Learn how FlexPod makes your IT more secure

In today's digital realm, the battle against cybercrime rages on, leaving organizations vulnerable. The escalating frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks underscores the need for robust infrastructure solutions that can safeguard data and maintain business continuity. It seems that we’re seeing new breaches every week. One can only imagine how it feels after being breached. Let's look at some key statistics:

• A March 2023 press release from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported over 800,000 cybercrime-related complaints in 2022, resulting in losses exceeding $10 billion.
• Ransomware attacks increased 62% worldwide, according to a Business Wire Ransomware Index Spotlight report (November 2021), with attackers becoming more adept at holding data hostage.
• The average cost of a data breach, according to IBM, reached a record high of $4.45 million in 2023, representing a 2.3% increase from the previous year.

To combat these growing threats, organizations must prioritize the security of their IT systems. The FlexPod^® platform has emerged as a leading infrastructure solution that prioritizes security. FlexPod is a secure foundation built to withstand the relentless pace of cyberthreats.

By incorporating best-in-class security technologies and innovations from Cisco and NetApp^®, FlexPod offers an industry-leading, security-first approach. Let's explore the key components of the FlexPod cybersecurity architecture.

Protect. FlexPod provides a holistic approach to safeguarding systems, management, data, and applications. Trust is established and enforced through device hardening, micro-segmentation, least-privilege access, and an end-to-end secure value chain. FlexPod goes above and beyond by encrypting data in transit and at rest, and its Zero Trust architecture, featuring multi-admin verification and multifactor authentication, thwarts rogue actors. With FlexPod, your infrastructure is fortified against threats and your digital assets are kept secure.

Detect. FlexPod remains a vigilant sentry in a dangerous world of cyberattacks. FlexPod quickly detects, analyzes, and responds to threats, preventing loss and corruption of data. Our technologies analyze, correlate, and classify threats and out-of-the-ordinary compute, network, and storage behavior. FlexPod utilizes events and telemetry across the stack, combining this information with machine learning to analyze access patterns and keep you a step ahead of cybercriminals. FlexPod alerts include highlighting network traffic anomalies, abnormal file access, data misuse, theft alerts, and file forensics to determine what files might have been compromised. With FlexPod, your data remains safe within a smart, sustainable and secure infrastructure solution.

Recover. FlexPod swiftly addresses your data protection and recovery if a data breach or ransomware attack occurs. If we detect anomalies, we quickly block user and data access and conduct detailed forensic analysis for future prevention. With policy-based server profiles and data recovery capabilities, FlexPod can restore servers, applications, and data in minutes for a quick resumption of operations.

Verification. The FlexPod security story doesn’t end with Protect, Detect, and Recover. The FlexPod cybersecurity defense is further enhanced by its industry-leading verification process. With over 240 thoroughly tested reference architectures (RAs), FlexPod offers a comprehensive portfolio of security-first solutions that align with the Protect, Detect, and Recover pillars of the FlexPod cybersecurity architecture. These designs provide a full-stack adherence to protect against breaches. You benefit from a 125% return on investment, efficiency gains, hardware and infrastructure cost savings, and reduced downtime. FlexPod is also always evolving and testing new features and RAs around security, so you remain protected.

For more information about FlexPod business outcome benefits, download this infographic:

FlexPod is also soon adding these security-centered solutions:

• The “Secure Hardened FlexPod” RA shows best practices for leveraging security across the FlexPod stack. This solution enables you to make your FlexPod infrastructure more secure by alerting and setting features and functions in compute, network, storage, and virtualization layers to optimize full-stack security. You gain a tested, automated script to make your infrastructure more secure today.
• The “Ransomware, Protection Detection, and Recovery” RA documents the process of testing your FlexPod infrastructure through a simulation of an attack and using the recovery process. This RA shows how to recover from a breach and get your data back quickly.
• The “FlexPod with Secure Separation” RA illustrates how to use virtual divisions to split a FlexPod infrastructure into tenants that are completely independent of one another. Even if one segment is compromised, the other segments are unaffected. The infrastructure attack surface is reduced dramatically.

From the moment you start considering an infrastructure investment, you should be considering security. Just like DRAM, CPU, RU, and SSD plans, security should be top-of-mind. Only FlexPod offers the best security practices of Cisco and NetApp, verified across a wide variety of workloads. With its prevalidated blueprints and built-in security best practices, your data and applications are safe with FlexPod.

To learn more about how FlexPod and its reference architecture portfolio can enhance your cybersecurity defenses, visit:

• www.netapp.com/flexpod
• www.cisco.com/go/flexpod

Protect your infrastructure with confidence and embrace the power of the FlexPod cybersecurity architecture.