There’s a new storage technology in town. Since the introduction of ‘Recovery Assurance Software’ or ‘RAS’ as an Innovation Trigger on Gartner’s latest Enterprise Storage Hype Cycle this summer, we’re hearing these words used with ever-increasing frequency.
As is the case with all emerging technologies – there isn’t yet a wide understanding of what it is, or why it’s important. This blog, by Predatar Founder and CEO, Alistair Mackenzie will help you get to grips with Recovery Assurance Software. And if anyone is qualified to do it, it’s Alistair. After all, Predatar has been developing it’s own Recovery Assurance technology for almost 2 years.
–
Author: Alistair MacKenzie.
I have a confession to make. It’s been a while since I wrote my last blog, and after almost an hour of staring at a blank screen, I decided I’d try a bit of plagiarism. Unfortunately, my attempt to steal from today’s content ‘King of Thieves’, ChatGPT, fell at the first hurdle.
My question “What is Recovery Assurance Software?” returned the following response:
“As of my last update ‘Recovery Assurance Software’ is not a specific, widely recognised term in the field of software and technology…’
Chat GPT is a powerful tool, but it needs source content to feed it. The response above only goes to show how new this important technology is.
I guess I’ll have to write this blog the old-fashioned way 🙄!
Let me start with why.
Why is there such a buzz around the rise of “recovery assurance”? I believe there are 3 main drivers.
# 1. Increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks.
The adversarial nature of cyber-crime with its many war-like descriptions has crowded out traditional disaster recovery concerns from conversations around risk management.
Deliberate contamination of traditional backup or replication-based DR solutions makes it practically impossible to use standard recovery procedures after a cyber-attack. As a result, firms have turned to using isolated recovery environments (IREs) or cleanrooms to verify and recover data from immutable backups copies held on storage systems.
#2. New regulation. In the financial services industry the EU’s DORA regulation, which came into force on the 16th January 2023, asks firms not to measure the likelihood of a cyber-attack, but to prove their resilience and recoverability. Previously it was sufficient to have a functioning backup system in place, but today, firms must prove they can fully recover when needed.
The challenge even with traditional business continuity planning was always the expense of regular, proactive testing. How many times have we heard of assets originally assigned for DR testing being reallocated for other projects? The cost in infrastructure and human resources all contributed to the alarming statistic that, on average, less than 1% of a firm’s data is tested for recovery each year.
#3. A tipping point for artificial intelligence.
Today’s ransomware gangs are equipped with the latest AI systems that are superhuman at writing code and quantum computer code-breaking capabilities that make modern encryption cyphers obsolete.
As a force for good, artificial intelligence is helping operations teams turn dumb data storage and backup infrastructure into intelligent detection engines, capable of alerting security analysts to adverse events and anomalous behaviour.
So, what is Recovery Assurance Software?
Only in July 2023 did Gartner, even recognise Recovery Assurance Software as an independent category.
Put simply, Recovery Assurance Software is designed to prove the recoverability of critical IT systems and data – so businesses can have certainty in their ability to remain operational when the worst happens.
Due to the rapid emergence of the three trends discussed – cyber-crime, regulation, and artificial intelligence – I’m certain that not only will this technology stick, but will soon find its way onto Gartner’s “slope of enlightenment.”
Recovery Assurance from Predatar
Predatar is leading the way in Recovery Assurance. Forward-thinking enterprises around the world are already using Predatar Cyber Recovery Orchestration to continually validate the integrity of their data and the speed of recovery. Read a short customer story (2 min read).
Learn more at our Data Resiliency Summit in October.
Join the Recovery Assurance trailblazers at the Control23 Data Resiliency Summit in London or online.
Find out more and sign-up now.
