IBM announced a cyber vault service for its flash storage array systems this week to help customers recover from ransomware and other cyberattacks faster.

The IBM FlashSystem Cyber Vault is part of the vendor’s data resilience strategy which also includes backup, recovery, and copy management services from IBM Spectrum Protect Suite; physical air gap protection with IBM tape storage; early attack detection capabilities through IBM QRadar and IBM Guardium; and proactive attack protection using IBM Safeguarded Copy.

“Storage plays a central role in recovering from an attack,” Chris Saul, marketing manager at IBM Spectrum Storage, wrote in a blog post.

The cyber vault complements the Safeguarded Copy on attack recovery for the FlashSystem arrays, IBM claims. 

Announced last year, Safeguarded Copy was designed to automatically create point-in-time snapshots according to schedule. Those snapshots cannot be changed or deleted except by specially defined users to protect them from malware or disgruntled employees, and can be used to recover production data following an attack. 

Cyber Vault continuously monitors those snapshots looking for signs of data corruption introduced by malware or ransomware, while identifying the data copies that have not been affected by the attack, according to Saul.

“Since Safeguarded Copy snapshots are on the same FlashSystem storage as operational data, recovery is fast using the same snapshot technology,” he wrote, adding that cyber vault’s automation capabilities also help speed the recovery process.

IBM joins a long list of storage and data security vendors offering cyber recovery vault capabilities. Rival Dell Technologies recently added a cloud-based cyber vault to its EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for AWS portfolio, and the vendor also offers cyber vaults for on-premises and colocation facilities. 

On top of the cyber vault, IBM unveiled new storage systems — the FlashSystem 7300 and 9500 — to accelerate hybrid-cloud use cases. 

"IBM FlashSystem Cyber Vault and our most advanced FlashSystem storage are specifically designed to address the performance and security levels that our hybrid cloud clients demand," Denis Kennelly, GM at IBM Storage, said in a statement.