CASE STUDY
Hong Kong-based Tontec International ( Tontec ) has evolved over the last three decades into a global multinational business with operations in China , Thailand , France , Tunisia and Mexico .
It currently serves clients from around the world with industry-leading plastic molding products and tools . Since 2019 , Tontec had also opened manufacturing sites in Thailand and in Chengdu , China , while also undergoing a major modernization of its IT infrastructure . This revamp occurred in light of changing market needs and expansion plans and with a strong IT background and interest of Nelson Lam , President at Tontec International , to build sound technology foundations for future success .
The need to address these foundations was also triggered by a major security incident involving a ransomware attack during a holiday period in January 2021 . The incident impacted data on primary servers and backup files . The group ’ s Microsoft 365 accounts were also down as a result .
Veeam was not being used to back up Microsoft 365 accounts when the attack happened . This situation made them realize that the ultimate cloud data protection responsibility lies with the user and not with the cloud provider .
Fortunately , at the time of the attack , the Tontec team was able to recover much of the impacted data as the company had from time to time performed a data copy of key systems to a USB-attached hard disk which contained much of the company ’ s core data . By quickly installing Veeam Availability Suite on an unaffected server , the team gradually recovered 70 – 80 % of the affected data from the USB hard drive . Not only did Tontec recover much of its critical data , but it also avoided taking the option of paying the demanded ransom to regain access to the data .
“ This security incident made it clear that having a resilient backup system and the process was critical for the business ,” said Johnson Chiu , IT Manager , Tontec . With the company ’ s growing use of cloud services in Microsoft 365 , having a copy of all cloud data on its own servers would be the best practice going forward .
The Veeam solution
Lam quickly initiated the infrastructure transformation to improve operational resilience and data security .
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