Yet this month, DCIG will release its first TOP 5 report based on its research into VMware backup solutions. These forthcoming reports represent the outcome of DCIG’s first comprehensive evaluation and research into VMware backup solutions since about three years ago.
While core VMware backup features remain intact, new features have emerged in response to current organizational demands. Most notably, organizations will often see support for artificial intelligence (AI), anomaly detection, and cloud-based consoles in these solutions.
Here is a more detailed breakdown of these three early insights from DCIG’s research into VMware backup solutions.
Early Insight #1: AI Now Readily Available
In today’s world, the use of AI in most enterprise software is almost a given. VMware backup software has also embraced AI, though it most often appears in those solutions targeting enterprises.
Exactly how each VMware backup solution uses AI does, however, vary. Three ways in which they may leverage AI include:
- Providing proactive technical support. Backup software providers have adopted AI in the same way as multiple other providers. Their AI component first gathers logs and telemetry data from their customers’ environments. They then use that data to both provide technical support and proactively identify trouble spots in the environment. It can also help optimize backup job scheduling and restores.
- Identifying backup anomalies. Looking for undetected strains of ransomware in backups in the form of anomaly detection has become a popular way to use AI. Since much corporate data flows through backup software, it can help identify ransomware that has crept in undetected.
- Mining backup data. Enterprises often have petabytes, if not hundreds of petabytes, of backups that often sit dormant. Using AI, enterprises may mine their backup repositories to perform eDiscoveries or gather new insight into their corporate data.
Early Insight #2: Anomaly Detection has Displaced Ransomware Detection
When ransomware started becoming an issue in the late 2010s and early 2020s, backup software started providing ransomware detection. To do so, some providers offered their own ransomware detection capabilities. Others partnered with anti-virus providers to obtain and deliver this functionality.
However, as ransomware evolved, the limitations of this approach became apparent. In many cases, ransomware evolves so quickly that traditional means of identifying it no longer worked predictably or reliably.
This unpredictability has led backup providers to introduce anomaly detection into their backup offerings. Rather than looking for ransomware signatures in backups, backup software instead, looks for anomalies in the backups or backup jobs. Examples of anomalies that the backup software may flag include:
- Large changes in the content of new backups.
- Reads of existing backups.
- Unusual number of login attempts to the backup software itself.
By monitoring these anomalies and others, VMware backup solutions can better identify when ransomware activity occurs. It also can better account for and ideally catch hackers that may tailor ransomware for specific organizations.
The backup software now looks for behavior generally associated with ransomware rather than looking for specific ransomware strains. This facilitates the backup software to more quickly identify ransomware in the IT environment.
Early Insight #3: Cloud-based Management Consoles Now Prevalent
VMware backup providers still offer the management options that organizations expect. These often include command line interfaces (CLI), VMware vCenter plug-ins, and web GUIs for local management. However, more providers now offer cloud-based web GUIs that organizations may use to manage their backup software.
Offering cloud-based GUIs has been somewhat of an outgrowth of VMware backup providers introducing AI into their solutions. The provider may already aggregate data from its customers into a central cloud-based location and then use AI to analyze it.
Since they already had connectivity into their customers’ environments, introducing a cloud-based console for management was not a huge reach.
Organizations should be aware that they may be unable to perform all the management functions they can perform locally. However, the cloud-based console may grant them visibility into most or all their backup software deployments that local management options may not provide.
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