Driving Product Evolution: Three Core Themes Behind Our Latest Backup Exec Release

As product managers, we are constantly striving to enhance the value we provide to our customers. The most recent updates to Backup Exec reflect a deep commitment to solving the evolving needs of businesses, ensuring greater security and control, extending support for a wider range of platforms, and portable recovery. Here’s a closer look at the motivation behind these developments and how they benefit our users.

Greater Security and Control

Centralized Access Management

We’ve extended role-based access control (RBAC) to the Central Administration Server to provide our customers with greater flexibility and granular control over their backup environments. Now, administrators have the choice to manage roles across multiple backup servers, defining access levels on a per-site or per-department basis. This improvement allows for more precise permission management, making it easier for organizations to maintain security while scaling their environments. Our goal here is to empower customers to streamline user access and security management, enhancing both control and efficiency.

Malware Detection v2

Security threats are constantly evolving, and we are committed to maximizing malware detection capabilities. The release of Malware Detection v2 introduces support for some of the most reliable malware scanners in the market. With this feature, we are enhancing our customers' ability to identify and mitigate malware risks across their IT environments. The goal is to provide a comprehensive security solution that enables our users to keep their systems secure and recover data and applications free from the risk of cyber threats.

Extended Protection

Windows Server 2025

As Microsoft continues to evolve its operating systems, we’re right there with them, ensuring that our customers remain protected no matter what version of Windows Server they are using. Our latest version of Backup Exec includes support for Windows Server 2025, allowing customers to take advantage of the latest security features and functionality in this newest platform. This integration ensures that businesses using Windows Server 2025 can continue to maintain robust protection against evolving cyber threats while securing their data and operations.

Teams Private Channels

Microsoft Teams is now an integral part of the modern workplace, and with that, the need to protect sensitive data within private channels has grown. We’re proud to introduce the ability to back up Microsoft Teams Private Channels, ensuring that confidential and crucial communications remain protected. As these channels are not accessible to everyone in an organization, maintaining backups ensures that businesses stay compliant with data retention policies and maintain business continuity even when disaster strikes.

NetApp ONTAP 9.11 NDMP (4117209) + 9.12

Offering efficient and scalable data protection for the latest NetApp environments, providing faster, offloaded backups that reduce impact on production systems. Our seamless integration with NetApp devices ensures easy configuration and reliable recovery, while supporting large-scale environments. Additionally, with this new support we enhance backup windows, recovery times, and compliance, making it an ideal solution for businesses seeking to optimize their data protection strategies without sacrificing performance or reliability.

Portable Recovery

Self-Protect Enhancements

Self-Protect brings the ability for Backup Exec to protect itself and with the latest release, we have added a powerful new layer of recoverability by giving Backup Exec customers the functionality to extend the safeguard of their backup configuration. By maintaining a separate copy of the Backup Exec Catalog and Database, customers can swiftly rebuild their system even in the event of complete infrastructure loss. By enhancing the portability of the Backup Exec infrastructure, this feature ensures rapid data recovery and system rebuilds, helping businesses quickly restore operations after a disaster.

Restore to PST for Exchange Online

Disaster recovery scenarios often require flexibility, and the ability to restore data in a variety of ways is a key part of ensuring business continuity. Our new Restore to PST feature for Exchange Online enhances recovery flexibility by allowing customers to restore, migrate, or transfer data to on-premises platforms. In cases where Microsoft 365 services are inaccessible or data is lost, or there is a need to migrate data out of Microsoft 365, businesses can now import that data into on-premises Exchange servers. This gives customers additional recovery options, improving their resilience during critical disruptions or when exiting services.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Data Protection

Entra ID Protection

We understand the importance of protecting identity and directory data in an increasingly hybrid cloud environment. With Entra ID Protection, which will be available soon, we are providing our customers with the ability to back up Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). This feature safeguards critical directory data such as user accounts, groups, and security policies. While Entra ID already offers built-in resilience, we know that adding this backup layer enhances security, minimizes disruptions, and provides robust business continuity in the event of unforeseen events. This is a proactive solution for organizations looking to protect their identity infrastructure.

Expanding Support for Hyperconverged and Open-source Virtualization Platforms

We understand the critical need to protect the data and workloads running on new hyperconverged and open-source virtualization platforms, especially as businesses shift towards more flexible, cost-effective, and scalable infrastructures. Soon, we’ll be introducing expanded support tailored to these environments, providing organizations with robust protection for their virtual machines, containers, and configurations. Whether safeguarding against data corruption, accidental deletions, ransomware attacks, or hardware failures, this feature ensures that vital virtualized workloads remain secure, recoverable, and easily accessible when organizations need to restore operations quickly and efficiently.

Conclusion

All these updates reflect our commitment to meeting the growing demands of our customers, whether that means providing greater security, increasing recovery portability, or ensuring compatibility with the latest platforms. As we continue to innovate and expand our product offerings, we’ll remain focused on delivering a simple, secure, and unified solution that addresses the evolving needs of the modern IT landscape. Learn more on the What's New in Backup Exec page and stay tuned for more exciting features as we work to empower our users to manage and protect their data with confidence.

Jason von Eberstein
Product Manager, Data Protection