Winners of Unitrends “5 Stories, 15 Communities” contest share stories of how they saved the day from ransomware, rogue servers and more
Burlington, MA—March 31, 2021 — Data is the lifeblood of every business, and each day IT professionals are charged with protecting it from enemies like cybercriminals and malfunctioning hardware. This World Backup Day, Unitrends, a Kaseya company and the global leader of Unified BCDR, celebrates these everyday IT heroes by sharing their winning stories from its “5 Stories, 15 Communities” contest. When faced with challenges like malware and natural disasters, these IT heroes stopped data loss in its tracks.
As part of the contest, Unitrends asked customers to share how backup helped them save the day. Out of the many notable submissions, Unitrends hand-selected five stories based on originality and embodiment of the Unitrends spirit.
Most Likely to Make Ransomware Cry (Robbie Evans, Assistant IT Director at Craven County):
“A user with access to a fileshare got a CryptoLocker virus. After it encrypted her entire drive, it went to her mapped shared drive and encrypted one of the largest file shares we had. After a quick containment of the PC and ensuring there were no other users infected, we decided to do a full restore of the entire fileshare. The fileshare was roughly 3 terabytes of data, but we had it fully restored in about four hours—users barely noticed the downtime. Unitrends made it so easy.”
Most Likely to Get You an Invite to Oktoberfest (Edward Bass, Systems Engineer at BornTec):
“A critical Windows server VM in Germany experienced the ‘blue screen of death’ on a Saturday evening (I was based in Chicago at the time). That server absolutely had to be online by Sunday afternoon. I was able to tell Unitrends to create a new VM from a backup while I slept Saturday night, and the replacement was online well before the target time on Sunday.”
Most Likely to Be Adapted for a Netflix Original (Chris Rolke, IT Manager at Dualite):
“I was planning on doing a restore of our test environment after-hours on a Wednesday but found I could not get into the network the normal way. I went in a different way, and I had to pinch myself to make sure I was not having a nightmare. Our entire network was compromised—a massive ransomware attack had hit everything. With Unitrends backups, I was able to restore our entire ERP system, Oracle databases, application servers and user files.”
To view the full story, click here.
Most Likely to Convert Your CFO to a BCDR Champion (Kevin Ray, Director of Technology at Donelson Christian Academy):
“A tornado destroyed parts of our campus, including all data and communication lines, and we had no access to any servers. All data in our account system was on a VM Windows server. I called Unitrends support, and within 48 hours, my CFO was back to work from a backup I ran and then loaded to his laptop.”
Most Likely to Convince Finance You are Actually a Magician (Michael Cyr, Senior Information Systems Support Specialist at Southern Maine Community College):
“I received a call from a very distraught employee of our Finance department stating that she accidentally ‘cleaned out’ a folder on the departmental shared drive. With our Unitrends 8040s series backup appliance, I was confident that I was going to be able to restore the folder. With a reassuring ‘Let me see what I can do,’ I let her know that I would call her back in 10 to 15 minutes.
I found the deleted folder, started the recovery process, and moved those files back into the shared departmental network folder. With a few minutes to spare, I called the individual and let her know that the files had been recovered. A few days later she brought in a box of pastries from the local bakery thanking me and our department for everything we do.”
“IT admins protect and rescue their organizations daily from the dangers of ransomware, malfunctioning hardware, clumsy or malicious employees, and so much more,” said Joe Noonan, General Manager of Unitrends. “These unsung heroes often go unnoticed, but at Unitrends we know how indispensable they are and understand the challenges they face. We’re proud to be the secret weapon that IT professionals use to thwart cybersecurity attacks, recover deleted data, and keep their organizations running – without breaking a sweat. No superhero ever works alone, so Unitrends will always be here to back up our customers in their greatest hours of need – 24/7, 365.”
The five grand prize winners of the “5 Stories, 15 Communities” contest each received a $250 gift card to a local business, with 10 additional entries to be chosen at random for $100 gift cards. All individuals who entered the contest received a free year of Helix, Unitrends’ intelligent SaaS remediation platform that identifies and fixes the most common environmental issues that may cause backup problems. Customers can submit stories year-round for the opportunity to win prizes and have their story featured on Unitrends.com. To submit a story, click here.
