California Department of Finance paid no ransom, restored Microsoft 365 data in 12 hours with Cohesity

Until 2020, the Department backed up M365 data on-prem, using the server vendor’s proprietary software. But backups and restores required multiple interfaces, finding lost files took too long, and software maintenance consumed several days a month.

After comparing leading data protection solutions, the Department selected Cohesity DataProtect delivered as a service, hosted on Microsoft Azure. All was well until December 2022, when the Department was hit with a ransomware attack—in the middle of a budget cycle.

Thanks to Cohesity’s immutable backups, the Department restored M365 data after the attack for nearly all 500 users in 12 hours – a fraction of the time it took to restore data still backed up by another vendor’s solution. No ransom was paid.