How Cyber Resilient Storage Helps Prepare, Respond and Recover from Cyberattacks

Our Canadian Cybersecurity Study noted that cyberattackers target cloud storage systems with ransomware attacks and leverage cloud’s scalability to amplify the damage. The share of impact of cyberattacks on enterprise storage systems as IT components has grown from 25,2 percent in 2022 to 31,6 percent in 2024. Public cloud had the largest share (56,7 percent) of impact in 2024.

Currently, surveyed organizations report using cloud SIEM, XDR, governance solutions and container security, among other solutions, to secure the cloud. However, the 2024 study data does not show a significant reduction in cloud security incidents compared with the previous year.

Additionally, a survey from ESG by TechTarget depicted that among organizations that faced ransomware attacks, 73 percent reported at least one successful attack.

In cases where a ransomware attack breaks through security defences, it may render data assets unrecoverable and make it hard for organizations to recoup the consequent business losses.

But at the same time, cloud adoption is pivotal to support digital initiatives and growing data storage needs. To overcome this dilemma and reap the benefits of scalable storage systems, there is a strong case for organizations to consider investing in cyber resilience.

Cyber resilience for storage refers to building capacity to prepare, respond to and recover from cyberattacks. Essentially, it's about making your storage system resilient in the event of an attack to enable you to bounce back with minimal damage.

This approach makes storage protection more effective by creating a failover mechanism. Even if ransomware encrypts or destroys your data assets, you can still recover the lost data and get back to normal functioning with the help of a resilience strategy.

Three pillars of cyber resilience for storage:

• Prepare – Proactively strategize to minimize the impact of cyberattacks with risk assessments, technology investments and incident response plans
• Respond – Mobilize response measures in the event of an attack with the help of monitoring, threat analysis and storage isolation
• Recover – Reinstate normal business operations with secure backups and recovery mechanisms that are free from vulnerabilities

The IBM Storage FlashSystem is an enterprise flash storage solution designed to meet the resiliency needs of data-driven businesses. Its storage architecture provides organizations that have large data volumes the ability to move data rapidly, scale as demand grows and recover data quickly when required.

This IBM solution features storage hardware and software products bundled together to form a comprehensive offering for enterprise workloads and supports on-premises virtualizable storage as well as connectivity to cloud-based applications, with the support of APIs, iSCSI and SMB protocols.

For organizations looking to improve the resiliency of their storage systems, IBM Storage FlashSystem offers five core features.

IBM Storage FlashSystem features Safeguarded Copy, which allows users to create point-in-time immutable copies of production data. These copies serve as data backups with built-in policies to prevent deletion or alteration.

In case a cyberattack corrupts precious data, the safeguarded copies can be quickly used to bring it back, all within the system. This reduces the chances of severe damage and improves how swiftly and effectively data can be recovered.

The Copy Management software, which is part of the solutions, helps storage administrators to configure and automate the copy creation process.

If a ransomware attack that targets storage systems begins to spread in the system, it may pollute the backups (Safeguarded Copy) too. For such instances, IBM FlashSystem Cyber Vault can come in handy to identify a ransomware attack in time and check for polluted backups.

The Cyber Vault enlists fresh and clean backups, helping administrators recover with confidence and halt the spread of ransomware. It ensures that they’re not reintroducing malware back into the system while providing intelligence on affected copies.

IBM’s Full System Replication Manager is a feature that enables organizations to create replicas of their data on multiple geographically distributed sites. This measure ensures that critical data assets can be recovered in case the local hardware experiences damage by a calamity or threat.

The system orchestrates the entire process, ensuring that data snapshots and system images are captured seamlessly. Replication adds a layer of safety for critical data such as financial records, customer databases or proprietary code.

IBM Storage Insights is a cloud-based storage monitoring service that offers a unified view of your storage environment. It monitors health, status and performance across servers, applications, SANs and file systems. The service can be used with Storage FlashSystem to enhance cyber resiliency in the following ways:

• Diagnostic events and performance data help administrators identify any potential issues in advance and improve preparedness for attack scenarios
• Capacity metrics can help build resilient data storage strategies that account for future growth in demand
• Complex storage architectures can be better analyzed using IBM Spectrum Control, available in the same offering

IBM Inline Threat Detection is designed to look for threats such as ransomware or malware within Storage FlashSystem. It can be configured to identify threats and trigger remediation workflows. The service leverages AI to grasp patterns that signal malicious activity in the system to improve the speed of threat hunting.

To further increase data security, organizations can also use IBM QRadar, a security incident and event management (SIEM) solution. It features proactive threat identification and deeper analysis to flag security incidents.

QRadar is available via SaaS model, on-premises or as a cloud-native deployment. Organizations may subscribe to it as a managed service also.

IBM’s converged storage solutions are enabling more organizations to rethink cyber resilience and safeguard their critical data from cyberattacks.

CDW is an esteemed solution provider for IBM’s portfolio of infrastructure solutions for all kinds of data workloads. Our in-house data security experts collaborate with your organization to understand your cyber resilience journey and devise solutions that fit your current and future needs.

We analyze your workloads, storage architectures and security posture to facilitate IBM solutions that bridge solution gaps and provide ROI. Our solutions span hybrid infrastructure, cybersecurity and AI.

Embark on your storage resiliency journey with CDW to help make the best use of your IBM investment.