Global Safety Company Enhances Data Protection and Reduces Costs With Arcserve 9000 Series

NAFFCO FZCO is one of the world's leading producers and suppliers of top-tier firefighting equipment, fire protection systems, fire alarms, and security and safety engineering systems. 

The company relies on its IT department to handle critical business applications for its more than 15,000 team members, including 2,000 engineers and over 6 million square feet of manufacturing space. Any lost data could be incredibly costly to the company.

One area where the company faced ongoing issues was slow backup performance and incomplete or failed backups. Having grown tremendously over the past two decades, it had become apparent that new IT solutions were needed that were stable and reliable and offered multi-site replication and built-in data and system backups to protect the company from ransomware attacks.

Massive IT Upgrades Include Data Protection

To support the company’s vision to become the world’s number one provider of innovative life, environmental, and property protection solutions, it was clear that a massive IT upgrade was in order. According to Mr. Mohanned Hennawi, NAFFCO’s Group IT Manager responsible for a 20-person team, the company’s previous systems were severely lacking regarding backup performance and data security.

After a complete IT infrastructure review, Mr. Hennawi recognized that slow—and often incomplete—backups were hampering his team’s productivity as well as the company’s overall performance. These challenges included unsuccessful email backups. It was also clear that data protection and ransomware prevention needed to be addressed. The company decided to modernize its operations and further strengthen its data resilience, so it began the search for a cost-effective, scalable, and flexible data protection solution that integrated cybersecurity features.

Arcserve Partner Delivers the Solution

NAFFCO worked closely with local Arcserve partner Grab. The company decided to deploy Arcserve 9360DR and 9096DR all-in-one appliances to protect its 45 physical servers and 100 virtual machines while streamlining its IT environment.

The Arcserve 9000 Series appliances offer “set and forget” disaster recovery, backup, cybersecurity, and application availability. The appliances also feature global source-based deduplication, multi-site replication, tape integration, automated data restore capabilities, and assured recovery.

“After considering and comparing many vendors’ offerings, we chose Arcserve appliances because they are easy to manage, feature-rich, and offer complete cybersecurity protection against ransomware,” said Mr. Hennawi.

To protect the company’s data and system backups from ransomware and other malicious attacks, the Arcserve appliances include Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Server. This additional defensive measure offers advanced endpoint protection that combines signature-based and signatureless malware detection, a deep-learning neural network, anti-exploit technology, CryptoGuard anti-ransomware, and WipeGuard technologies to stop the broadest range of endpoint threats.

The implementation took three days to complete and was online within a week. “The process was seamless and went smoothly, and the management interface is straightforward to understand and use,” said Mr. Hennawi.

Results Exceed Expectations

With Gerab’s expert help, NAFFCO first deployed the Arcserve 9360DR in its Dubai data center in February 2022. With the results exceeding the company’s expectations, it subsequently purchased the Arcserve 9096DR for its Abu Dhabi branch.

Mr. Hennawi notes that the company is very satisfied with the solution as it has improved IT productivity while delivering seamless application performance and reducing costs. The company plans to install additional Arcserve appliances in its Qatar and Saudi Arabia branches in the future.

Get Expert Help from Arcserve Partners

Like Gerab, Arcserve’s global ecosystem of implementation and reseller partners brings data protection, backup, and disaster recovery expertise to every client engagement. You can find an Arcserve technology partner here.