Case Study: Building a Ransomware-Resilient Backup Strategy for a Global Manufacturer
A complex global environment required reliable backup, strict compliance, and zero downtime. Here’s how Waident delivered.
Executive Summary:
Industry: Global manufacturer
Company Profile: 3000+ employees worldwide, 600 TB of data stored securely, office locations on 3 continents
Challenges:
- Previously failed recovery testing SLAs
- Governmental control and internet access
- Protecting physical and virtual infrastructure and several operating systems
- Federal audits and zero downtime tolerance
- Lack of strategy and gaps in documentation and security, leading to increased compliance risk
A global manufacturing organization with operations across the United States, Europe, and Asia required a comprehensive enterprise data protection and disaster recovery solution to safeguard critical systems and ensure operational resilience across multiple regions.
With operations spanning multiple continents, the organization faced a critical challenge: ensuring that business-critical systems could be recovered quickly and reliably in the event of ransomware, system failure, or regional disruption.
Downtime was not an option, and neither was failing a compliance audit.
The Environment Before Waident
-
Failed Compliance and Cybersecurity Audits
-
Inconsistent Backup Performance
-
Lack of Scalable Approach to Managing Backups
-
No Recovery Testing
-
Missed Recovery SLAs
-
Limited Visibility Across Infrastructure
-
Ransomware and Data Loss Risks
-
Inefficient Data Storage Use
The Challenge: Distributed Global Infrastructure, Zero Downtime, and Compliance Risk
The organization required a managed services partner to design, deploy, and operate a secure, scalable backup and disaster recovery platform capable of protecting both virtual and physical workloads across a distributed global infrastructure.
The client’s key requirements included:
Infrastructure
- Comprehensive protection for Windows and Linux virtual and physical machines
- Application-aware backups for critical systems, including Active Directory, Oracle, and SQL
- Fully managed infrastructure supporting off-site backup storage and replication
- Deployment and ongoing management of all hardware, software, updates, patches, and maintenance
Security & Compliance
- A managed services provider with SOC 2 compliance and certified expertise with Veeam Backup & Replication
- Implementation of backup encryption and immutable storage to protect against ransomware and unauthorized changes
Operational
- Strict adherence to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for backup operations, restore requests, and infrastructure changes
- Regularly scheduled disaster recovery testing, with provider-led recovery and customer-side application validation
The organization needed a partner capable of delivering not only the technology but also the operational expertise and governance required to support a global enterprise environment.
Waident introduced a structured, transparent approach that transformed what had been a significant risk into a controlled and dependable part of our IT environment.
Waident introduced a structured, transparent approach that transformed what had been a significant risk into a controlled and dependable part of our IT environment.
We now have consistent audit outcomes, predictable backup and recovery performance aligned to our SLAs, and significantly stronger resilience against ransomware and data loss. Equally important, we’ve gained end-to-end visibility across our environment and the confidence that our global disaster recovery strategy will perform when it’s needed.
600 TB of data stored by Waident
Monthly Disaster Recovery Tests
1000+ Virtual and 150 Physical Machines Backed up Daily
Restores Started Within 30 Mins
Multi-year Data Retention Policy
Why the Client Chose Waident
Selecting an IT partner wasn’t just about support, it was about reducing risk, improving visibility, and ensuring the organization could meet its compliance requirements.
The decision came down to trust, alignment, and confidence. They weren’t looking for the cheapest option.
Why Waident Stood Out
Waident stood out for several reasons:
- Extensive experience supporting complex manufacturing environments
- Ability to meet audit requirements
- Deep expertise in backup, security, and infrastructure, not just support
- Average team tenure: 7.5 years
- Team size: 30
- Waident maintains SOC 2 compliance and adheres to the Federal NIST cybersecurity framework.
The Solution: Strategic and Secure Managed Backups
Waident designed and implemented a comprehensive enterprise data protection and disaster recovery solution built on industry-leading technologies and a fully managed service model. With strategic management and structured oversight, the organization passed the audits, improved employee productivity, and gained confidence in passing federal audits.
What Waident Delivered:
- Waident became the single point of accountability for managing backups and data across all locations
- 24/7 help engineering support
- A dedicated backup team, supported by a broader Waident team
- Transparent reporting and metrics
- Deployment of Veeam Backup & Replication to protect virtual, physical, and application workloads
- Implementation of backup encryption and immutable storage architecture to protect against ransomware and unauthorized changes
- Deployment of purpose-built hardware appliances designed to support immutable backups
- Fully managed backup infrastructure, including storage, networking, and security components
- Continuous monitoring, patching, upgrades, and lifecycle management of all hardware and software components
- Management of all moves, adds, changes, and restore operations within defined SLAs
- Regularly scheduled disaster recovery testing to validate backups, recovery procedures, and ensure business continuity readiness
Tools Used to Solve the Challenge
To deliver a secure and resilient architecture, Waident integrated best-of-breed technologies from leading vendors, including:
This approach ensured the solution met the client’s requirements for security, performance, scalability, and compliance.
The Results: Reduced Risk, Faster Support, and Scalability
Over several years of operation, the organization has successfully achieved its objectives for data protection, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity governance.
Today, our client has:
- Consistent success in compliance and cybersecurity audits
- Reliable backup and recovery performance aligned with business SLAs
- Enhanced protection against ransomware and data loss
- Improved operational visibility across backup, storage, and infrastructure environments
- Increased confidence in the organization’s global disaster recovery capabilities
By partnering with Waident, the manufacturer established a secure, scalable, and fully managed data protection platform capable of supporting its global operations and evolving cybersecurity requirements.
What Our Clients Say
Keep your people productive, your enterprise running, and your company data safe.
If your environment feels hard to manage, lacks visibility, or creates audit pressure, it may be time for a different approach.