From the increasing reports of attacks on critical national infrastructure, public services, educational institutions and businesses around the world, it is clear there is an urgent need for organisations to better protect themselves from ransomware. Attacks are now growing by over 50% year-on-year and it is estimated a new company is hit every 14 seconds. With the frequency and severity of attacks on the rise and costs of remediation skyrocketing, the problem isn’t going away any time soon.
Cybercriminals can access the same technologies, services and solutions as any consumer, with the added advantage that they don’t play by the rules. This makes them agile, adaptable and always on the offensive, so an organisation must be on alert 24/7. It only takes one click from an unsuspecting employee to compromise the entire network, including all file shares, NAS, critical systems and valuable data, and it’s important to note that antivirus alone may not stop insider threats. Many organisations have endpoint security, but there are still many ways that ransomware can slip under the radar.
Over the last few years, cybercriminals have become highly sophisticated in deploying the latest tactics. Some even operating a MSP business model by offering Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) kits to any malicious actor who may lack the skills or time to develop their own variants. Unfortunately, the mass transition to remote working in response to the pandemic further complicated cybersecurity, as organisations were forced to quickly move data into public cloud environments and accommodate staff working virtually. Although this did spread the risk, it also opened up new threat vectors to be exploited.
The situation has resulted in a recent surge in demand for ransomware solutions in the form of cloud and on-premises applications and services. For over eight years we have been working closely with our clients in Austria to protect businesses and public services from some of the most complex ransomware threats in existence, and have secured growth of 100% over each of the past four years. The time is right for international expansion, not just across our key markets in Europe (including Germany, Benelux and Switzerland), but also the UK and USA.
ProLion’s growth plans are aggressive and we are keen to capitalise on the success we have achieved in our native Austrian market by expanding the workforce to accommodate this increased demand. We are also continuing to invest significantly in expanding our channel-centric go-to-market model, and are currently in the process of engaging with some of the best channel partners and ONTAP storage resellers to easily reach customers based in the UK and USA.
Robert founded ProLion in 2013 after he saw an opportunity to provide data integrity solutions to ONTAP file storage users. Robert is passionate about the solutions available to customers and continues to look for innovative ways to add to the ProLion portfolio, both for ONTAP and others.
Before he started ProLion, Robert held various roles within the IT industry, including resellers and distribution. Most recently he was the country manager for Austria at NetApp where he enjoyed considerable success. If Robert can improve the security and integrity of your data, then he has achieved his objective.
