Product Review

Commvault Security Launch Event June 2023

June 13, 2023 /

So last week I attended the Data Protection redefined event as I was curious about what was going on in the market. This was also mainly driven by seeing all the recent cyber attacks in the news and hearing about them daily via various social feeds and my role.

It may be a little blunt but I had a small realisation that in previous times we were chasing the fact we need to protect ourselves from software or hardware failures with technologies at the time of writing this things have moved on with continuous software development and virtualisation coming to save the day with hardware issues we face a new enemy. I have written and spoken about this in the past but bad actors now have many more ways to exploit data and security vulnerabilities than ever before, data has always been king to any business so it makes sense why this is always the prize. I eluded to some of this in my previous Commvault write up.

So what were a few of the key highlights that came from this release, note below some feature sets are yet to be fully available at the time of this post:-

Available in Q2, Commvault’s advanced security features are managed and delivered through the simplicity of the new Commvault Cloud Command interface, providing complete visibility for better business decisions, improved security postures, and preserved data for cleaner, more efficient recoverability. These capabilities include:

  • Commvault Cloud Command – A single platform and UI, offering universal management for all Commvault offerings in an integrated dashboard that provides full telemetry and observability into key Commvault software indicators. Delivers health-at-a-glance, risk levels, security and recovery indicators, and beyond for Commvault investments from a single source.
  • Commvault Risk Analysis – Powered by machine learning (ML), Commvault Risk Analysis quarantines and protects sensitive data, giving organizations the ability to discover, analyze, and secure sensitive data to help prevent cyber exposure and potential data exfiltration.
  • Commvault Threat Scan – Fosters the detection of corrupted or suspicious datasets. Businesses can use Threat Scan to locate and quarantine malware and threats from backup content, and help ensure clean recoveries while decreasing the likelihood of reinfection.
  • Commvault Auto Recovery – Cyber analysis tool that tests recovery readiness at scale and provides a framework for forensic analysis to validate and sanitize points of recovery, aiding in the prevention of future incidents. Allows organizations to easily and securely recover workloads at scale from cyber-attacks with minimal data loss and downtime.
  • ThreatWise Advisor – Delivers integrated logic into Commvault backup environments to intelligently recommend decoy placement, and further harden critical workloads.

There was also a great piece all about the latest integrations

Ecosystem integrations – Protecting the most workloads requires strong technology and engineering partnerships. To that end, Commvault also announced it has collaborated with CyberArk and Microsoft to integrate Commvault’s technology with their respective, industry-leading security platforms. By expanding its security ecosystem, Commvault is helping organizations enhance their security posture through automated incident response, better collaboration, and deeper insights into the threat landscape. 
 

There was a key quote in some of the press material, I only mention this as just the other day I fully believe that this is the next evolution of AI/ML too. Systems need to be aware of each other with bi-directional integration so that intelligent decisions can be made otherwise which system can validate changes made by humans or a machine, do these systems then otherwise cause conflict by each making cyclic changes. This was a great debate I had with a customer and peers in the last few weeks.

Commvault and Microsoft Sentinel bi-directional integration provides an enhanced security posture and improved collaboration between backup environments and security systems. This new layer of interoperability for IT and SecOps teams delivers automated orchestration jointly across both systems for combined cyber event insights, actionable countermeasures, and optimized incident response.

You can still watch the whole thing on demand here but I also wanted to just expand on a few other bits I saw https://discover.commvault.com/Event-Security-Launch-Data-Protected-Registration.html

I will do my best not to spoil too much as I do highly recommend finding some time to watch this as its not all about product as you will see later in the panels, I do hope we see more things like this talking about business challenges rather than the products

Straight out the gate, this was a shockingly high figure, I knew there were challenges being a customer and implementing this in the past but I honestly thought with the vast array of solutions on the market it would have got easier.

We may as well also cross it now with the below but supply chain attacks are things we should always be mindful of, it may not be our employee that causes this but somewhere else in the chain

The next biggest shock to me was how high the fact data that has been exfiltrated is now being used as a ransom rather than the encrypted data itself. I assume the fear of further repercussions and brand image with consumers is something we should all be aware of. The figure of 83% is also quite concerning, it truly shows an evolution in the ways these events are occurring.

I promise I will try and get away from more numbers but this one again close to my heart. I always said in all the auditing I did human error or humans were always the biggest risk. We all make mistakes right, that what it is to be human.

The panellists that were lined up next drove some great insights but two of my take aways were below

I really do hope that I can dig deeper into some of the products over the coming year as we all joke about the year of but I would rather say at this juncture it’s now the time of data protection. We are all trying to be cloud smart and now with our data being so disparate how do we keep on top of all this and ensure that is safe/secured. I have always said data is king as this is normally the key differentiator of any business with the next so let’s ensure we can keep our businesses safe and secure.

My final ask would be that you watch this and reply back to the thread below as I am keen to hear everyones thoughts

To wrap up this great event covering this security update we saw tremendous growth within Commvault’s offerings catering to emerging threats in the current landscape. It was certainly enlightening to see some a wake up statistics to anyone in the world of IT at present such as 90% of customers could not fully restore their data from a cloud-based service, that ransomware is not only to encrypt that data but a method to extort the victim by threatening to release data that would cause reputational damage. If I was in operations again I know this is something that would keep me up at night. With the ability to backup and storage data across clouds with one dashboard and being able to easily locate this is key to faster recovery.

Now more than ever teams need to work closer to fully understand the company’s objectives with IT and how this will drive value ensuring that all data is safe and protected especially with the use of more clouds and disparate data repositories. We also need to be mindful of AI/ML but how can we use this to complement what we are doing and ensure that these integrations provide value and ease workloads to create data-driven decisions rather than creating more noise preventing us to do more exciting things with our business. This was demonstrated by their Risk Analysis tools and their bi-direction integrations with partners such as Microsoft with Sentinal providing further insights to teams to respond as quickly as possible.

Note: I have been compensated for this post and commentary. All the thoughts and opinions in the post are mine and not linked to the company or my current/past employer I am working for

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