Linqto Implements Effortless Microsoft 365 Backup and Ransomware Protection with Alcion

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Industry: Financial Services

ABOUT LINQTO

Linqto is a leading global financial technology investment platform allowing accredited investors to identify, evaluate, invest in, and make liquid investments in the world’s leading unicorns and private companies. With over 700,000 users in 110 countries, Linqto is a leader in democratizing access to private market investments.

With a rapidly growing community of more than 700,000 users in 110 countries, Linqto takes pride in its mission to democratize access to the private markets. Being in the Financial Services industry and given the high value of their data stored in Microsoft 365, the company has a keen focus on security and compliance of the internal and customer data.

Impact

• Effortless unified AI-driven backups and ransomware protection for 100+ users
• Went from first login to first backup in under 15 minutes, down from hours or even days
• Zero operational overhead, as opposed to managing backup infrastructure with other vendors

Pete Rodriguez, Microsoft 365 administrator at Linqto, faced a significant challenge in finding a cloud-to-cloud backup solution to protect their cloud office data while catering to compliance and ransomware security requirements. With Alcion, Linqto was able to set up their backup environment within minutes, and leverage AI to simplify  day-to-day operations.

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The Challenge

Linqto has been seeing a rapid growth in users on their private investment platform. With critical data stored in Microsoft 365, they needed a robust, secure cloud backup platform to protect their OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange data that contained company and customer data.

Their primary motivation was to meet SOC-2 compliance requirements and to protect against ransomware and malware attacks. As Pete evaluated several backup solutions, he found that most of them were complex to use, had limited cloud-to-cloud backup capabilities, or were missing critical protection against ransomware.  As a system administrator wearing multiple hats on any given day, Pete also needed the backup solution to be easy to get started with and manage.

Effortless, Secure Cloud Data Protection

After a thorough evaluation of backup solutions in the market, Alcion stood out as the ideal choice for its ease-of-use and emphasis on compliance and ransomware protection.

Designed for the IT generalist, Alcion was strikingly easy to get up and running. Pete and team were able to onboard effortlessly without requiring training. They went from first login to creating their first backup in under 15 minutes. Linqto has over 100 users on Alcion today, and is expected to grow its footprint in the near future. “We love how clean and intuitive the interface is,” said Pete Rodriguez, Senior System Administrator at Linqto. “It’s very plug and play. The agentless architecture means that admins are freed from maintaining, patching, and upgrading software, servers, operating systems, and agents.”

With cyberthreats such as ransomware becoming top of mind, security features provided by Alcion were also an important consideration. In particular, Alcion’s ransomware detection capabilities and malware removal from backups provided critical resiliency and peace of mind for the company.

Key Benefits

Zero Training Required

Alcion is built for the IT generalist and does the heavy lifting with simple, AI-driven operations. Pete was able to onboard their tenant in minutes without any training. A clean, modern UI allowed Linqto to create backups, view activity, and perform restores effortlessly.

Ransomware Protection

Given the high value of their data stored in Microsoft 365, threat protection provided was an important requirement for Linqto. Alcion’s comprehensive backup policies, malware removal from backups, and ransomware detection capabilities provide peace of mind against threats, both internal and external.

Compliance

Alcion’s robust data protection closed a critical gap for Linqto’s goals of achieving SOC-2 certification. In addition, given the sensitive nature of their business and data, Alcion’s own SOC-2 Type II certification was a key consideration for Linqto’s internal compliance requirements.

No Operational Pain

Steady-state operation had no overhead for the Linqto team as Alcion takes care of all operational issues including successfully and transparently redriving backup failures in case of transient outages or upstream throttling of Microsoft APIs.