Cohesity launches Data Security Alliance for customers
Cohesity has formed a Data Security Alliance of 12 companies and will launch its DataHawk security service in early 2023. Both are aimed at consolidating offerings for customers.
Cohesity's Data Security Alliance and DataHawk SaaS service could provide a consolidation of security services and information on best practices.
At its ReConnect Summit Tuesday, Cohesity unveiled its Data Security Alliance, which brings together 12 partner companies with cybersecurity and data security management expertise, including Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, BigID and Splunk.
The goal of the alliance is to provide Cohesity customers best security practices and problem-solving tools, according to the company. The alliance will be managed by Cohesity, with its security partners.
Each alliance member may have a different integration or relationship with Cohesity, according to the company. For example, with Cisco and Palo Alto Networks, their security platforms are integrated with Cohesity DataProtect, providing alerts of suspicious activity as an early detection of possible attacks. Mandiant and PwC will provide consulting guidance to secure systems, data, customers and businesses against the threat of cyberattacks.There is a possibility of these companies working together on products in the future, but those details have yet to be finalized.
"There's no way around it, [security is] a team sport," said Christophe Bertrand, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget. "Those who execute well with alliances and technical integrations -- those companies will do really well."
12 companies form Data Security Alliance
BigID
Cisco
Cohesity
CrowdStrike
CyberArk
Mandiant
Okta
Palo Alto Networks
PwC
Securonix
Splunk
Tenable
Cohesity also unveiled its DataHawk, a SaaS offering that combines the company's FortKnox -- an air-gapped data vault service released in May -- with threat scanning and detection, intelligent data classification into one service. The offering is set to be released early next year and pricing is not yet known. A customer must purchase DataProtect, the vendor's backup and recovery offering for on-premises and cloud workloads, before adding additional services like DataHawk.
Combining services for customers
Randy Kerns, an analyst at Evaluator Group, said Cohesity's Data Security Alliance and DataHawk SaaS offering focus on the bigger picture. With ransomware attacks coming at a company through different vectors, such as via email or through software updates where a weakness has been found, combining services in this way benefits the customer.
"This [alliance] is about putting these pieces together to integrate efforts to recover from different attacks," Kerns said.
This [alliance] is about putting these pieces together to integrate the efforts to recover for different attacks.
Randy KernsAnalyst, Evaluator Group
On the alliance, Kerns said it will help customers coordinate resources and help provide a faster response to attacks. He hopes to see more vendors become involved in this alliance as well as establish a central management and reporting system for attacks. He said that an alliance with this degree of cooperation is new.
"This will adopt different areas [of expertise] that will have [opportunities] to respond in a more centralized manner," Kerns said.
Vinny Choinski, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said that the better these services are integrated, the more effective the alliance will be. He added that not too long ago, these kinds of services would be more siloed.
"With something like ransomware, everyone needs to react," Choinski said.
DataHawk's single service
Vikram Gupta, product management leader at Cohesity, said that in creating DataHawk, the company tried to see the situation from the perspective of security operators. This meant not just detecting a threat but determining whether data was exposed and the potential damage. He added that each of DataHawk's systems can be independently turned on or off.
"So we see a tight affinity between tech scanning, data classification and then cyber warding because you are looking to create an isolated copy [of the data]," Gupta said.
Kerns said DataHawk could help customers accomplish several security-related tasks with one service. This could be helpful with more cyber threats emerging as well as the skills shortage companies are facing.
"A lot of companies have more work than they can handle," he said. "If this can simplify things by combining things into a service, they'll be able to do more [and] deploy faster with getting security and governance around the data."
Choinski said DataHawk builds off what the company has been doing. Bertrand added that with IT becoming more complex, anything that can simplify the offering is helpful.
"For existing customers, they don't have to go elsewhere," Choinski said. "Now as these services get rolled in, they have a trusted partner in Cohesity."
