There was a time some years ago when some storage vendors, especially the object storage ones, started calling themselves the “last line of defence”. And even further back, when the purpose-built backup appliances (PBBAs) first appeared, a very smart friend of mine commented that they shouldn’t call it “backup appliance”, but rather they should call it “restore appliance”. That was because the data restoration part, or to be more relevant in today’s context, data recovery is the key to a crucial line of defence against cybersecurity threats to data, especially ransomware. We have a saying in the industry. “Hundreds of good backups are not as good as one good restore.” Of course, this data restoration part has become more sophisticated in the data recovery processes.
In recent years, we also seen the amalgamation of both data protection species – the backup/restore side and the cybersecurity side – giving rise to the term and the proliferation of Cyber Resilience.
Dialing Cyber Resilience (Picture from tehtris.com)
I have no qualms or lack of confidence of the cyber resilience technologies. I am pretty sure they can do the job extremely well, so much so, that some give million dollars guarantees if ever their solution failed. Druva announced their Data Resiliency Guarantee of USD$10 million and Rubrik has their Ransomware Recovery Warranty.
Of course, these warranties and guarantees come with terms and conditions, and caveats and not everyone is besotted by these big numbers’ payout. My friend, Andrew Martin, wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece last year about Rubrik’s warranty guarantee in his Data Storage Asia blog last year, which discussed whether it was Rubrik’s genuineness or spuriousness that might win or lose customers’ affections. You should read his blog to decide.
