Semperis and Veritas to protect against Active Directory attacks

Microsoft AD, the primary identity system and backbone of IT operations for 90 percent of organisations, is a common target for ransomware operators and other attackers. Disruptions to AD services lead to significant downtime and organisational losses, making AD protection a top security priority. The most destructive cyberattack to date, NotPetya, wrought $10 billion in total damages, according to White House officials. Like many high-profile companies impacted by NotPetya, the world’s largest shipping firm, Maersk, spent over a week manually recovering its AD.

“Across all verticals, organisations have an urgent need for robust AD security and recovery solutions. Our solution integration with Semperis helps customers minimise cyber recovery time following an AD attack and guard against follow-on attacks by eliminating backdoors and other vulnerabilities left behind in the AD environment,” said Matt Waxman, SVP, GM, Data Protection, Veritas. “By bringing together the strengths of both companies, we can offer organisations a comprehensive, layered defence strategy against a broad spectrum of cyber threats.”

“Semperis is on a mission to be a force for good in the fight against ransomware gangs and other bad actors,” said Darren Mar-Elia, Semperis VP of Products. “We’re constantly innovating to deliver the industry’s most comprehensive protection for hybrid identity environments, and Active Directory forest recovery is a critical component of our layered defence approach. Partnering with data protection and backup leaders like Veritas means our joint customers benefit from integrated and holistic ransomware response capabilities across multiple specialties.”

The Semperis-Veritas collaboration coincides with the launch of Veritas 360 Defense, an extensible framework that integrates cyber resiliency solutions from Veritas with a broad ecosystem of solutions from leading security vendors, including Semperis. Veritas 360 Defense unites data security, data protection, and data governance, guiding organisations through an approach that spans the gamut of the cyber resiliency lifecycle from heterogeneous asset inventory to extensible orchestrated recovery.

The Veritas customer base comprises more than 90 percent of the Fortune 100. Semperis and Veritas protect the world’s largest companies. The joint solution delivers unparalleled protection and recovery for AD environments, including:

• A blueprint for inventorying, classifying, and monitoring data with Veritas 360 Defense to protect it from cyberattacks

• Anomaly detection and virus scanning through Veritas NetBackup to ensure data is virus-free before recovery

• Fast, automated, malware-free recovery of the entire AD forest to any virtual or physical hardware with Semperis ADFR in the event of an attack that compromises AD

• Post-breach forensics with Semperis ADFR to help incident response teams eliminate backdoors, attack paths and other vulnerabilities remaining in the environment

“Veritas and Semperis are industry leaders in data protection and AD security and recovery, respectively,” added Mar-Elia. “This collaboration leverages the strengths of both companies to provide thousands of organisations unmatched AD resilience. Our AD backup and recovery solution will help Veritas’ customers not only recover from AD attacks faster but also ensure that any lingering vulnerabilities are eradicated from the environment.”