We are excited to inform our clients and partners that IBM Storage Defender, part of our IBM Storage for Data Resilience portfolio, is now generally available.

Enterprise clients worldwide continue to grapple with a threat landscape that is constantly evolving. Bad actors are moving faster than ever and are causing more lasting damage to data. According to an IBM report, cyberattacks like ransomware that used to take months to fully deploy can now take as little as four days. Cybercriminals keep trying to find their way into an organization one way or another, and early detection and timely response are more critical now than ever. 

IBM Storage Defender, announced earlier this year, aims to work across the various silos that exist in an organization’s IT landscape to provide a holistic view of its data security posture. It is also engineered to help enterprises detect sophisticated threats earlier and orchestrate data recovery to help get a minimally viable enterprise operational by coordinating with existing SecOps workflows. With IBM Storage Defender, IBM Storage software capabilities covering inventory, threat detection, data protection, Safeguarded Copy and recovery orchestration are available to clients with simple consumption-based credit licensing.

Mitigating risk with a holistic view

Building resiliency for data against threats from bad actors, insiders or unsuspecting users is a team sport. It takes collective intelligence and collaboration—usually between teams fostered by alignment, standards and a shared understanding. A management platform like IBM Storage Defender with a single pane of glass optimized for personas based on their specific roles (e.g., data, security, infrastructure or governance) can bring the right groups together to converge on the recovery plan.

IBM Storage Defender is designed to be able to leverage sensors—like real-time threat detection built into IBM Storage FlashSystem—across primary and secondary workloads to detect threats and anomalies from backup metadata, array snapshots and other relevant threat indicators. With IBM Storage Defender, clients can cut through data silos and devise an action plan to strengthen their data resilience. For example, a client could air-gap copies of the most sensitive data, hold it off-premises and periodically test for recoverability. Doing this is designed to help reduce the threat exposure window and proactively safeguard data from vulnerabilities.

Credit-based licensing to break down silos

All our new IBM Storage Defender capabilities going forward will be available as credits called Resource Units (RU). Our existing capabilities can continue to be consumed under current licensing agreements or as RUs going forward. Customers can procure RUs and redeem them against any underlying capabilities within IBM Storage Defender. They will be able to size the RUs they need based on the capabilities they plan to consume. Credits are like coins; they can be used to consume any service within IBM Storage Defender. This construct gives our clients more flexibility to consume IBM service capabilities and only pay for what they use.  

Comprehensive data resiliency to address needs of modern workloads

The IBM Storage for Data Resilience portfolio is designed to help clients protect their most valuable asset—their data—against sophisticated threats like ransomware, exfiltration, insider attacks and inevitable events, such as natural disasters and common user errors.

IBM continues to evolve its IBM Storage for Data Resiliency solutions with mission-critical enterprise applications, virtual machines and an increasing footprint of cloud and container-native applications.

IBM Technology Expert Labs can help install and set up IBM Storage Defender

IBM Storage Defender clients can benefit from the IBM Technology Expert Labs team’s highly skilled consultants, established best practices that have been garnered over the years through many successful client implementations, timely service delivery and skills transfer to the customer at the end of the service engagement.

Get started with IBM Storage Defender today

Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Technology Expert Labs at Systems-Expert-Labs@ibm.com to engage a specialist who can help you get started today. Learn more about IBM Storage Defender by reading our white paper here.

Learn about other IBM solutions that protect against cyberattacks like ransomware:

• Learn more about IBM Security QRadar EDR
• Learn more about IBM Security Guardium Data Encryption
• Learn more about IBM Security QRadar SIEM

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.