Protecting What Matters Most
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by I.T. From early 8-bit home computers to modern PCs, I’ve always loved working with technology. By my teenage years, I’d become the go-to I.T. support expert for my friends and family – helping them fix their computers and back up their invaluable photos and documents.
Fast-forward a few years and I found myself about to graduate from university (naturally, in an I.T. related subject!) and thinking about what to do next. When the opportunity arose to teach English at a school in Japan, I jumped at the chance to see more of the world while I decided on a career.
Following a Passion
For the next three years, I taught English at a high school in Japan. I quickly realised that digital tools and multimedia were a brilliant way to engage my students. Before too long, I convinced the school to use laptops in their classrooms – a concept that was somewhat rare at the time. Additionally, I built a number of computers from scratch for the school and it was immensely rewarding to provide a platform for students to have safe, supervised internet access during their free time. From this point on, I knew I.T. would always be a major part of my future and I spent the following year in Tokyo, immersed in the latest tech.
Ever since, helping people to protect data has been at the heart of what I do. After honing my skills at a series of London accountancies, I moved to Mishcon de Reya LLP – one of the UK’s leading independent law firms.
Keeping Pace With Evolving Threats
Since joining Mishcon de Reya, I’ve seen data protection evolve dramatically as a discipline. Both companies and criminals alike have come to realise just how valuable a commodity data is.
For a law firm like mine, defending against cyberattacks such as ransomware has never been more important. Our fee-earners utilise a variety of platforms to work on complex and sensitive matters, and any data breach would represent a major regulatory and reputational risk.
To help ensure that such a breach never happens, we’ve made Veeam the cornerstone of our data protection strategy. With the Veeam Data Platform, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, we protect our data and systems on-premise and in the cloud. We can reliably backup and encrypt our data automatically, at intervals based on the criticality of each system. If the worst were to happen, we know that all our mission-critical systems are easily recoverable with Veeam.
Safeguarding a Global Business
One thing I take great satisfaction from in my job is that I get to protect data throughout its entire lifecycle: from the moment it’s created to the time it’s deleted (in accordance with our retention policies, of course). There’s so much to consider with this process: the services where the data resides, the networking in between, the compute you have available, and the endless possibilities for tuning and efficiency when backing up and recovering within tight timescales.
I greatly value our relationship with Veeam because they are always developing and looking for smarter, more cost-effective ways to protect and restore data which is also a passion of mine. For example, whenever Mishcon de Reya sets up a new office, whether in the UK or anywhere in the world, Veeam makes it so quick and easy to bring those systems into our central data protection solution.
The Veeam product suite makes everything seamless, so for the majority of the business and our users, most of our data protection services are completely invisible. But, whenever Mishcon de Reya needs Veeam, the solution is there for us. When our solicitors ask for help, they’re often surprised to learn that not only can I restore accidentally deleted files, but I can even restore different versions of those files going back six months or more in mere minutes.
Bringing Data Protection Home
Today, I’m still the go-to I.T. expert for my friends and family. The big difference is that I can bring everything I’ve learned from a long career in enterprise data protection to help them automate the protection of cherished photos, videos and other important data. And what’s more, I’m doing it with Veeam.
A few years ago, I built and installed some lightweight servers running Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition in the homes of several family and friends and networked them together via their household broadband connections. This allows us to automatically back up each household’s data to another householder’s server. Effectively, we’re bringing Veeam enterprise-class data protection capabilities right into their homes!
If you want to find out how Veeam can protect your data from ransomware, you can request a custom demo.