IBM Targets Ransomware with Next-Generation Flash Storage Offerings 

ARMONK, N.Y., Feb. 8, 2022 -- IBM today unveiled IBM FlashSystem Cyber Vault to help companies better detect and recover quickly from ransomware and other cyberattacks. The company also announced new FlashSystem storage models, based on IBM Spectrum Virtualize to provide a single and consistent operating environment, that are designed to increase cyber resilience and application performance within a hybrid cloud environment.

IBM FlashSystem Family

According to the IBM Cyber Resilient Organization study, 46 percent of respondents surveyed reported experiencing a ransomware attack over the past two years.¹ With cyberattacks continuing to grow, and with average recovery time lasting days or even weeks², business and reputational risks are unprecedented. Even with prevention and detection tactics in place, organizations also must be ready to recover their operations quickly to minimize loss of business and other costs.

Addressing the Cyber Resiliency Imperative

As part of a comprehensive suite of data resilience solutions, IBM today unveiled FlashSystem Cyber Vault, designed to streamline all phases of cyberattack recovery, and reduce overall recovery time.³ By actively monitoring data in real-time, FlashSystem Cyber Vault is designed to accelerate ransomware recovery based on validated restore points, allowing organizations to more rapidly recover a clean copy of their data.

"As companies are under increasing security threats, they must anticipate and prepare for cyber-attacks in addition to maximizing business agility of day-to-day operations," said Denis Kennelly, General Manager, IBM Storage. "IBM FlashSystem Cyber Vault and our most advanced FlashSystem storage are specifically designed to address the performance and security levels that our hybrid cloud clients demand."

In the face of today's security challenges, organizations are opting for a comprehensive approach to cyber resiliency, implementing solutions to both prevent and recover from cyber-attacks. The IBM FlashSystem Cyber Vault solution complements IBM Safeguarded Copy for IBM FlashSystem arrays. FlashSystem Cyber Vault automatically scans the copies created regularly by Safeguarded Copy looking for signs of data corruption introduced by malware or ransomware. This scan serves two purposes. It can help identify a classic ransomware attack rapidly once it has started. And it is designed to help identify which data copies have not been affected by an attack. Armed with this information, customers are positioned to more quickly identify that an attack is underway and to identify and recover a clean copy of their data more rapidly.

"Cyber resilience is clearly a top priority for our customers," says David Chancellor, Director Enterprise Systems, IBM Business Partner Gulf Business Machines. "Our customers are looking for ways to better prepare for probable cyberattacks; IBM Cyber Vault is the ideal choice. Not only is it designed to be easy to add to an existing FlashSystem deployment, but its ability to help reduce recovery times is exactly what cyber resilience teams need to keep the business running."

Ultra-Performant IBM FlashSystem Takes Aim at Monolithic Multi-Engine Arrays and Accelerates Hybrid Cloud Use-Cases

IBM FlashSystem delivers scaleable performance and capacity (1PBe per rack unit) addressing the performance demands of critical and operational workloads without compromising their efficiency goals. Designed on a single architecture with a common operating environment, IBM FlashSystem provides customers with a hybrid cloud Storage platform from edge-to-core-to-cloud(s).

Address Performance Demands of Time-Sensitive Workloads: The dual multi-core controller and computational storage architecture of the IBM FlashSystem portfolio, IBM is pushing the limits of throughput and latency, while delivering enterprise-class resiliency for critical and operational workloads.

• Alleviate Data Center Resource Constraints with Workload Consolidation: Built for growing enterprises needing the highest capability and resilience, FlashSystem 9500 offers twice the maximum performance,⁴ connectivity, NVMe flash drives, and capacity of FlashSystem 9200 and up to 50% more cache (3TB) and supports a maximum of 4.5PB effective capacity per control enclosure.^5,6
• Move to Hybrid Cloud with Purpose: By relying on IBM's Spectrum Virtualize and Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud, customers benefit from IBM's common storage operating environment delivering a consistent set of data services and operational capabilities with cloud-like consumption models at the data center edge, in the core and in public cloud platforms. Additionally, customers can repurpose traditional and legacy storage from other vendors virtualized behind IBM's SAN Volume Controller to extend the same data and operational services to existing IT investments.
• Maintain an Efficient Data Center: Businesses today are facing pressure to automate wherever possible to help increase efficiency. The single operating environment that the advanced IBM FlashSystem storage models are based on, IBM Spectrum Virtualize, can simplify, and automate data management.

Simple and Standardized Technical Support

IBM Storage Expert Care offers additional optimized, flexible services for maintaining IBM FlashSystem. Clients simply choose from Basic, Advanced or Premium level support on the IBM FlashSystem 7300 or 9500 at time of sale, which helps reduce the threat of outages and optimizing IT infrastructure while keeping IT staff focused on mission critical goals.

For more information, visit https://www.ibm.com/storage.

Notes

¹ Source: IBM Cyber Resilient Organization study, https://www.ibm.com/resources/guides/cyber-resilient-organization-study.
² Source: IBM Institute for Business Value 2021 Cost of a Data Breach report, https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach
³ One customer experienced reduced overall recovery time with comparable DS8000 function.
⁴ IBM lab measurements using a database-like workload of 70% read/30% write, 16KB transfers, 50% read hit ratio.
⁵ Based on product specifications.
⁶ Effective capacity is based on compressibility of data, which will vary among data types. Some data (already compressed or encrypted) will not compress at all. Refer to IBM compression estimator tools, https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-flashsystem-comprestimator

About IBM
IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service.

For more information, visit www.ibm.com.

Source: IBM