Disaster backupIndustrial Defender offers new backup and disaster recovery services

Industrial Defender the other day announced the acquisition of Fandotech LLC, a provider of backup and disaster recovery services. Industrial Defender says the acquisition enables it to debut Survive Services, the company’s new backup and disaster recovery offering for ICS. Survive Services are built upon Industrial Defender’s Automation Systems Manager (ASM) solution and uses the capabilities of Fandotech, which adds new data center facilities and backup and recovery expertise to Industrial Defender’s portfolio.

Industrial Defender says it is introducing its Survive Services in response to the changes in the ICS threat landscape, complexity of operational systems, increases in field devices, and interconnectivity between information systems, the Internet, and other infrastructures. In addition, regulatory requirements, such as NERC CIP, have placed increased demands on operations staff responsible for keeping their production assets and systems up and running.

“Control systems must be available at all times in order to ensure the reliability of critical operations. As described in the Pike Research report, Industrial Control Systems Security, the challenges of managing these heterogeneous, complex, system environments places a heavy burden on existing staff. With regulatory pressure from NERC CIP requiring backup and recovery processes, the need to improve system availability and business continuity is urgent,” said Bob Lockhart, senior analyst at Pike Research. “Because of internal resource constraints, organizations can benefit from highly experienced providers who understand the unique challenges of operational technology and have back-up and recovery options specific to industrial control systems.”

“The issue is simple. Critical infrastructure operators need their staff to be focused on maintaining uptime of their facilities. However, operations professionals are challenged by the expanding complexity and connectivity of heterogeneous systems that manage that operational environment,” said Brian Ahern, CEO of Industrial Defender. “Our Survive Services are designed to provide essential backup and disaster recovery functionality for operational management systems while providing customers a restoration strategy to minimize unplanned outages. Acquiring Fandotech was a strategic investment we made in order to offer new operational continuity services to our customers and markets. With expert staff and outstanding data center facilities, we can now offer customers the peace of mind that no matter what happens, Industrial Defender can help them maximize their plant uptime by quickly enabling recovery from unforeseen events, meeting compliance mandates, and reducing their security exposures, without placing additional demands on operations staff.”

Fandotech president, John Boyd said, “Our team has been managing backup and recovery for clients globally with managed services and world-class data centers.” Reflecting on his professional roots in the power industry, John added, “I’ve had my finger on the pulse of the ICS conversation for 30 years and it’s exciting to come full circle with this recent acquisition and work closely with Industrial Defender’s customers in the ICS market.”