Higher education institutions and K-12 schools are still reeling from the changes made during the pandemic, and the looming threat of a ransomware attack continues. Sixty-four percent of higher education institutions were hit by ransomware in the last year – a significant increase from 44 percent the previous year.
Institutions are attractive targets for bad actors, as they often lack a resilient IT infrastructure, operate with tight budgets and stretched IT teams, and struggle to secure outdated infrastructure with limited resources. Modern institutions run on data, making a meaningful data protection strategy essential.
Ensuring continuity of learning and research is a top priority for higher education institutions as any disruption threatens the student, educator, and researcher experience. They can benefit from solutions that prioritize data protection against changing ransomware threats – and investing in data-centric, flexible, and scalable solutions offers secure and reliable data protection.
The Importance of Data Protection
Data protection is a vital component of the contemporary data center that encompasses multiple platforms and technologies, efficiently delivers critical data and applications with blazing fast restores, and enables institutions to derive real value from data. It also plays a critical role in risk mitigation, continuity of teaching and learning, protecting institutional reputation, and student satisfaction.
While institutions grapple with the best approach to modernization, they face the ever-growing threat of a cyber breach – 57 percent of leaders reported an increase in the volume of cyberattacks on their institutions last year. With recent hacks at Los Angeles Unified School District and other high-profile school districts and institutions that shut down operations, the balance between access and security is as crucial as ever.
Michael Wiseman is the Vice President, Public Sector Sales at Pure Storage, bringing over 25 years of experience as a tech sales leader in government IT. Wiseman previously served as Vice President, US Americas SLED, leading the sales team responsible for state, local, and education customers in the United States.
In his current role, he is responsible for developing a team to enable the transformation of how public sector customers protect, serve, and educate their constituents by leveraging technology to connect, innovate, and lead. Wiseman’s history of driving IT market share, building revenue, and ensuring customer satisfaction has helped propel Pure Storage forward in the Public Sector market. His dedication to amplifying customer and partner stories is essential in developing and executing missions across Federal, state, local, and education sub-verticals.
Wiseman is an advocate for the application of information technology to streamline operations, increase collaboration, and drive innovation.Wiseman has represented Sales in Pure Storage’s “Pure Equality” Inclusion and Diversity Team, Employee mentoring and onboarding initiative, as well as Pure Good community service initiatives.
Prior to joining Pure Storage, Wiseman spent 17 years at Cisco, where he held sales leadership positions in Commercial, Enterprise, and Public Sector segments, as well as the National Partner Organization. Wiseman has also served as the Cisco Public Sector/SLED leadership representative for Junior Achievement, helping teach K-12 students about business and entrepreneurship.
Prior to Cisco, Wiseman held various National and Public Sector sales positions at Executone Information Systems. Wiseman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from California State University-Chico and a Master of Science degree in Management of Technology from Golden Gate University. He volunteers with the SF-Marin Food Bank and Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.
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