You don’t need to be told by now about the dangers of ransomware. But despite the huge interest in the topic, it can be surprising to find out how little companies know about protecting themselves from ransomware.

Jon Toor, CMO of Cloudian, says that among the many things you can do, there’s one thing more important than the rest: making sure your data is immutable. Immutable data is data that can’t be changed, so if ransomware strikes, you simply restore from your immutable backup, and you’re back in business.

Toor discusses data immutability and other ransomware topics in this episode of “10 on Tech” with ActualTech Media Partner James Green. Having the proper understanding of the threat is your first best weapon against the bad guys, so listen in and learn.

Highlights of the show include:

* The three key attack vectors for ransomware

* What companies are missing when calculating potential damage from a ransomware attack

* The true costs of a ransomware breach—it’s not just the ransom

* “After-the-attack” costs

* The single most important thing to protect

Resource links from the show:

Cloudian’s ransomware solution -- https://cloudian.com/ransom

HyperStore® S3-compatible object storage -- https://cloudian.com/products/hyperstore/

Free trial of Cloudian -- https://cloudian.com/free-trial/

The most comprehensive ransomware education site on the Internet – https://ransomware.org

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

PDI Software CTO Chris Berry says that it’s a matter of “when,” not “if,” your organization will be hit by a ransomware attack. And she’s right.

On this episode of “10 on Tech,” Berry and ActualTech Media Partner James Green dive into the hottest topic in IT: the growing scourge of ransomware, which is affecting every corner of the industry. It's a plague that will only expand, since it has now become big business, operating in fact like any other business with a profit motive.

PDI focuses on markets with a highly distributed IT infrastructure, like convenience retail and wholesale petroleum. With so many edge locations and endpoints to secure, PDI has a vested interest in stopping ransomware, and understands better than most the vulnerabilities faced by these types of businesses. Learn how they’re protecting their customers, and more, in this discussion.

Highlights of the show include:

* Why PDI customers’ biggest security concern is ransomware

* Why ransomware is a special problem for distributed environments

* The top three ways ransomware gets into your organization

* The reasons it can make sense to outsource your ransomware protection to a third party

Resource links from the show:

PDI Software homepage -- https://www.pdisoftware.com/

What really happens during a ransomware attack? -- https://www.pdisoftware.com/news/what-really-happens-during-a-ransomware-attack/

PDI Case Studies -- https://www.pdisoftware.com/case-studies/

PDI Blog -- https://www.pdisoftware.com/blog/

A new website for ransomware education – https://ransomware.org

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

Here’s a fact you probably didn’t know: it’s not uncommon at all for a ransomware payment to be only a small portion of the overall financial impact of an attack. The bigger part, quite often, is the income lost by the business downtime.

Mihir Shah, CEO/Co-Founder, StorCentric, believes that recovery should happen in a matter of hours, minimizing losses. He discussed the ransomware epidemic on this episode of “10 on Tech” with ActualTech Media Partner James Green.

Do you have a comprehensive strategy for getting your company back on its feet after an attack? Are you sure? Do you think that ransomware insurance is enough to protect you? If so, this is a must-listen episode.

Highlights of the show include:

* How to protect edge data

* The crucial ability to recover quickly from a ransomware attack

* The difficulty of protecting data that can be anywhere

* The cost difference between paying a ransom and business downtime

* Why one successful ransomware attack can quickly lead to others

* The drawbacks of ransomware insurance policies

Resource links from the show:

StorCentric homepage -- https://storcentric.com/

Blog: Advanced Ransomware Protection Against the Threat of Ransomware -- https://storcentric.com/advanced-ransomware-protection-against-the-threat-of-ransomware/

StorCentric case studies -- https://storcentric.com/resources/resource-center/case-studies/

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

We are now in the era of cloud-native application development. And while this new paradigm has incredible benefits in terms of time to market, efficiency, and more, it ramps up the complexity factor significantly.

With dozens, hundreds, or thousands of microservices comprising an application, observability is harder than ever, while at the same time being more crucial than ever. There are a lot of moving parts to track.

That problem is the subject of this “10 on Tech” episode with Chronosphere. CEO/Co-Founder Martin Mao joins ActualTech Media Partner James Green for a fascinating discussion on this emerging topic. They chat about the challenges of observability in cloud-native environments, and why the “3 Pillars” of observability are starting points, not the end of the game of proper outcomes.

Highlights of the show include:

* What Chronosphere learned about app observability from Uber

* Why it’s imperative that developers monitor their own cloud-native apps

* Advantages of observability in cloud-native production environments

* How cloud-native infrastructure complexity hampers observability

* The “3 Pillars” of observability

* How Chronosphere addresses the “3 Phases” of observability

Resource links from the show:

Chronosphere homepage -- https://chronosphere.io/

Cloud-native monitoring -- https://chronosphere.io/product/#cloud-native-monitoring

It’s all about scale: Why a delivery app company needed true cloud-native monitoring --

https://chronosphere.io/learn/delivery-app-case-study/

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

Believe it or not, there was a time when virtualizing servers was hard. Not so much anymore. In a way, that’s where we are with databases in the public cloud. It’s hard, and it can be intimidating to make the switch.

When we look back in a few years, though, we may wonder why it seemed so hard to move data from strictly on-premises to off-premises environments.

That’s the subject of this episode of “10 on Tech,” featuring a conversation with Chris Buckel, VP of Business Development for Silk. Silk calls itself the “database supercharger,” and helps migrate databases safely to the cloud. Chris chats with ActualTech Media Partner James Green about the current state of cloud-based data, and what the future holds. (Hint: it’s not as scary as you think).

Highlights of the show include:

* What “Cloud, Chapter 2” means

* Why “anchor workloads” could be holding your databases back

* The challenges of moving databases into the public cloud

* The top pain points organizations have when moving data to the cloud

* Primary drivers for choosing a public cloud provider

* How Silk helps companies move their databases to the cloud

Resource links from the show:

Silk Data homepage -- https://silk.us/

3-month free trial of Silk -- https://silk.us/request-a-demo

Silk data sheet -- https://silk.us/static/3e64f556fb3b07e82877a60bc4ce87bd/Silk-Data-Sheet-Sept4-1.pdf

Silk Case Studies -- https://silk.us/success-stories

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

“The computing edge” is a sexy buzzword right now. But is that really what you want as an IT admin? No—what you want, what you need, is infrastructure that just works, whether it’s on-premises or at the edge.

That means your edge infrastructure needs to be reliable, especially in areas where it can be notoriously unreliable, and it needs to be run with as little administrative overhead as possible. Even if that means almost no overhead at all. In other words, the edge needs to be so boring that you don’t stay up nights worrying about whether it’ll suddenly go down.

Scale Computing understands that, and CEO/Co-Founder Jeff Ready discusses how to make edge computing boring with ActualTech Media Partner James Green on this episode of “10 on Tech.” They chat about how computing is changing, and what you can do to stay on top of those changes, keeping your company competitive in the new computing era.

Highlights of the show include:

* Scale Computing history

* What exactly is “edge computing” anyway?

* The importance of “blue collar” IT

* Identifying the most unreliable part of the infrastructure

* Top considerations for doing edge computing right

* Why hyperconverged infrastructure and edge computing are a natural fit

* Security concerns for edge deployments

* Extreme edge use cases and how to minimize (or eliminate) downtime

* Scale’s No. 1 lesson for doing edge computing right

Resource links from the show:

Scale computing homepage -- https://www.scalecomputing.com/

Get a free trial -- https://www.scalecomputing.com/landing-pages/hc3-edge-computing-trial

Contact Scale for more information -- https://www.scalecomputing.com/contact

Scale’s Edge Computing solutions -- https://www.scalecomputing.com/hc3-edge

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

If there’s one word that describes the modern IT era, that word is “complexity.” Applications, data, and its associated infrastructure has broken through its on-premises boundaries and moved to the cloud and the edge.

This has massive implications for things like software development and storage. Apps are increasingly born in the cloud and housed in containers, using microservices and APIs. This ramps up complexity in a big way.

These apps are consuming huge amounts of data, and the storage needs to keep up. Since object storage is incredibly scalable, it’s more important than ever.

And making sure that object storage is fast and efficient enough to be used by these apps is the core of what Scality does. In this episode of “10 on Tech,” Scality Chief Product Officer Paul Speciale joins ActualTech Media Partners Scott Lowe and James Green to talk about the past, present, and future of object storage.

If you’re using containers and Kubernetes in production, or are considering a move into cloud-native development in the near future, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

Highlights of the show include:

* The emergence of “big data” applications

* The shift toward cloud native computing and how it impacts storage

* How storage is evolving in the direction of DevOps

* The unique storage needs of containerized apps

* The necessity of API-driven access and provisioning for storage in the cloud

* The changing consumption patterns of storage

* What’s behind the rise of object storage in the last decade

* Looking ahead to the future of storage

* Scality’s new object storage offering

Resource links from the show:

Scality homepage -- https://www.scality.com/

Schedule a Scality demo -- https://www.scality.com/contact

Why object storage is the new primary data storage -- https://www.scality.com/solved/object-storage-is-the-new-primary-data-storage/

Webinar: How to build a scalable and versatile data platform to unlock your data’s potential -- https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/12517/443123

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

IT infrastructure has broken through. It’s no longer in an on-premises walled garden—data, applications, and hardware can live anywhere. That means new opportunities for business, but it also brings new challenges, especially when it comes to tying all these newly-disparate pieces together.

That’s where edge networking comes in, and that’s the topic of this “10 on Tech” episode with ZPE Systems. John Paul Kang, ZPE Solutions Architect, joins ActualTech Media Partner James Green for an eye-opening discussion of how edge networking can transform your IT operations.

Edge networking ensures that all your various systems can quickly and reliably communicate with each other, even if they’re thousands of miles away. It also allows you to update, manage, and maintain your network with minimal or even no staff onsite. It’s an episode you don’t want to miss.

Highlights of the show include:

* Edge computing vs. edge networking

* Why businesses are moving to edge networking

* Challenges in building and maintaining edge networks

* Defining zero-touch provisioning, and its importance

* Real-world examples of customers who have saved time and money by implementing ZPE edge networking solutions

Resource links from the show:

ZPE Systems homepage -- https://www.zpesystems.com/

What is zero-touch provisioning? -- https://www.zpesystems.com/what-is-zero-touch-provisioning/

ROI calculator -- https://www.zpesystems.com/roi-calculator/

Enterprise networking survival guide -- https://www.zpesystems.com/resources/media-library/ebooks-whitepapers/enterprise-networking-survival-guide/

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

Ionir CEO Jacob Cherian calls his company a “container-native, enterprise software-defined storage and data management platform for Kubernetes.” That’s a mouthful! And it might be hard to even grasp what all that means.

That’s why Cherian had a talk with ActualTech Media Partner James Green. In this episode of “10 on Tech,” they discuss how Ionir’s product overcomes the traditional limitation of running stateful applications across containerized/Kubernetes environments.

Stateless apps have always been easier to use with containers, but the necessity of persistent data for some apps has made architecture much more complicated. Using Ionir, that’s no longer the case. Listen in to find out more.

Highlights of the show include:

* The changing nature of data

* The problems of data portability and persistent volumes

* How Data Teleport handles Reads and Writes

* The importance of minimizing Reads on demand

* Improving the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) development model

* The breakthrough of converting a storage stack into a microservices architecture

Resource links from the show:

Ionir homepage -- https://ionir.com/

Get early access to Ionir -- https://ionir.com/early-access-program/

About Data Teleport -- https://ionir.com/blog/introducing-data-teleport-instant-data-mobility/

Why tightly-coupled containers and microservices are a must in achieving cloud-native storage -- https://ionir.com/blog/why-tightly-coupled-containers-and-microservices-are-a-must-in-achieving-cloud-native-storage/

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­

You’re an IT admin. You’ve been tasked with expanding your storage infrastructure. You know that the cloud is the way to go. But there’s a big question facing you: what data do you have, and how do you sort out the most important data from the less important data? And then, how do you move it into (and out of) the cloud without breaking the bank?

These are critical questions for data management, and they’re the focus of this episode of ActualTech Media’s “10 on Tech” podcast. Joining ActualTech Media Partner James Green is Krishna Subramanian, President & COO of data management vendor Komprise.

They discuss the best ways to get a handle on the data explosion happening in most companies, and the best ways to increase efficiency and save money when migrating data to, and managing that data in, the cloud. If you’re looking to do this now, it’s an episode you don’t want to miss.

Highlights of the show include:

* Why companies are moving to a cloud-first strategy for data storage

* Structured vs. unstructured data

* How to properly migrate data to the cloud

* Why manual processes for data migration are doomed to fail

* The Komprise solution for data management

Resource links from the show:

Komprise homepage -- https://www.komprise.com/

Try Komprise for free -- https://www.komprise.com/free-trial/

Data management TCO calculator -- https://www.komprise.com/resources/tco-calculator/

Komprise FAQs -- https://www.komprise.com/resources/faqs/

We hope you enjoy this episode; and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.­