CEO MONTHLY / ISSUE 7 2023 9 Eric Simmons: Leading Asigra to Pioneer the Backup Space Headquartered in Toronto, Asigra is an award-winning agentless enterprise cloud backup and recovery platform that proactively hunts ransomware, helping companies secure their data. Since November 2021, the company has been led by CEO Eric Simmons, who aims to drive innovation and thought leadership by instilling a culture of inspiration within his team. For this reason, Eric has been named Canada’s Most Influential CEO in the Backup Software space. Like many companies, Asigra was founded to solve a problem. In 1986, Founder David Farajun was programming when he suddenly lost his work. The IT team could not recover the lost data, and he was unable to find a third-party solution. This inspired David to create Asigra to provide backup and recovery services for businesses. Since then, the company has accomplished this goal successfully. Over the years, ransomware attacks have become increasingly sophisticated. Cybercriminals know that the only thing standing between them and their victim’s willingness to pay is their ability to recover their data. For this reason, criminals now target their backups. Asigra is dedicated to creating innovative solutions in order to continue protecting its partners’ and their customers’ data. With a highly unique and industryleading Deep-6 Security stack, the company is spearheading the integration of backup and cybersecurity. The six core elements of the Deep-6 Security model are bi-directional anti-malware scanning, Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) technology, Deep Multi-Person Authentication (MFA), variable repository naming, soft delete, and FIPS 140-2 Encryption. During his extensive career, Eric Simmons has progressed through the ranks from sales representative positions to CEO roles. In 2021, he took on the role of CEO of Asigra, where he aims to instil an organisational culture of inspiration, further the company’s thought leadership, and create and launch new products that address key market challenges. Ultimately, he strives to ensure that Asigra is always the most secure backup vendor on the market. Having worked in numerous managerial positions, Eric has continuously sought ways in which he could improve his methods of leadership. He has always strived to create diverse teams of employees who leverage their individual strengths and support each other’s weaknesses. As well as this, he has come to understand the importance of motivation, so he aims to provide his team members with a broader sense of purpose. This transforms a seemingly meaningless day-to-day job into an important role that serves a higher purpose. More recently, Eric has also come to value inspiration in his leadership. With the assistance of Lance Secretan, a world-renowned inspirational coach, Eric has been able to instil a culture of inspiration within his teams. He carefully considers whether or not his actions are inspirational, both professionally and as a human being. This has built an incredible level of trust, transparency, and care within the business. Each team member treats their colleagues with the utmost dignity and respect, enabling them to do great work together and enjoy every moment. Asigra’s leadership team hold monthly meetings in which they discuss how they can maintain this outstanding organisational culture. As a result of his innovation, inspiration, and commitment to the industry, Eric Simmons has been awarded Most Influential CEO (Backup Software) in the Most Influential CEO Awards 2023. With regards to the future, Eric is excited to announce the upcoming launch of a new differentiated product created by the Asigra team. Most companies are unaware of how difficult, costly, and time-consuming it can be to recover data from a SaaS application. Many SaaS vendors follow the AWS shared responsibility model, which states that they are not responsible for access, identity, and customer data. Vendors often recommend the use of a third-party backup provider. Asigra has worked to address this key market challenge by building a platform that backs up a multitude of SaaS applications through a comprehensive dashboard. Today, Asigra backs up M365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce. Soon, the company will back up dozens, then hundreds, of SaaS applications. It anticipates that this will be a huge trend in the backup space but that it will be challenging for companies to master, giving Asigra a useful head start. We congratulate Eric on his success in this year’s Most Influential CEO Awards programme and wish him the best of luck in all of his future endeavours. Contact: Eric Simmons Company: Asigra Web: www.asigra.com May23219
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