Primary Storage

by Sam Werner, VP, Storage Product Management, IBM Systems

As you know, recent events have highlighted a shocking rise in cybercrime. The Colonial Pipeline, Irish Healthcare system, and JBS incidents among others are the latest episodes of a problem that continues to worsen for enterprises of all sizes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of cyber attacks doubled, with an increase expected as "cybercriminals exploit the fear and uncertainty caused by the pandemic." Left unchecked, cybercrime damages might reach $6 trillion this year — equivalent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the world's third largest economy.

Cybercrime is costly and causes organizations to lose valuable data, the trust of customers, and suffer severe reputational harm. As a result, organizations are prioritizing this real threat. In the KPMG 2021 CEO Outlook Pulse Survey, participating CEOs identified "cyber security as the greatest risk to company growth over the next three (3) years."

Given the sophistication and resources of cyber criminals, even the most security conscious organizations can be victimized by cybercrime, ransomware, and malware. Despite diligent efforts to stop attacks, they still happen. For us, the focus is on providing solutions that enable customers to recover quickly and successfully when a cyber attack occurs.

A VALUABLE CAPABILITY FOR CUSTOMERS

Data is critical for any organization to sustain their operations. And with malicious actors omnipresent, organizations need data copies that are resilient and beyond the reach of cyber criminals. That's where IBM Safeguarded Copy (SGC) comes in –  available today for DS8K and mainframe environments, and now extended to IBM FlashSystem.

This solution gives customers point-in-time copies of data that are hidden, unalterable, and only usable after recovery. Plus, with its offline-by-design functionality, data copies have an air-gapped buffer between them and production data, ensuring data resilience if production data is compromised. And to prevent unintentional corruption by internal users, Safeguarded Copies can have a separation of duties between administrators of production data and those of Safeguarded Copies.