The security infrastructure helps Ascend open up its data to AI

Manufacturers rely on security infrastructure to protect data and maintain operations during disruptions. For companies with complex assets and decades of operational records, the ability to recover this data is an important part of business continuity.

At Ascend Performance Materials LLC, data protection and cyber recovery are part of business interruption preparedness. As a recent hurricane approached one of its largest plants in Florida, the company verified that local systems at the recovery site were secured and recoverable, said Xiong Xiong (pictured), vice president of information technology at Ascend.

“This is the stuff that helps me sleep at night and helps me go back to my leadership and the board and say, ‘Look, we have the resilience and we’ve double-checked and triple-checked and we have the right partner to help us,'” he said. “We literally put it to the test just last week.”

Xiong spoke with Krista Case of theCUBE Research for the AI ​​Cybersecurity and Resilience Summit during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Ascend moved from uncertainty to recoverability to operational confidence and what this shift means for AI adoption. (*Disclosure below.)

Proven recovery transforms security infrastructure into an AI enabler

AI introduces another dimension to Ascend’s security planning. The company expects its suppliers to integrate AI defenses into their products, Xiong said.

“We are looking at solutions to integrate AI to prevent AI from causing some of these problems,” he said. “Now you want the same thing to defend itself against itself. It used to be more of a pipe dream, now it’s like a requirement.”

According to Xiong, Ascend was already experiencing resilience issues before the AI ​​push. Before expanding its relationship with Dell, the company was struggling to perform nightly backups, verify them, and move them to its recovery site, while operational demands dictated that it also needed on-site capacity.

“We needed to … still have that localization capability. But you can’t have a localization capability if you’re not able to thoroughly backup and restore it,” he said.

Xiong noted that Dell racked, configured and validated the hardware before handing it over to Ascend. His team then tested the deployment and watched backups complete locally, move to the recovery site, and run in isolation.

“We have different technologies. We have technologies that are very modern, that are very easy to backup and restore. We have some technologies that we should no longer use… and we were even able to bring those up,” he said.

Xiong said the changes also freed up space and reduced the burden of reorganizing data to manage consumption at each location. This shift has allowed Ascend to focus more on making data available where it can be used, supporting the company’s AI strategy.

“Now that this is working, we are more focused on what we do with our data,” he said. “We are very, very data rich [and] Poor information, and we’re changing that.”

Here is the full video interview, part of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the AI ​​Cybersecurity and Resilience Summit:

(*Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over the content of theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE