As part of its 2021 Cyber Protection Week activities, Acronis, which has grown into a genuine global leader in cyber protection, has just unveiled its new, no-cost version of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, its award-winning service provider solution.

The company says its “new licensing makes it more profitable for service providers to design and offer a comprehensive cyber protection services portfolio with little to no upfront costs.”

With the announcement, the Swiss-Singaporean company’s current Acronis Cyber Backup Cloud will be extended with cyber protection capabilities – including the company’s best-of-breed backup, award-winning anti-malware, and protection management – and renamed Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud.

Serguei “SB” Beloussov, Founder and CEO of Acronis said: “Using separate tools to address different IT requirements and counter cyberthreats is a complicated, inefficient, and costly way for service providers to operate.

“By unifying data protection, cybersecurity, and protection management in one, any service provider can eliminate the complexity and management headaches while improving security. With this new licensing model for Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, our partners can deliver superior cyber protection services to their clients at little to no upfront cost,” Beloussov condluded.

On a personal level, I think that having a multi-layered approach to security is a good thing, but complex things do get simplified and streamlined all the time in life, and companies create products and services that provide real solutions to pressing problems all the time, too.

The Acronis approach and rapid global growth has seen it emerge as a genuine cyber protection leader, providing a real challenge to its competitors, a real challenge to cyber criminals, and is great for competition - which, in the era of the escalating Cyber Cold War we’re currently living in, is the perfect timing for a solution like that offered by Acronis to emerge and benefit everyone, from customers, to partners and Acronis itself, with cyber criminals the true losers.

So, why else does Acronis say this is fantastic for its managed service provider (MSP) partners - and for everyone that uses MSP services to run their businesses and operations?

Well, we’re told that the new version of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud features a set of essential cyber protection capabilities included at no cost or on a pay-as-you-go basis, enabling MSPs to build services at little to no upfront expense, ensuring 100% coverage of clients' workloads with cyber protection.

The company says MSPs “can also expand their service portfolio to meet client requirements and market demand with advanced protection packs that extend their capabilities.

“By adding advanced protection packs such as Advanced Backup, Advanced Security, Advanced Disaster Recovery, and Advanced Management onto of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, MSPs gain the flexibility to expand and customise their services to deliver the optimum level of cyber protection for each client and every workload.

“Installed with one agent and managed through one console, the centralised management of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud ensures MSPs can fully protect their clients without having to juggle multiple solutions.

“A single pane of glass provides the visibility and control needed to deliver comprehensive cyber protection – from creating local and cloud-based backups to stopping zero-day malware attacks with advanced AI-based anti-malware and antivirus defences that are VB100 certified.”

Bradley Silverman, Technical Operations Manager of Ventra IP CTO, A/NZ said:

“Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud's model has revolutionised our entire backup infrastructure, it truly does everything we were promised and more. It has lowered our operational costs, while enabling our servers to complete 600% more backups a day.

“Backups are mission critical for us, so being able to provide our customers more backups, more frequently and with the ease Acronis provides has been a huge part of our offerings. Their pricing model means we get all these great features while being able to build the perfect solution for our unique requirements.”

Proving the power of integration

The announcement comes as Acronis announced the findings of its annual 2021 Cyber Protection Week survey, which surveyed 4,400 IT users and IT pros from around the world.

One of the astonishing key findings Acronis shared was that “more solutions does not mean more protection – 80% of organisations now run as many as 10 solutions simultaneously for their data protection and cybersecurity needs, yet more than half of those organisations suffered unexpected downtime last year because of data loss.”

There’s also the report from the FBI showing cybercrime jumped 400% during the pandemic. One wonders how many companies will go out of business due to lax cybersecurity in 2021, despite all of the protection at least some of the companies think they’re being protected by?

Acronis reports having “long recognised the cost, efficiency, and security challenges that arise from deploying multiple solutions, which is why the company pioneered the field of cyber protection, integrating cutting-edge cybersecurity, best-of-breed backup, and protection management in a single solution.”

Acronis notes: “to ensure service providers can build their cyber protection service easily, efficiently, securely, and profitably” its new licensing model is now available as of March 31, 2021.

Here's an infographic from Acronis with more information, while the annual 2021 Cyber Protection Week survey results are here.