At PrimaryIO, we’re on a mission to make disaster recovery (DR) smarter and simpler. In today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape, traditional DR methods just don’t cut it anymore. With ransomware attacks becoming more targeted and sophisticated, it’s not just about backup and restore—it’s about being able to predict, detect, and recover before damage is done.

That’s why we’ve integrated IBM’s watsonx technologies into our ProtectIO platform.

At the upcoming IBM TechXchange 2025 conference  in Orlando, Florida on October 6-9, we’ll be showcasing how watsonx.data and watsonx.ai are powering a new era of automated, intelligent ransomware defense—running on IBM Cloud for VMware. This integration gives our customers a proactive edge, helping them respond to threats faster and with greater precision.

Let’s break it down.

The Problem: Ransomware Recovery Isn’t Just About Immutable Backups 

Most DR platforms are reactive. Something breaks. You flip the failover switch. Recovery begins.

But modern ransomware doesn’t just encrypt your data—it studies your environment, disables your backups, and triggers at the worst possible moment. By the time you're in recovery mode, you've already lost control.

So, we asked a better question:
 What if DR could detect the attack—before it spreads?

The Integration: watsonx Meets DR

Our platform now integrates watsonx.data as the telemetry lake, and watson.ai as the inference engine. Together, they bring real-time situational awareness and AI-driven decisioning into the core of our DR orchestration.

Here’s how it works:

●      Telemetry Ingestion: We store I/O patterns and changes in entropy  from VMware VMs into watsonx.data.

●      Model Training: Our anomaly detection models are trained on baseline system behavior—what “normal” looks like for your workloads.

●      Behavioral Analysis: Classifiers are tuned to detect ransomware hallmarks—rapid encryption rates and uncharacteristic data access patterns.

●      Continuous Learning: As the environment evolves, so do the models. We continuously retrain using live telemetry to stay ahead of new attack vectors.

What makes this different is context. AI doesn't just flag an issue—it tells us why it's happening, and what to do next.

The Result: AI That Accelerates Recovery

With AI in the loop, the ProtectIO platform does more than recover—it orchestrates resilience:

●      Early Warning: Alerts fire when behavior diverges from the trained baseline—often before encryption begins.

●      Auto-Quarantine: Suspicious VMs can be isolated proactively using VMware NSX-T policies.

●      Smart Recovery: The system auto-selects recovery points before the detected corruption, ensuring clean data is restored.

●      Postmortem Insights: AI generates root-cause timelines and exposure maps to help security and compliance teams close the loop.