respond to individual partner requests.
In a call with Axcient’s tech support team, Kevin said he needed to catch archive email trains. Over the course of the next few months, Axcient implemented that capability into the product, while getting Kevin’s input throughout the process. Kevin tells David, “You really meet your partner’s needs and the industry’s needs because that’s what our customers need.”
When pandemic safety precautions sent everyone home within just days, MSPs needed to provide the technical resources to make it possible. Not only were end users looking to MSPs for technical answers, but MSPs were looking to their solution providers for the same thing. Axcient responded by giving MSPs free access to our secure file sync and share solution, x360Sync. We wanted to enable productivity, decrease downtime, and protect remote perimeters without adding costs for MSPs and their clients. Equipped with free and secure file sync and share, MSPs were able to continue providing the business continuity and enablement they promised.
MSPs were faced with the same hardships as every other business, so Axcient responded by giving, rather than selling. We focused on protecting our partner’s businesses as best as we could to keep them in existence, and in turn, keep their clients in existence. Later, we offered free access to x360Cloud for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup. Again, it was what people needed to keep their perimeters secure, while continuing to work from remote locations.
Protect Axcient.
In order to provide free access to secure collaboration and data storage tools during the pandemic, Axcient had to find resources internally. David committed to doing everything possible to prevent layoffs, continue supporting the channel, and keep Axcient going – but he couldn’t do it alone. Axcient initiated a company-wide incentive program to find ways to save. Cut Out Waste, or COW as we call it, encourages employees to identify unnecessary costs within each department that could reduce overhead. That program proved wildly successful and allowed Axcient to continue to fund free solutions for the channel, while working with partners to remain resilient during these unprecedented times.
Protect backups.
David explains, “The way I look at security is, if someone is going to steal your car, you can do all these things to prevent that, but in the end, they’re going to take it if they want it. Same thing with data. No matter what, someone is going to get lucky, get clever, or utilize human interaction to get information, or get into systems. So what we took a hard look at was, ‘how do we ultimately solve that?'” Axcient is in the business of recovery, and the worst case scenario for data loss is that you either don’t have backups, or your backups are compromised.
It’s not just about protecting data, it’s about protecting backups. Axcient’s problem solving process is to take that worst case scenario and solve the issue. To protect backups no matter what, we developed AirGap technology. AirGap separates data deletion requests from deletion mechanics, and requires human authentication for final deletion. David says, “If you have great backups that can ensure recoverability, ransomware is null and void because you can always get your information back. So we’ve solved the problem.”
Other Axcient features include Virtual Office which provides near-instant virtualization for self-managed disaster recovery during a natural disaster or device compromise. AutoVerify automatically virtualizes the latest backup recovery point for each system and runs numerous integrity checks before backup verification, so MSPs have confidence in backups without manual processes. And Direct-to-Cloud hardware-free BDR, was specifically launched during the pandemic to address remote endpoints. Kevin explains, “Direct-to-Cloud allows us – without any hardware – to be able to remote-in to an at-home computer and put in the full protective force of x360Recover, so that the home laptop or PC is fully protected.”
Protect Everything™
So what does Axcient’s motto, Protect Everything™ mean? It means that no matter how data is compromised – be it malicious or accidental deletion, through ransomware or phishing attack, natural disaster, or a destroyed device – Axcient’s BCDR solutions will keep your business running. Throughout the value chain – from Axcient solutions to our MSP partners, to their clients – Axcient can Protect Everything™.
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