Veeam alliance partner HotLink Corp. is introducing a beta program for Veeam cloud service providers (CSPs) that provides next-generation cybersecurity for their customers. More specifically, disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) and backup-as-a-service (BaaS) providers can provide customers with automated cyber analysis and actionable intelligence using continuous backup fingerprinting.

HotLink did a technical preview of its new cybersecurity platform for backup and disaster recovery systems at the RSA Conference USA 2018 in April. This yet unnamed new HotLink technology delivers the capability to identify, analyze and remediate a broad spectrum of security threats to Veeam CSPs that deliver DRaaS and BaaS.

HotLink’s Lynn LeBlanc

“Security threats are continuously evolving and evading the front-end tools that companies are deploying,” said Lynn LeBlanc, CEO at HotLink. “With malware and bad actors becoming more clever by the day, CSPs are in a unique position to fortify backup and DR systems and help eliminate cyber incidents that threaten predictable recovery following a production failure.”

HotLink is not stranger to delivering disaster recovery. The vendor’s HotLink DR Express offer is a VMware plug-in for VMware vCenter that extends administration and management capabilities to include backup and replication plus BR/BC on AWS.

In fact, it’s through its experience offering this product that the company became aware of a bigger cybersecurity issue and two years ago began to develop its new cybersecurity platform.

“We wanted to develop a technology that got at the heart of the cyberthreats that we were seeing customers experience in greater frequency; specifically, a lot of sophisticated malware that was latent and propagating into customers’ backups unknowingly,” LeBlanc told Channel Futures.

HotLink is transitioning the disaster-recovery part of its business to focus on the cybersecurity aspect. HotLink sold DR Express direct to customers. Another part of HotLink’s business is offering hybrid IT solutions, which will continue.

According to HotLink, industry research shows that more than half of IT shops indicate security is a top priority in their 2019 budgets. The new HotLink technology will help Veeam partners differentiate their DRaaS and BaaS offerings and gain new revenue opportunities by offering robust and unique cybersecurity capabilities, such as fine-grained security fingerprints, correlation to threat intelligence and policy-based analysis of every backup and replication — all without the requirement to restore virtual machines in a sandbox or affecting customer production environments. This is an industry first and an important step toward protecting Veeam customers from the daily attacks facing critical operations, the company said.

Given that service providers support multiple business models, HotLink’s cybersecurity technology for Veeam will offer a range of licensing options:

HotLink has been running the beta program for about three months and is looking to expand to include another dozen or so Veeam CSPs.

“The channel has experienced enormous growth on the BaaS and DRaaS side; yet, at the same time, on the security front, customers are getting more concerned and are experiencing more security issues that are either propagating or lying dormant in the backups that are being taken,” said LeBlanc. “The big problem there is that the more mission-critical the workload, the more frequency a restore point or backup is taken, which means more threat if they get through the front end, potentially contaminating every backup you’ve got.”

While HotLink targeted Veeam as the first vendor to partner with in its cybersecurity rollout, expect to see additional vendor partners. General availability of the new cybersecurity offer is expected in the first quarter, according to LeBlanc.