From Leeds Digital Festival to London’s International Cyber Expo, the Vapour team is certainly not one to shy away from an industry event.

But it’s not always about scoping out cutting-edge innovations and knowledge-sharing with leaders across the tech space. Sometimes, partners as generous as software giant Veeam come along, and invite you to a VIP get-together just to say ‘thanks’.

Their recent offering saw our business development manager, Mark Taylor, and business development exec, Holly Eyre, head to The Jam House in Birmingham – known for its intimate jazz, blues and rocks gigs.

Along with 90 hand-selected guests from across different realms of IT and tech, it was a privilege to be rewarded for the completion of certain targets, as well as continually driving innovation in the sector.

It wasn’t all fun and games though, as our dynamic duo still had plenty of wisdom to impart at Vapour HQ, upon their return. Here’s Holly’s round-up…

Think of a workload, and you can bet Veeam can protect it

We were reminded at the event that Veeam is not just available to support end-to-end data protection needs, but also has several standalone products to help tech teams sleep better at night. And these are perfect for small businesses reliant on a specific programme or public cloud, such as Salesforce – which is a must for any sales team.

At Vapour, we also regularly deploy backup solutions for Microsoft 365 and Teams – an essential strategy for schools in particular, where critical files are always at risk of loss, deletion, of malicious malware. Because the recovery process is completely granular and fast, there’s minimal downtime too.

The ultimate automation and control solution to safeguard operations

Speaking to various IT firms in attendance, we learnt the value of monitoring and analytics with Veeam ONE. Proactive alerting mitigates security threats before they turn into real issues, and real-time visibility offers complete control over data and infrastructure – for both physical and virtual environments!

Plus, with capacity planning and forecasting, you can remove the guesswork when strategising future tech needs and purchases.

Maintaining close partner connections is crucial for growth

There’s no denying that Veeam is making waves in the market right now, but the organisation wouldn’t be where it is without its partners. Creating and nurturing strong relationships with fellow industry leaders is a key part of building, marketing, and selling Veeam solutions and Veeam-powered services. And by maintaining close connections with account managers and constantly providing version release updates, Veeam ensures end users are always kept in the loop.

When disaster strikes, Veeam helps to maintain business as usual

Ok, so we knew this one already! But being in Veeam’s presence solidified exactly why we’re so proud to have it as part of the Vapour Cloud.

From natural disasters to cyber-attacks, it’s impossible to predict what lies around the corner. But secure cloud technology has the power to deliver that all-important resilience when it’s needed the most. Backups undoubtedly play a key role in this – protecting business-critical applications with an SLA-focused solution, which offers peace of mind for our customers. And there’s no-one we’d rather power our solutions than Veeam.

Our partner knows how to throw a great party!

It was a privilege to meet the Veeam team in person – especially senior manager, Pamela Napier, and senior cloud and commercial marketing manager, Clare Angood.

As if the free bar and food spread wasn’t generous enough, we were surprised with a raffle draw – where Mark managed to bag a Lego Millennium Falcon – and a private set from Comedian Jason Manford. Although, sitting front-row was probably foolish, in hindsight – as it was a very participatory performance!

Thanks once again to the very thoughtful, and endlessly innovative, Veeam, for hosting such a stellar event.

If you want to explore more about our Veeam-powered backup solutions, click here.

Last month, the iconic Olympia London opened its doors to over 5,000 delegates, for the 2022 International Cyber Security Expo.

With an esteemed Advisory Council, chaired by Professor Ciaran Martin CB (former CEO of the NCSC), the event combines world-class education with practical business solutions, as well as leading products and innovations.

Not ones to miss such an opportune event, our cyber security team headed down to scope out some key insights.

Here’s what they came back with…

Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) as a strategy 101

Recently emerging as a key building block in software security and supply chain risk management, a SBOM is a complete inventory of a codebase – including open source components, their license and version information, and any known vulnerabilities.

Having an SBOM is one of the most effective ways to identify impacted systems, as well as help organisations secure their infrastructure to minimise cyber security risks.

Attack tree analysis: identifying and ranking cyberattack paths

Conceptual diagrams showing how a system or target can be compromised, attack trees are an excellent tool in the world of cyber security.

Utilising telemetry data and estimates to reduce the risk of an attack, David Wiseman of Isograph Software ran through an example of a threat imposed on an automotive infotainment system – and what an insightful demo it was!

Application security – present and future

A panel of cyber powerhouses delved deeper into application security automation testing.

Specifically, the discussion focused on API security, cloud native application security, and supply chain risks – highlighting how our growing reliance upon such services have exposed users to a variety of new security risks, and exploring how to protect them from constantly-evolving threats.

Hunting the actors behind the threat

Clustering is the process of dividing entire data into groups, based on the patterns in the data – allowing experts to observe activity and identify any anomalies that could indicate a threat. Very Jason Bourne!

Zero Trust for applications and protecting yourself from zero-day vulnerabilities

Zero Trust is a hot topic for network security. Yet, many are yet to grasp its impact or understand successful implementation.

Delving into the various endpoint evasion techniques that are undetectable by most Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and antivirus solutions, offered some great insight into the need for such architecture in an increasingly connected world.

An insight into  penetration testing

With a whistle-stop demo of penetration testing in action, attendees were encouraged to think like a hacker, and detect vulnerabilities in a sample software system.

But why is this so important?

• It shows real-world attack vectors: These could impact an organisation’s IT assets, data, humans, and/or physical security – ultimately telling you how effective your security controls are against these attacks.
• It uncovers any major vulnerabilities within your environment: Plus, it detects low-medium risks, to help you prioritise fixes and allocate resources accordingly. This is a critical part of tightening up your security posture as the vulnerabilities can lead a hacker all the way through your network to your sensitive data.
• It identifies problems you didn’t know existed: You may need to, for example, fix misconfigurations in a DNS server or a compromised web server you forgot about.
• It identifies recommended security controls: This might present an opportunity to prioritise remediation events, patch IT assets, or layer more security defences in your organisation.
• It reveals poor practices within your security team: Don’t forget the role of humans – are you missing important patches or not hardening applications and operating systems?
• It highlights your team’s strengths: A quality pen test might not only show you the weaknesses in your security posture, but also the strengths and where your team excels. This can instil your team with confidence in detecting and responding to threat actors, as well as becoming more proactive in finding hidden threats themselves, in future.
• It helps to enhance your security strategy: If you already have a solid security strategy and policies, you can show the organisation and end users how important these are. However, if your pen testers can show that human mistakes are causing the biggest gap in your security, you can reinforce the need to re-evaluate your processes.

Want to continue the conversation? Get in touch.