San Joaquin County Moves Off of Cohesity to Safeguard Data Immutability and Business Continuity with Rubrik

40%

TCO savings

Instant

restores (12 hours to minutes)

FTE

IT headcount repurposed to focus on strategic initiatives

Overview

San Joaquin County (SJC), located in California’s central valley, is home to 750,000 people and is one of the world’s most active agricultural regions. It also boasts a sophisticated transportation network, including an international deep water port that has attracted major multinational corporations to the region. It offers residents quality affordable housing, recreational opportunities along its vast network of waterways, and state-of-the-art K-12 schools and higher education institutions.

David Newaj, Assistant CIO for SJC, works in the agency’s central IT department. Along with his 90-plus colleagues, he is responsible for supporting the technology needs of 3,000 end users.

“We support HR, the Controller, the County Administrative Office, the Board of Supervisors, the Sheriff’s Office, and the District Attorney as well as Human Services and the County hospital,” explained Newaj. “We have our hands in just about everything that goes on in the County, and IT is critical to its smooth operations.”

I started looking into Rubrik and the solution checked all of the boxes for me. It could do all of the things that Cohesity couldn’t, plus its native immutability offered me peace of mind with regards to cyber threats. We were able to replace multiple backup solutions with a standardized data management platform across all departments.

David Newaj
Assistant CIO

Featured Product: Rubrik Cloud Data Management

Challenges

Data loss threatened 24/7 availability of County-wide services
Financial and downtime impacts of ransomware attacks loomed large
Outdated and inefficient legacy backup solution

Results

40% TCO savings
One full-time IT headcount repurposed to focus on strategic initiatives
Instant restores (12 hours to minutes)
Immutability from ransomware attacks

Business Transformation

SJC has strengthened their DR strategy and immutability against ransomware attacks.
Saving 40% on their backup costs.
Effectively restoring backups and confidence in keeping citizens’ safety top of mind.

Challenges

Implications of data loss to citizens livelihood and safety

Previously, the San Joaquin County IT department was backing up all of its data on tapes. Not only was that time consuming and costly, Newaj wasn’t confident the data was secure and accessible.

“If data were lost, the results for the County and our residents could be disastrous. Payments for people who rely on public assistance would be delayed causing hardship, and those delays would also result in fines for the County,” said Newaj. “Even the County’s ability to pay its own employees could be jeopardized, along with services such as recording the sale of property within the County.”

Citizen safety is of paramount concern from a law enforcement perspective. Reliable backup is vital for the law enforcement databases tracking all of the County’s criminal history, including information about parole and probation. Residents could experience delays in law enforcement and emergency services response times. Data loss could even hamper the ability of the District Attorney to prosecute cases because of rules about how long defendants can be held. Needless to say, there is no wiggle room for downtime.

If data were lost, the results for the County and our residents could be disastrous. Payments for people who rely on public assistance would be delayed causing hardship, and those delays would also result in fines for the County. Even the County’s ability to pay its own employees could be jeopardized, along with services such as recording the sale of property within the County.”

David Newaj
Assistant CIO

Solutions

Looking towards a brighter future

“Prior to Rubrik, we rolled out Cohesity to replace tapes, however, at that time, performing restores of our Office 365 mailboxes was problematic and the product was unable to backup roughly 40% of our data,” stated Newaj. “Not only that, it did not offer any protection from ransomware attacks. Those were not risks I was willing to take.”

“I started looking into Rubrik and the solution checked all of the boxes for me. It could do all of the things that Cohesity couldn’t, plus its native immutability offered me peace of mind with regards to cyber threats,” recalled Newaj. “We were able to replace multiple backup solutions with a standardized data management platform across all departments.”

Cyber security is a concern for every County in the state. Neighboring counties have been hit with ransomware attacks and they were down for weeks, if not months, and it cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars to get back up and functioning again. With Rubrik, we know our data is safely archived, accessible, and won’t be consumable by ransomware due to its immutability.

David Newaj
Assistant CIO

Related: Protect Microsoft 365

The Results

Over 90% of the San Joaquin County environment is now protected by Rubrik, including multiple terabytes of data running on Microsoft and Oracle. The County has also started using Microsoft Azure integrated with Rubrik for its cloud solution. Additional benefits include:

Restores take minutes, not hours

“It used to take roughly 12 hours to do a restore of our Oracle databases. It was painful. My team and I spent plenty of all nighters. With Rubrik, we can now restore within minutes.”

Protected from cyber attacks

"With Rubrik, we know our data is safely archived, accessible, and won’t be consumable by ransomware due to its immutability.”

40% TCO savings

“By eliminating licensing, tapes, and hardware, we’re saving 40% on our backup costs.”

Efficiencies and time savings across the organization

“[Before] it was one person’s full-time job simply to manage tapes. Now, with Rubrik, we can repurpose that IT headcount to focus on planning for the future, like cloud initiatives and solidifying a DR strategy.”