Manufacturers depend on security infrastructure to protect data and keep operations running when disruptions occur. For companies with complex facilities and decades of operational records, the ability to recover that data is an important part of business continuity.

At Ascend Performance Materials LLC, data protection and cyber recovery are part of preparing for operational disruptions. When a hurricane recently approached one of its major Florida plants, the company checked that local systems were backed up and recoverable at its recovery site, according to Xiong Xiong (pictured), vice president of information technology at Ascend.

“This is the stuff that helps me sleep at night and helps me go back to my executive leadership and the board and say: ‘Look, we have the resilience in place and we’ve double-checked, triple-checked, and we have the right partner helping us,'” he said. “We just put it to test literally last week.”

Xiong spoke with theCUBE Research’s Krista Case for the AI Cybersecurity and Resilience Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Ascend moved from uncertainty about recoverability to operational confidence and what that shift means for AI adoption. (* Disclosure below.)

Proven recovery turns security infrastructure into an AI enabler

AI introduces another dimension to Ascend’s security planning. The company expects its suppliers to incorporate AI defenses into their products, Xiong explained.

“We are looking for solutions out there to have AI built in to prevent AI from causing some of these issues,” he said. “You’re now looking to have the same thing defend against itself. Previously, that was more of a pipe dream; now it’s like a requirement.”

Ascend’s resilience challenges predated its AI push, according to Xiong. Before expanding its relationship with Dell, the company struggled to complete nightly backups, verify them and move them to its recovery site, while operational requirements meant it also needed capabilities on-site.

“We needed … to still have that localization capability. But you can’t have localization capability if you don’t have the ability to back that up thoroughly and recover it,” he said.

Dell racked, configured and validated the hardware before handing it over to Ascend, Xiong noted. His team then tested the deployment, watching backups complete locally, move to the recovery site and come up in isolation.

“We have various technologies. We have technologies that are very modern, that’s very easy to back up and recover. We have some technology that we shouldn’t be running anymore … and we were able to even bring those up,” he said.

The changes have also freed up space and reduced the effort spent reorganizing data to manage consumption at each site, according to Xiong. That shift has allowed Ascend to focus more on making data available where it can be used, supporting the company’s AI strategy.

“With this working now, we’re more focused on what do we do with our data,” he said. “We’re very, very data-rich [and] information-poor, and we’re changing that.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AI Cybersecurity and Resilience Summit:

(* Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE