What’s in a storage product? Nowadays, all-flash, data protection, and data availability are turning storage into a multitasking, multicloud machine. Storage computing doesn’t just deliver data across distributed systems — it also can also double as a cyber-resiliency aid.

Storage and data-protection are increasingly becoming tools for “cyber resiliency,” according to Bina Hallman (pictured, right), vice president of software-defined storage solutions at IBM Corp. Resiliency is about fortifying against attackers at all points in the information technology landscape.

“Storage plays a huge role in the cyber-resiliency plan,” Hallman said. Cyber resiliency is about not just planning against and detecting attacks. It also means bouncing back from them in the event that they occur. This is why IBM is increasingly angling its storage offerings as security infrastructure.

Hallman and Alistair Symon (pictured, left), vice president of storage and software-defined infrastructure at IBM, spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Think event in San Francisco, California. They discussed IBM’s latest announcements and the security talents of advanced new storage. (* Disclosure below.)

Rebounding with restore

Part of cyber resiliency might include developing a baseline model of the environment. What does it look like under normal conditions? Infrastructure and storage patterns, critical systems, day-to-day usage — with these established, it’s all about monitoring for abnormal activity, according to Hallman.

Customers can catch abnormal activity with IBM’s Spectrum Protect. It features data protection and built-in analytics to look for things abnormal activities and things, like malware and ransomware, and give alerts.

“Once you’ve detected something like that, being able to quickly recover from that is really important to get the business up and running,” Hallman said. This is where automatic data restore comes in. Recovery and restore after attacks is where storage plays a huge role.

Things like copies and snapshots are life-savers when the best-laid security plans fail, according to Simon. “Even if somebody does breach you, you’ve still got the recovery point and a safeguarded copy that you can go back to to make sure your data’s restored,” he said. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Think event. (* Disclosure: IBM Corp. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE