Data is one of the most important assets of organizations. Protection of this data is not a question but a must. That is why we traditionally have solutions based on data redundancy and backup. In addition, the volume of data is growing and things like availability and continuity are an increasingly decisive factor in supporting primary processes.

This has also been noticed by cyber criminals, which is why this is a revenue model for ransomware attacks, for example. This provides yet another angle when it comes to protection: it is not only about absorbing technical disruptions, but also about countering unauthorized access and data mutations.

Of course, every organization has measures in place for controlled access to applications and data, but cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated, and anyone who follows the news is aware of the "successes" of these attacks at a random number of organizations.

Keep in mind that a ransomware attack often slowly but surely works its way through systems before actually striking. Thus, data may have been 'infected' for an extended period of time. Hence, this topic is the top concern for virtually every organization and cyber resilience is a top priority of in virtually every CIO survey.

The question therefore is how to protect data in such a way that, after a cyber attack, continuity is not compromised, or even better, an incipient data attack can be detected and stopped as quickly as possible.

 If a cyber attack breaks through the network security then it is important to have the data secured at another level. This is why BPSOLUTIONS offers specific solutions based on IBM Flash Storage that address precisely this aspect. This solution offers the following levels of security:

Prevention by inline detection

Here, the behavior of the data is looked at inline, upon entry of the data, without specific knowledge of the malware signature. This also overcomes so-called "zero day" issues. This check, based on a the mathematical technique (Shannon Entropy), is used to detect deviations in a pattern. A detected anomaly is reported to the storage administrator so that immediate action can be taken.

Save copies and instant restore

Another form of protection is the use of "immutable" storage snapshots. This creates a picture of the data that cannot be changed. In case of a cyber issue, this picture can be restored instantaneously within a few seconds, making the data available again. This prevents lengthy restore actions from backup solutions to storage in case of major issues. Of course, it is not a 100% replacement of a backup: these snapshots are stored on the primary storage and retrieval of individual files is more complex.

Data redundancy

Of course, protection against technical disruptions remains a basis for availability and continuity. Hyper-swap is used for this purpose, which ensures data availability regardless of the physical data storage system.

Data backup

In addition to the above, various backup solutions are available that support the described storage solution. Most important point of attention from a cyber security perspective is the so-called air-gap between the data to be protected and the backup data. This requires at least a separate data storage.

To deliver all this data-centric security without noticeable performance degradation for application and end users, FlashCore technology is used. This is a form of computational storage, which offers much more than a standard SSD solution, while the costs are not much different. IBM is a leader in the application of this technology and has a proven track-record when it comes to the reliability of this type of solution. Within our portfolio, scalable solutions are available with the functionality described starting at a few terabytes.

Would you like to have more information about this or would you like an appropriate advice for your situation? Please contact BPSOLUTIONS