Rackspace puts focus on data protection & compliance with newest offering

Managed cloud provider Rackspace has moved further into the cybersecurity market with a new data protection and compliance solution designed to complement its existing managed security services.

According to a recent Forrester Research report, 49% of global network decision makers have experienced at least one breach in the last 12 month.

Rackspace believes that chief risk and compliance officers have to reevaluate the way their organisation handles sensitive customer data. The company sees an opportunity for a fully-managed data protection service in this space.

Christy Schumann, Rackspace Managed Security general manager, says, "Cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated and breaches involving unauthorised access to customer data are more common, but many businesses lack the in-house resources and expertise to deal with these threats.

Schumann adds that Rackspace experts will be able to manage the data protection process and compliance requirements for customers.

Rackspace ANZ general manager Angus Dorney says that ANZ customers are particularly concerned about the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Bill.  He also says the ANZ market is putting more emphasis on security funding.

Rackspace's Privacy and Data Protection solution provides security and compliance benefits such as understanding data risks, data protection surrounding access reports to sensitive data and compliance reporting to help customers meet requirements for various data security laws.

The company is also continuing to collaborate with major technology partners on services, using Vormetric Transparent Data Encryption from Thales.

Thales eSecurity vice president of strategy Peter Galvin says that the threat landscape is a confrontational world for enterprises.

"Our world, which now includes the cloud, big data, the IoT and Docker, calls for robust IT security strategies that protect data wherever it is created, shared or stored. Businesses need to invest in privacy-by-design defense mechanisms – such as encryption with access controls – to protect valuable data and intellectual property and view security as a business enabler that facilitates digital transformation and builds trust between partners and customers," Galvin says.

Rackspace has also been busy in the enterprise market: Last week it announced support for Microsoft Azure Stack, and earlier this month it embarked on a channel partnership with Amazon Web Services.

In July, the company acquired enterprise management company TriCore solutions as part of its journey into managed services for mission-critical enterprise applications and workloads.