Eastern Company in Egypt speeds up data recovery and strengthens data security with Cohesity

Founded in Egypt more than a century ago, Eastern Company produces a varied collection of tobacco products. With over $930M in annual revenue, the company has joined the Forbes list of the 100 most powerful companies in the Middle East. With over 13,000 employees spread across seven locations, Eastern Company is determined to scale its 32 brands sustainably with an array of flavors. 

The Challenge

As ransomware attacks became more frequent worldwide, Eastern Company decided to take extra steps to safeguard its data. “Previously, we relied on traditional data protection,” explains Hossam El-Morshedy, general manager of Infrastructure and Cloud Computing at Eastern Company. “But ransomware is something that we cannot avoid. It will happen sooner or later. We need to be ready with an environment that has clean data, enabling a fast recovery.”

Eastern Company set its sights high. “We needed the flexibility to move data between on-premises and cloud environments and the ability to switch services from Azure,” continues El-Morshedy. “In comparison to other industry solutions, we realized Cohesity’s solution was excellent for us. Cohesity's distributed file system, SpanFS, and the Cohesity Data Cloud platform offered unparalleled security features. Cohesity ensured that our data remained protected, even during data transfers between on-prem and cloud setups and across different data centers.”

The Solution

With help from iNOLOGY, Eastern Company conducted a successful Proof of Concept (PoC). “It became evident that Cohesity could offer the secure data management we needed. We devised an exhaustive implementation checklist and we got to work,” recalls Tarek El-Reedy, managing director of iNOLOGY in Egypt and UAE. 

The first step was to rely on Cohesity DataProtect to safeguard data locally, including creating local data backups and controlling data management policies through a unified interface. “We then formulated a meticulous policy to either replicate or transfer the data from our on-prem setup to Cohesity FortKnox, a virtual air-gapped data isolation and recovery solution,” explains El-Morshedy. “This step was crucial in keeping our data physically isolated from the network, making it inaccessible to online threats.” 

In the event of a complete data loss, Eastern Company implemented a contingency plan to spin up VMs to Microsoft Azure. The company also set up cloud backups for Microsoft Office 365 with Cohesity DataProtect delivered as a service. “By implementing Cohesity, we could extend our data retrieval capabilities up to three years, allowing us to access the data at any time,” shares El-Morshedy.

The Results

After a successful implementation, Eastern Company gained much-needed security and flexibility and the assurance it can recover quickly if a ransomware attack does happen.

The added security with Cohesity FortKnox also protects sensitive domains, like taxes and salaries. Eastern Company’s financial system handles crucial tasks like salary processing and managing transactions with suppliers, and any disruption could bring the entire business to a standstill. “We have ensured that we can have critical systems up and running within two hours in case of a total loss,” says El-Morshedy. In the tax environment, Eastern Company uploads data from on-prem to the cloud daily. “Accurate data transfer is imperative. By implementing robust protection measures for our tax environment, we can meet compliance requirements and recover clean data swiftly, avoiding potential fines,” he adds.

Since the implementation, Eastern Company can more easily manage its critical security environment. “Previously, when dealing with databases, three different teams would need to collaborate. Aligning these resources was challenging and time-consuming. Now, we only need one resource for data security and management, and it's fully automated. All we need to do is monitor the system,” notes El-Morshedy. Previously, Eastern Company also used separate tools to manage data on virtual machines. Contacting application providers was also sometimes necessary to restore running services. “With Cohesity, the process is streamlined. Data recovery is simplified, requiring just a few clicks and creating efficiency and time savings for our team,” adds El-Morshedy.

But the proof is in the numbers. “From a business perspective, our achievements were remarkable,” notes El-Morshedy. “We significantly improved our Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Backup time was reduced from 24 hours to just two. Recovery time to Azure, which used to take seven to eight hours, was slashed to one hour. Additionally, we achieved an impressive Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of one to two hours.”

The added efficiency has also freed the employees up for more crucial tasks. “Before, it would take our staff three hours a day to manage data protection. Now, they just spend 5 to 10 minutes on monitoring,” says El-Morshedy. “This gives them more time to look into security gaps or work on innovation that can benefit the company.”

With Cohesity, Eastern Company continues to serve its customers with peace of mind. “Cohesity and iNOLOGY  not only addressed our challenges comprehensively but also significantly enhanced our data protection capabilities, meeting and exceeding our business objectives,” concludes El-Morshedy.

Key benefits 

Eastern Company achieved the following benefits with Cohesity:

• 92% faster backup time
• 88% faster recovery time
• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1-2 hours
• 94% less time spent on data management