Revolutionizing Data Protection: McCormick Stevenson Has Cutting-Edge Security in AWS GovCloud

McCormick Stevenson Corporation is a specialized engineering firm that plays a pivotal role in the defense and armaments sector. The company offers a broad range of services tailored to meet the needs of our nation’s warfighters. These include system engineering, equipment design and automation, quality systems support, product design, analysis and simulation, manufacturing process development, and manufacturing inspection services. 

Operating out of Clearwater, Florida, McCormick Stevenson has carved out a niche for itself through its dedication to engineering excellence and its exclusive concentration on armament systems.

McCormick Stevenson is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. Originally a small private enterprise with just a few employees, they have expanded into a multi-million-dollar company that now employs 55 people. 

There is a two-person IT department led by Chris Morin, the organization’s Senior System Administrator and IT Specialist. He’s responsible for everything in the IT department, from backups and security to managing the infrastructure as well as business partners.

When Morin first came to McCormick Stevenson, the on-premises data was backed up manually. Morin described the process that ran on an older HP workstation: “We had different disk enclosures for each day. Each day, a robocopy process would begin. We’d pull a physical computer hard drive out of the device, put it in a plastic sleeve, hand it to one of our management staff, and they would take it to our off-site storage”. 

Morin explained the manual process was in use because, “Our small private company started with only a couple of people, and sometimes you just must make things work with homegrown tooling. But as we grew, we realized that we couldn't continue to run the business like that”.

Since McCormick Stevenson primarily works with other government contractors, they have data on Microsoft 365, GovCloud, and GCC (Government Community Cloud). This helps them not only maintain their NIST security compliance but also will be important as they move to become CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) certified. However, they were relying on the native data protection of the Microsoft 365 platform. Also, Microsoft couldn’t give Morin the long-term storage he wanted, nor the ability to restore files from any time in the past. 

Morin knew he needed to build a plan to protect the company’s data from something that concerns all companies in Florida: hurricanes. It was important to implement a solution to create a disaster recovery plan in case the buildings and data were impacted by a storm.

Another thing Morin had to plan for was migrating data and services from older servers onto virtual machines - before the servers succumbed to their age and there was an outage. 

All of these strategic IT initiatives are undertaken by a small team of two people. The IT team continues to be challenged as they support the company’s growth and overall mission.

McCormick Stevenson realized that they had outgrown their home-grown data protection routine. He adopted the modern approach of the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud. Morin had used Druva at a previous job, so he knew that the SaaS solution would solve many of the data protection gaps he was facing. He worked with Hypershift, a Druva partner, to initiate the conversation about adopting Druva to protect their on-premises hybrid workloads environment. 

During the initial rollout, the Hypershift team mentioned that Druva also could protect SaaS apps like Microsoft 365. Morin explained, “It was a no-brainer for us to add in Druva’s protection for Microsoft 365 at the time”.

According to Morin, the Druva implementation couldn’t have been easier. He said, “The implementation was very easy. Our proof of concept ended up becoming our implementation. It was really that simple. We just had to flip a switch when it was all done”. They went from proof of concept to completely replacing the homegrown backup system with a modern platform in just a few weeks.

The Druva solution also gave McCormick Stevenson a way to respond to any data risks that may come their way - including hurricanes. Druva was built in the cloud, and their “always on” services are delivered from a cloud-hosted control plane. Morin also elected to subscribe to Druva’s Cloud Disaster Recovery (DRaaS) offering. This means McCormick Stevenson’s on-premises VMs are being backed up to Druva. When a hurricane impacts their region, Morin can recover those VMs to any AWS region across the globe, meaning data is continuously available and ready to go, even during (and after) a category five hurricane.  

Because the IT team is so small, adopting cloud practices is what enables them to effectively manage their company's data. Utilizing the Microsoft 365 GovCloud allows them to maintain their NIST certification. Since Druva can be implemented within AWS GovCloud, the McCormick Stevenson backup data and security also remain in compliance.

Morin describes one instance where “Bringing in Druva has really been just a lifesaver”. A domain controller was on an aging physical machine that was on its way out. The plan was to back up the domain controller with Druva and then restore it to a virtual machine. It only took a couple of hours to execute the plan. It was good timing because the domain controller stopped working that day. Morin said, “It was just [an] amazing situation with Druva, and really kind of drove the point home as to how powerful the solution is”.

Morin’s team is amazed at how quickly they can restore files compared to what they had to go through with their in-house backup solutions. Now they can restore files in a matter of minutes or sometimes even seconds. Morin explained, “I mean, it takes us longer to log into the Druva console than it does to actually run a restore. We've been able to do almost instant restores. It's just been so helpful. Much better as far as helping us do our day-to-day job”. 

Now Morin knows the backups run every night and that he can depend on them. This means if he ever does need to restore a file, he can do it quickly without any pain or effort. He knows that helps his organization stay on track, up and running, and not miss a beat in production, Morin said, “You can't quantify that”. 

Overall, Morin is very happy with the decision to move to the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud. He said, “I have used a lot of other products in my career, and Druva, by far, is the best backup product I have ever used”.