The News: At VMware Explore, Rubrik unveiled Rubrik AI-Powered Cyber Recovery for VMware users to aid administrators in mitigating data loss and reducing downtime following a cyberattack. The solution harnesses generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to offer guided workflows and task lists, streamlining data recovery and bolstering cyber-resilience, ultimately minimizing the impact of cyber threats on organizations. Additional details are available in Rubrik’s Press Release.
Rubrik’s AI-Powered Cyber Recovery Minimizes Data Loss and Downtime
Analyst Take: With cyber-attacks now being an inevitable occurrence for organizations, the main priority for cyber-resiliency has become mitigating potential business impact. For IT Operations, this means limiting data loss and downtime following an attack. This is no easy feat, however. Recovering from ransomware and other cyber-attacks tends to be a highly manual process, largely because the organization needs to investigate when exactly the attack penetrated their environment, and the exact damage that it caused (which systems were infected, etc.) This recovery demands time from skilled IT professionals, which are in short supply today. In fact, in The Futurum Group’s Trends in Enterprise Data Protection 2023 Study, 28% of respondents noted limited IT staff/headcount as a top challenge – surpassed only by budget limitations and high solution costs. The result is data loss and downtime.
Rubrik’s new solution aims to help SecOps teams to accelerate cyber-recovery by using generative AI, LLMs, and automation. Specifically, it provides step-by-step, guided workflows that first utilize vSphere templates to create a new, clean virtual machine (VM) on which to recover, and then to recover unaffected data to this clean environment. This approach helps to speed time-to-recovery and at the same time avoid re-infection.
Building on Rubrik’s partnership with Microsoft, the new solution also uses Azure OpenAI-based recommendations for the “last known good” snapshot or file to recover in order to minimize data loss. Specifically, it builds on the integration with Azure OpenAI that was previously announced. It is worth noting that, in addition to integrating Azure OpenAI, Rubrik’s flagship platform, Rubrik Security Cloud, also integrates with Microsoft Sentinel, a cloud-native SIEM and SOAR platform that provides a unified view of security data from across an organization, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, and that uses AI and machine learning (ML) to automate threat detection and response.
From an industry perspective, Rubrik’s announcement reflects a trend that The Futurum Group expects to see in using generative AI and LLMs to improve cyber-resiliency. As these capabilities find their way into the hands of malicious attackers to craft increasingly sophisticated attacks, it will become even more important for organizations to find ways to utilize them to meaningfully improve their cyber-resiliency. Example use cases include preventing and detecting attacks through pattern recognition in data, creating and executing more quickly customized responses to attacks, and general education and training on evolving best practices for cyber-resiliency.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
Microsoft and Partners will Strengthen Microsoft 365 Data Protection
AWS Storage Day 2023: AWS Tackles AI/ML, Cyber-Resiliency in the Cloud
BlueVoyant’s AI-Powered Cyberdefense Platform Responds to Threats
Author Information
With a focus on data security, protection, and management, Krista has a particular focus on how these strategies play out in multi-cloud environments. She brings approximately 15 years of experience providing research and advisory services and creating thought leadership content. Her vantage point spans technology and vendor portfolio developments; customer buying behavior trends; and vendor ecosystems, go-to-market positioning, and business models. Her work has appeared in major publications including eWeek, TechTarget and The Register.
Prior to joining The Futurum Group, Krista led the data protection practice for Evaluator Group and the data center practice of analyst firm Technology Business Research. She also created articles, product analyses, and blogs on all things storage and data protection and management for analyst firm Storage Switzerland and led market intelligence initiatives for media company TechTarget.
