The Cyber Defense eMagazine March Edition for 2024

Access architecture is immutable. An automation engine manages the entire backup infrastructure,
ensuring the components carry out their tasks according to policy.
What happens if I need to restore my data?
No business seems to be immune from cyber attacks. In a worst-case scenario, a ransomware attack
could get into Active Directory, gain all usernames and passwords, and wipe out all production data. And
yet the data in the backup environment would still be safe because it lives in a Zero Access infrastructure.
There is no bridge from the compromised credentials into the Zero Access environment because there
are no logins. The only access to that infrastructure comes from the backup provider’s automation engine,
which manages components and executes tasks according to the policies you’ve set.
If hackers were to attack your business operations, you’d be able to restore a copy of your backup data
thanks to Zero Access. Once you’ve started to rebuild the production system so that there's somewhere
to restore to, you can start to install restore tools onto those systems that will be able to recover the data.
Then you’d simply log in to the backup GUI and follow the recovery procedure. And remember: You’re
only restoring a copy of the data; there’s no way to compromise or destroy the original backup data,
which remains safely locked away.
While the zero-trust approach sounds great, and it plays an important role in protecting the business
environment, it is not the pinnacle of security that some backup vendors make it out to be ... especially
when it comes to precious backup data. You must protect your backup environment at all costs. The best
way to keep bad actors out of your backup environment is to make sure there’s no access at all. And for
that, Zero Access offers much higher security than zero trust. The best part is that Zero Access security
protection for backup is available today.
About the Author
Greg Tevis, Vice President of Strategy at Cobalt Iron, has worked for 42 years
in the storage and data protection market helping companies develop data
protection and cybersecurity solutions. Tevis is recognized as an industry
expert in storage technologies, particularly storage management. He has 42
U.S. patents, with several more pending. He can be reached at
gjtevis@cobaltiron.com (linkedin.com/in/greg-tevis-10a5042). More
information about Cobalt Iron is available at cobaltiron.com.
Zero Access® is a registered trademark of Cobalt Iron, Inc.
Cyber Defense eMagazine – March 2024 Edition 82
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