Data Protection for Converged Infrastructure offers Dell EMC Cyber Recovery to combat ransomware attacks on enterprise backup environments.

Cyber Recovery combines PowerProtect DD or Data Protection Suite and the PowerProtect DD system to isolate the backup environment. The Cyber Recovery software identifies and resolves cyber attacks within the isolated environment. It then restores a clean copy of the backup to the production environment.

Recovery is the key when ensuring that business-critical data can withstand a cyber attack designed to destroy or cripple an organization’s data including backups and replicas. The Dell EMC Cyber Recovery solution incorporates the following elements to build a final line of defense:

• Solution planning—Selection of application candidates, recovery time, and RPOs
• Isolation and governance—An isolated data center environment that is disconnected from the network and restricted from users other than those with proper clearance
• Automated data copy and air gap—Software to create WORM-locked data copies to a secondary set of arrays and backup targets as well as processes to create an operational air gap between the production environment and the isolated recovery zone
• Integrity checking and alerting—Workflows to stage replicated data in the isolated recovery zone and perform integrity checks to analyze whether the data is affected by malware, along with mechanisms to trigger alerts on suspicious executables and data
• Recovery and remediation—The use of dynamic restore processes and existing DR procedures to perform recovery/remediation after an incident

The centerpiece of Cyber Recovery is the CR Vault, an isolated and protected part of the data center. The CR Vault hosts the organization’s critical data on Dell EMC technology that is used for recovery and security analytics. The goal of the CR Vault is to move data away from the attack surface, so that if a malicious cyber attack occurs, customers can resort to a valid copy of data to recover critical business systems. Using vault protections around the isolated data also protects it from insider attacks. Cyber Recovery automates the synchronization of data between production systems and the CR Vault and creates immutable data copies, as depicted in the following figure:

Figure 4.         Cyber Recovery

Dell EMC Cyber Recovery combines Avamar, PowerProtect DD, and networking as well as a management host that houses the software components. This Cyber Recovery solution can be integrated into a customer’s VxBlock System environment for both greenfield and brownfield deployments.