Network security firm SonicWall has launched a new backup and recovery appliance for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) designed to protect business-critical data, applications and systems.

SonicWall Continuous Data Protection (CDP) provides automatic transparent backup functionality, which ensures that data, apps and systems are protected from common user error, hardware failure, deletion, potential disaster and malicious attack, the firm said.

A User Self-Directed Restore feature provides on-demand file restoration for users, removing the need for IT intervention to recreate lost files, while low-touch administration reduces IT backup management overheads.

CDP also offers enhanced capabilities to protect data and databases in real time as they are created or changed, and to improve user productivity and server uptime.

"SonicWall understands the very real pain-points SMBs have when it comes to backing up and, more importantly, restoring lost data," said Chris Winter, director of CDP product management at SonicWall.

"Based on customer feedback, we have worked hard to design an affordable and easy-to-use backup and recovery solution that does not compromise on performance or reliability."

The vendor is offering the appliance in a wide range of different models to fit the budget, performance and capacity needs of all SMBs.