Asigra’s New CEO Vows Tighter Tie Between Security, Data Protection

“[David and Eran Farajun have] been leaders in terms of innovation. They are looking to bring in a new team and support new initiatives. The rise of ransomware has made it important to do more to protect data. They also want the company to expand its markets and bring storage and security closer together,” says new Asigra CEO Eric Simmons.

Data protection technology developer Asigra this week unveiled a new executive team committed to tightly tying security and data protection technology as a way to protect customers’ data in the face of the increasing number of ransomware attacks.

Asigra’s new executive team includes CEO Eric Simmons (pictured), Chief Technology Officer Val Silva, Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Marketing Officer Pete Nourse, and Vice President of Worldwide Sales Chris Gilkes.

Simmons was chief strategy officer for two years at IMC Business Architecture, a Toronto, Ontario-based custom app developer focused on ways for businesses to measure unconscious biases. He joined Asigra in November, but the company kept the news quiet until this week.

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The new executive lineup represents a major change at Toronto-based Asigra, which has been run by David Farajun, who founded the company in 1986 and has served since then as CEO. Farajun and his brother, Eran Farajun, who serves as executive vice president, are still involved in Asigra, Simmons told CRN.

“They’ve been leaders in terms of innovation,” he said. “They are looking to bring in a new team and support new initiatives. The rise of ransomware has made it important to do more to protect data. They also want the company to expand its markets and bring storage and security closer together.”

No new investment was made in Asigra as part of the change in leadership.

“Asigra is profitable,” Simmons said. “It has never raised capital. It’s been all self-funded. The company has gone 35 years without outside funding.”

Asigra has done a great job with its messaging about security and data protection, said Jason Cole, manager of technology services at Continental Technologies, a Timonium, Md.-based solution provider that has worked with Asigra for around 10 years.

“We certainly believe in that concept in our own organization. To hear someone else say that is music to our ears. Data is at risk these days as ransomware is going after the backups. We’re seeing attempts to delete the backups. And customers are not following our suggestions.”

Asigra has not always clearly conveyed its message about the importance of security with data protection to protect against ransomware and other security attacks, Simmons said.

“We are reaching out to partners to help them understand how we can help make backups more secure,” he said. “We have anti-malware technology to scan data when it moves to backups and production, deep multi-factor authentication in addition to single sign-on including biometric sign-ons to get into backups, and multi-person authentication to prevent a single person from accessing backups.”

CRO and CMO Nourse told CRN that some of Asigra’s technology is aimed at preventing advanced attacks that can bypass traditional measures to protect backups, including immutability and air gapping.

“Ransomware developers are getting sophisticated,” he said. “David and Eran saw this coming down the road for some time.”

Asigra in 2022 will add new elements to increase security capabilities with an aim to make Asigra the most secure backup product on the market, Simmons said.

That’s great news, Cole said. “We’re looking forward to advancements in Asigra’s products,” he said. “Asigra has been a solid core platform for us for 10 years. We’re looking to see the new features. But we’re also hoping to see some great things stay the same. We’ve found the Asigra team supportive and very responsive.”