Dell expanded the reach and availability of its cybersecurity and cyber recovery services in a move that mirrors growing enterprise concerns over ransomware and cyberattacks.

The vendor’s Cyber Recovery Services is now available through its Apex as-a-service platform. This allows users to rely on Dell to manage the day-to-day cyber recovery vault operations and help in data recovery should an attack happen.

Dell’s cyber recovery software and hardware includes an on-premises, air-gapped Cyber Recovery Vault with multiple layers of physical and logical security to isolate critical data from ransomware and other threats. Chad Dunn, VP of product management for Apex, explained in a press briefing that customers maintain the ability configure the service as needed, with Dell chipping in with templated recovery, run books, and procedures in dealing with a cyberattack.

“Our sophisticated security analytics platforms dynamically detect anomalies in the vault and the underlying infrastructure to maximize readiness for a cyber incident and recover with confidence,” he said.

Dell initially launched a managed version of its Cyber Recovery Services product last year. This new update is available now.

Dell also expanded the reach of its PowerProtect Cyber Recovery service to Microsoft Azure. This builds on that product's initial availability on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The platform leverages a users’ current backup infrastructure, but it is independently configured, operated, and self-managed. This reduces the attack surface in case of a ransomware attack. The service isolates a customers’ critical data with an operational air-gapped vault, which locks down management interfaces and requires separate security credentials and multi-factor authentication for access.

“This is all about being able to create that air-gapped copy, and in this case a physically isolated air-gapped copy as well, of that data in the public cloud,” explained Caitlin Gordon, VP of software and solutions product management.

Azure access to the service is scheduled for the second half of the year.

Dell built its PowerProtect Cyber Recovery portfolio five years ago, originally focusing on on-premises infrastructures within a customer's data center. The portfolio included an on-premises, air-gapped Cyber Recovery Vault with multiple layers of physical and logical security to isolate critical data from ransomware and other threats.

Dell last year expanded the deployment options to co-location facilities through its partnership with multi-cloud data services provider Faction. That move paved the way for cyber-vault deployments in the public clouds.

Dell also built on the previous AWS work with the launch of its CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery word jumble. This update adds adaptive analytics to the platform that can scan metadata and complete files, and uses machine learning and forensic tools to detect, diagnose, and help with data recovery.

Gordon explained that this provides “full context content indexing of those air-gapped cyber bulk copies” that allows an attacked organization to find and recover the last known good backup copy of data and also let a company know that it was attacked.

“Because it's doing full content indexing, it can actually have the intelligence to detect if a ransomware attack has actually happened,” Gordon said. “So it can help you ensure you have the last known backup copy to recover from, but it also can help detect ransomware attacks as well.”

The CyberSense update will be available later this year.

The Dell updates come on the heels of a Comcast Business survey that found 69% of its customers experienced a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack last year, with 55% of those hit by multi-vector DDoS. The company also witnessed DDoS-extortion ransomware attacks surge by 125% over the past two years.