Intelligent CIO North America Issue 27 | Page 7

EDITOR ’ S NOTE

Welcome to the latest edition of Intelligent

CIO magazine for the North America region . This month ’ s cover features Herminio Rodriguez , Information Technology Director for the City of Sarasota .
He tells us how when Sarasota ’ s legacy backup solution no longer met the city ’ s data integrity needs and put city services at risk , its IT team replaced it with Veeam .
“ We started using Veeam to keep city services running and support Digital Transformation of future services , but Veeam ’ s true test came a year later when cybercriminals attempted an attack on our city ,” Rodriguez said . “ They encrypted three file servers supporting city services and demanded US $ 34 million in Bitcoin . Rather than risk city services , we recovered our file servers with Veeam .
“ Not one service or resident was impacted , and we avoided paying ransom . If we hadn ’ t been able to recover our servers , we would have had massive data loss affecting all facets of the city , and ultimately it would have impacted our residents .” You can find out more details about the project by turning to p56 .
Elsewhere , we take a look at how Saber Hospitality ’ s SynXis Booking Engine is helping Blue Diamond Resorts increase its booking revenue . responsiveness has fundamentally been one of the keys to our success ,” said Ami Patterson , Program Manager of Information Technology , Blue Diamond .
“ Having that immediate responsiveness with the team and their agility and willingness to pivot with us . . . those factors have really helped our relationship to grow .” There ’ s much more to discover about this project on p48 .
In this month ’ s CIO Opinion Jon Pratt , CIO at 11:11 Systems , discusses cybersecurity resourcing and the benefits of Managed Security Services Providers .
“ Given the complexity , severity and 24 / 7 nature of the evolving threat landscape , the increasing requirement to meet compliance requirements , and the costs and limitations of in-house resources , the right MSSP can offer CISOs a great solution to address their need for affordable and trustworthy protection from cybercrime ,” he says .
“ These specialist support teams address all organizational security needs , with dedicated teams , state-of-the-art technology , facilities and processes that monitor and manage the simplest to the most complex of security incidents .” For more on this turn to p44 .
Don ’ t forget you can read daily news updates at https :// www . intelligentcio . com / north-america /.
“ It was an extremely positive experience having such a structured project management methodology and all the expertise along the way throughout the implementation . When it comes to the experience in working with and collaborating with the Sabre team ,
I ’ d like to wish you a good month ahead and please enjoy the read !
Mark Bowen Editor
www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO NORTH AMERICA 7