Enhancing cyber resilience with IBM Cloud Object Storage and IBM Storage Defender Data Protect

Ransomware, insider threats, and data exfiltration events are growing both in frequency and sophistication. Traditional models where backups are stored on-prem—often on the same network as the production environments they are protecting—present an easy opportunity for cyber-attacks to disable entire organizations. When backup copies remain in the same environment as production data, attackers can encrypt or delete them, eliminating recovery options.

To combat this, organizations are increasingly looking to cloud to provide offsite backup and data protection. However, even as organizations move to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, many struggle to secure and isolate their data effectively. This is often due to:

• A lack of expertise in cloud security architecture;
• Inadequate controls for detecting and responding to cyber incidents;
• An overreliance on traditional backup systems, without consideration to protecting data at rest; and
• Limited visibility and monitoring of data integrity in cloud environments.

The result is a widening gap between data protection strategy and actual cyber resilience.

IBM addresses this challenge with an integrated solution that combines IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS) configured as a cyber vault with IBM Storage Defender Data Protect, which provides centralized cyber resilience management along with offsite, isolated data protection. This combination offers a powerful, modern approach to safeguarding your most critical data against evolving cyber threats.

Why offsite cloud storage for your archives and backups?

Storing backup and archive data in offsite, isolated targets like IBM Cloud Object Storage ensures maximum resilience against cyber threats. By keeping copies outside the production environment in immutable, isolated storage, organizations can safeguard critical data from ransomware, insider threats, and accidental deletion. This separation of primary and secondary data copies provide a last line of defense, ensuring recoverability even in the face of advanced cyberattacks that compromise production environments.

IBM Storage Defender is a next-generation data protection and cyber resilience solution that leverages AI and automation to protect, detect and recover from cyberattacks. Key capabilities include:

• Data resilience and compliance: Confidently recover clean backups, secure data with compliance-ready features and scale across storage, backup and multi-cloud environments.
• Early threat detection: Detect sophisticated threats faster with AI-driven anomaly detection, synchronized hardware and software insights, and seamless SIEM integration for rapid response.
• Fast and safe recovery: Accelerate recovery of your critical applications with orchestrations that leverage secure and validated immutable backups, stored offsite for maximum data protection

IBM Storage Defender Data Protect provides comprehensive data backup and recovery and can direct secure backup copies to an isolated cyber vault—built on IBM Cloud Object Storage—for long-term retention and recovery.

IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS) provides a highly scalable, secure and resilient foundation for storing unstructured data. When configured as a cyber vault, it becomes an essential component of your cyber resilience strategy. Here’s how:

IBM COS supports Object Lock (also known as Write Once Read Many (WORM)), which allows you to make data immutable for a specified retention period. Once locked, objects cannot be modified or deleted, protecting your data from both malicious actors and accidental deletion.

This feature is crucial in defending against ransomware attacks, as it ensures backup copies remain untouched and recoverable, even if primary systems are compromised.

Context-Based Restrictions let you define granular network access controls for your COS buckets. With CBR, you can restrict access to the bucket from:

• Specific IP addresses or ranges
• Particular VPNs or VPCs
• Geographical locations
• Cloud services and user roles

This helps enforce a zero-trust security posture by ensuring only authorized systems and users can access the cyber vault.

Data at rest in IBM COS is encrypted, and customers can manage their own encryption keys using IBM Key Protect. This allows you to:

• Maintain control over who can access encrypted data
• Rotate encryption keys regularly
• Enforce compliance with industry-specific regulations (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR)

Key Protect integrates seamlessly with COS, giving you fine-grained control over the cryptographic protection of your stored data.

IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) allows you to manage who can access your storage buckets and what actions they can perform. With IAM, you can:

• Define access policies by role (reader, writer, admin, etc.)
• Integrate with enterprise identity providers via SSO
• Apply least privilege principles across users and services

IAM ensures that only the right users and services have access to critical data, reducing the risk of insider threats or misconfigurations.

Using IBM Cloud Logs, you can monitor all activities related to your COS buckets. This includes:

• Upload/download actions
• Access requests (successful and denied)
• Configuration changes
• Object lock status updates

Real-time monitoring and audit logs are critical for detecting suspicious behavior and proving regulatory compliance.

By integrating IBM Storage Defender with a cyber vault built on IBM Cloud Object Storage, organizations gain:

1. Isolation: Backup data stored in a logically or physically isolated environment
2. Immutability: Protection against tampering or deletion via Object Lock
3. Observability: Continuous monitoring and alerting via Cloud Logs
4. Granular access control: Robust IAM and network controls via CBR and Key Protect
5. Fast recovery: Orchestrated recovery workflows initiated by Storage Defender in the event of an attack

This architecture transforms your backup environment into a last line of defense that is resilient, compliant and recoverable.

Cyber threats are not going away. With the combination of IBM Storage Defender and IBM Cloud Object Storage, you can move beyond traditional backup strategies and adopt a cyber vault approach that gives your business a real advantage in the fight against ransomware and data loss.

Whether you’re an enterprise IT leader or a cloud architect, now is the time to build your resilience strategy on a foundation of intelligent protection and secure, immutable storage.

Get Started with Cloud Object Storage