Cyber ​ ​ Project solution helps St. Petersburg State University Higher School of Management to ensure data security in the cloud

2022: Implementation of Cyber Backup Cloud

On June 8, 2022, it became known that the Cyber ​ ​ Cyberprotect solution helps the Higher School of Management of St. Petersburg State University to ensure data security in the cloud.

As reported, several years ago, the Higher School of Management of St. Petersburg State University built and implemented a modern cloud infrastructure. This solution is widely used both in managing the work of the Business School and in the educational process: for conducting classes, interacting students with teachers and among themselves. It also allowed the Higher School of St. Petersburg State University to switch to distance learning without loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. The solution includes Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 services.

In the face of uncertainty related to sanctions risks, the management of the Business School decided to revise the assessment of threats to data loss in the event of restrictions on the operation of Microsoft cloud solutions. It was necessary to create insurance copies of data in Russian cloud infrastructures in a short time.

For us, the amount of data that has been accumulated over several years in the Microsoft cloud is critical. Without them, it will become impossible to either fully continue the educational process, or the work of many services for our students and teachers. We are satisfied with the functionality of our cloud solution, which has been used for many years, but as of June 2022, the obvious first need is to create a full backup copy of data in the cloud of the Russian provider. says Yuri Yekimov, Information Technology Director of Higher School of St. Petersburg State University

Specialists of the Business School compared several solutions for data backup, available as a service in the clouds of Russian providers. The criteria for choosing a software solution were the ability to back up data from heterogeneous systems and applications, the ability to write copies of data to physical devices, the presence of a function to search and restore certain sets of data belonging to a period of time or a separate application or service. It should be noted that, following the principles of reliable backup, the specialists of the Higher School of Economics of St. Petersburg State University considered it necessary to create an additional copy of the data in a separate physical storage - for this, NAS Synology RackStation RS820 + was chosen. Both Russian and foreign developments were considered as "candidates."

The choice for Cyber ​ ​ Backup Cloud helped make functional properties that were critical to us. Some solutions did not fit due to their high cost, others - due to the "gluttony," too high requirements for the necessary resources. The solution of the Cyberprotect company turned out to be optimal. In addition, the company cooperates with one of the leading Russian providers who was able to offer us data backup using the Cyberprotect solution as a cloud service. Most of the time we spent on getting thoroughly acquainted with the solution, all the nuances of its work, the details of the provision of the service by the provider. For June 2022, it would take us one day to create a full backup of all the data. Copying "cloud to cloud" is good because it does not have any impact on the operation of systems. In our case, this made it possible not to interrupt the educational process or even to use our employees in the process of creating a backup copy. All work from beginning to end was done by our partners - representatives of the cloud provider, and we only had to control the result. told Yuri Yekimov

In the cloud, data from all services used by the Higher School of St. Petersburg State University were reserved: SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft 365, Exchange. The total amount of current backup data reached 10 TB. A backup copy of the data is available to HSM specialists in 24/7 mode and can be used at any time to recover information.

The Business School notes that Cyber ​ ​ Backup Cloud has many additional functions that were in demand by the customer's specialists. These include backup replication and tiering, data deduplication, backup encryption, copy integrity check and recovery testing, support for unaltered storage features, granular recovery of individual applications and services, access-based administration, monitoring, alerting, and reporting capabilities.

Feeling insecure about data security is as frustrating as any anxiety. A backup in an independent cloud allows us to systematically continue working, teach students, plan classes - do everything that any university usually does. The service based on Cyber ​ ​ Backup Cloud worked as we expected: we did not have a single reason to once again contact the technical specialists of the provider or vendor. We just got access to a finished copy of the data, which will now be updated. And our technical specialists will be able to get acquainted with the features of the service in detail, figure out how to partially restore data or optimize the service by fine-tuning. supplemented by Yuri Yekimov