Success Story – NJR STEEL

Reliable Backup & Data Protection that Beats Ransomware Attacks

BACKGROUND
NJR Steel is a South African company operating through 23 branches across five provinces. This distributed business model poses a challenge for ensuring that seamless, reliable and frequent backups of user computers are performed. Apart from the dispersed nature of the NJR Steel branches, NJR Steel also has a number of mobile employees who are constantly travelling between branches, resulting in a higher risk of data loss.

THE PROBLEM
The large number of branches increased the potential risk of data loss.” With a dispersed network of multiple branches and roaming users, ensuring that end-user data was successfully backed up without user involvement was almost impossible,” says Enrico Payne, IT Manager at NJR Steel.
Along with the higher risk of data loss and data vulnerability, NJR Steel also had the increased operational burden of slow and sometimes impossible data recovery projects if a user lost their laptop. That further resulted in opportunity costs, large  amounts of lost work and higher IT support costs.
User machines also had sensitive personal information along with confidential company data on their machines and needed an increased layer of data security should a computer be stolen or lost.  In the event of a Ransomware or other malware attack, NJR was completely vulnerable.
NJR Steel needed a solution that removed the need for user-managed backups while also giving them the best in Data Loss Prevention. They needed a solution that protected them from Ransomware attacks, or any other data loss threats, and would equip them with the additional related Data Recovery and Data Migration operational benefits.

WHY NJR STEEL CHOSE CIBECS
“Cibecs was initially tested on a small site of 23 users. But once we saw the ease of installation as well as the robustness of the backup and restore software, we decided to roll-out the product to the rest of the NJR Steel group”.

For NJR Steel, besides the backup and restore functionality of the software, the hands-on approach of the Cibecs team was refreshing. “The support team have responded to issues with user backups without prompting. This level of dedication and belief in their product is hard to find in a market that is saturated with many off-the-shelf backup solutions costing far more per user than what the Cibecs solution offers.”
In addition to this, the additional Data Security features were critical for NJR, and they saw the massive value in utilising a solution that protects their users from growing Malware and Ransomware threats.

“The final deal-clincher for NJR Steel, besides the reliable backup software at a reasonable price, was the can-do attitude of the Cibecs team.”

NEW CHALLENGES: RANSOMWARE
Recently, twenty computers at one branch of NJR Steel were infected by a vicious strain of Ransomware. The attack was identified mid-morning, Enrico says, “The first priority was to identify the infected devices and disconnect them from the network.”
The infected computers were all formatted, completely removing data, operating systems and software. Once the devices were clean, and the operating system and software were re-installed, the NJR Steel IT team was able to install the Cibecs client which allowed them to restore the end-user data back to the computers from the previous day’s backup.
Within half a day the NJR Steel IT team had all 20 computers back to working condition without experiencing any data loss, or having to pay the ransom. “What was really impressive was that Cibecs made the process simple and fast.” NJR didn’t pay the Ransom, no further machines were infected, thus controlling the potential disaster, and the users were back up and working on their machines with all their data restored by lunchtime.
“What could have been a devastating situation for the entire branch was a simple fix that was really quick to resolve and we completely avoided any data loss for the users.”
CONCLUSION
As the primary endpoint backup and data protection solution at NJR Steel since 2014, Cibecs has stood the test of time and has proven its effectiveness and operational efficiency. Even through malicious ransomware attacks, end-user data was reliably and quickly recovered, and kept secure, allowing NJR Steel to get users back to work quickly, without any major losses.
ABOUT CIBECS
Cibecs is the best endpoint backup & data protection solution for business, it’s built locally and trusted by thousands of companies worldwide. Cibecs is easy to deploy and manage and equips IT with a single solution for complete end-user data protection. With Cibecs you’ll have total visibility with impressive and intuitive reporting that enables Corporate Governance Compliance.

“With Cibecs there was peace of mind that data was recoverable. We did not even consider paying the ransom.”  – Enrico Payne – IT Manager, NJR Steel

NJR Success Story51

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